Descriptive epidemiology of cancer in Japan: current cancer incidence and survival data.

The Research Group for Population-Based Cancer Registration in Japan, which has been collecting cancer incidence and mortality data from participating registries annually since 1974, has also been estimating cancer incidence rates for the whole of Japan by sex, age, and site. Data from the third survey have now been analyzed. Marked changes have been observed by the Osaka Cancer Registry in incidence rates of some sites during this period. Five-year relative survival rates for registered cancer cases have been calculated by the Osaka Registry for the first time in Japan.