In this report, the utilization, research and development of corrosion inhibitors in Japan and the action mechanism of corrosion inhibitors are explained, and their effects and future utilization are also described. In Japan, corrosion inhibitor was commercialized in the 1970s, and the use of these showed the rapid elongation as a countermeasure of the use of sea sand as an aggregate for the period 1975-1977 and the use of corrosion inhibitors decreased after 1979 because of the regulation for the total amounts of chloride in concrete in the standards. Then, amounts of concretes with corrosion inhibitors decreased in 1990s. However, in the civil engineering and construction industry fields, they seem to have to deal with the problem of increase of chloride content in concrete by the deregulation and the utilization of various industrial waste materials. We should consider the utilization of corrosion inhibitor from the new viewpoint. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.