The issue ofcarbon leakagecaused by imbalance of carbon emissions embodied in trade draws widespread attention of the world under the background of climate change. This paper establishes a model of imbalance of carbon emissions embodied in bilateral trade and calculates the imbalance of carbon emissions embodied in Sino- Japan trade using a noncompetitive input- output table for 2001 to 2011. We found that the complete carbon emission coefficient of each sector in China is higher than that of Japan,with rather big differences between the two countries. China has maintained a surplus of carbon emissions via Sino-Japan trade,though it acts as a deficit trader in general. As a consequence,China has been in a situation ofdouble imbalancein both trade value and carbon emissions embodied in trade at the same time;(3)China performs as a surplus country of carbon emissions embodied in Sino-Japan trade in each sector, and textile,electrical and optical equipments have the largest imbalance scale of carbon emissions embodied in bilateral trade among all sectors. SDA was used to decompose the effects that influence the change in imbalance in carbon emission embodied in Sino- Japan trade. Chinas export scale and intermediate input structure significantly drive the increase in the imbalance in carbon emissions embodied in bilateral trade,while Chinas carbon intensity and import scale plays the opposite role,i.e. eliminating the rise in carbon emissions embodied in Sino-Japan trade. Therefore,greater efforts are needed to improve low- carbon technology and decrease carbon emission intensity in the manufacturing procedure,and the production and trade structure should be optimized to effectively alleviate the imbalance in carbon emissions embodied in Chinas foreign trade to promote the coordination of foreign trade and environmental protection.