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(★)(Founded over three hundred years ago, Mitsui is the oldest and one of the largest financial empires in Japanese history. As the present book reveals, this enduring giant owes much to the remarkable men who shaped it. Throughout their long history the Mitsui family and executives of its enterprises have been innovators. Before 1700 Mitsui had introduced the revolutionary policy of cash sales at fixed prices, as well as double-entry book-keeping, on-the-job training, and a rudimentary profit-sharing system. In 1891 the head of Mitsui Bank, which was founded some years before the Bank of England, instituted merit promotions, set up an employees´ pension fund, and originated the semiannual-bonus system that is such an integral part of Japanese business practice today. ／Mitsui perceptively traces the political and economic institutions that gave birth to Japan´s merchants, nurtured her industries, and fostered her ´zaibatsu´, the gigantic financial combines whose influence and power extended to every level of Japanese society. The entire history of business in Japan is reflected in this chronicle of one of the greatest zaibatsu, Mitsui : its simple beginnings ; its ever stronger ties with the government ; its steady growth following the opening of Japan to the West ; its increasing independence from family control ; and finally, its phenomenal recovery following World War II and the nearly disastrous occupation policy of dissolving the zaibatsu. ／In the early seventeenth century the farsighted head of the Mitsui family, exchanging his sword for an abacus, became the last Mitsui samurai and the first Mitsui to join the burgeoning merchant class. In 1673 one of his sons opened Echigoya, the Tokyo draper´s shop that was to become the foundation of the Mitsui empire and is today´s great Mitsukoshi Department Store. Mitsui has grown steadily from the original small family enterprise until today its national and international holdings range from banking, insurance, and engineering, through mining, chemicals, and textiles, to heavy industry. ／The investments of the far-flung Mitaui empire have always served as a barometer of the political and economic climate of Japan. Mitsui money financed not only the armies of the Tokugawa shogunate but also the imperial forces that overwhelmed them. Later, Mitsui money, which had been the foundation of the imperial treasury and had kept the constitutional government alive in its infancy, was used by Japan´s expansionist governments to finance their wars in Russia and China and to develop the South Manchuria Railway ; it was to have been used to purchase Manchuria itself. Mitsui money and enterprises were called upon to meet the growing demands of Japan´s military government prior to and during World War II, and at war´s end they turned just as quickly to the tasks of repairing the war damage and rebuilding the destroyed economy. ／Business in Japan has long been an enigma to the Westerner. As the influence of Mitsui and other business empires continues to grow outside Japan, it becomes increasingly important to understand the forces at work in Japanese business. Incisive, compelling, Mitsui penetrates the mysteries of the intricate and complex relations among the government, the business empires, and the families that founded them. ◆John G. Roberts, a biologist by training and a professional writer by preference, has made his home in Japan since 1959 and is a foreign correspondent for several economic and financial publications. Like Mr. Roberts´s previous books --´Japan Quest (with Jacqueline Paul)´, ´Black Ships and Rising Sun´, and ´The Industrialization of Japan´-- the present book grew out of his desire ´to understand what goes on here. Why Mitsui? Because it´s the oldest, one of the biggest, and the most famous economic unit in Japanese history and even now exerts a strong influence on Japanese society.´) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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