What is a business enterprise ? Though seemingly simple, in reality this is a very difficult question to answer. When we examine a group of business enterprises such as the Mitsubishi Group, an important issue is how to look at enterprises, the members of said group. A currently popular approach...

There have been many corporate mergers in Japan. Beginning with the great mergers of once-dissolved Mitsubishi Shoji (Mitsubishi Trading) and Mitsui Bussan (Mitsui Trading) in the 1950s, there have been numerous large-scale mergers including the Ocean Shipping Conglomerate (mergers into six core...

Immediately after Japan was defeated in World War II and the United States began occupying it, the dissolution of the izaibatsu/i took place. The basic objective of the izaibatsu/i dissolution was to eliminate the family control of giant corporations in Japan. This action stemmed from the...

iCapitalism without capitalists/i: Yataro Iwasaki (1834-1885), who founded the Mitsubishi Co. about 120 years ago and then later built the Mitsubishi izaibatsu/i around it, openly and without apology proclaimed, "The Mitsubishi Company is nominally a corporation, but it is in fact entirely a...