Zaibatsu

"Zaibatsu"

The term zaibatsu was used in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century to refer to large family-controlled banking and industrial combines in Japan. While the term was used arbitrarily in the United States throughout the 1980s to refer to any large Japanese corporation, it is not used natively by Japanese speakers for anything other than historical discussions in reference to Edo- and Meiji-era zaibatsu.

Historical influence

The Big Four zaibatsu of Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Sumitomo and Yasuda are the most historically significant zaibatsu groups, having roots stemming from the Edo period of Japanese history. During this period and later into the Meiji period, the Tokugawa shogunate employed their services and financial powers for various endeavours, which the zaibatsu often provided free of charge in exchange for the privilege of using government funds. After the Russo-Japanese War, a number of so-called "second-tier" zaibatsu also emerged, mostly as the result of business conglomerations. Some more famous second-tier zaibatsu included the Okura, Furukawa, Nakajima, and Nissan groups, among several others.

Postwar dissolution

The zaibatsu were dissolved by reformers during the Allied occupation of Japan. Their controlling families' assets were seized, holding companies (the previous "heads" of the zaibatsu conglomerates) eliminated, and interlocking directorships, essential to the old system of intercompany coordination, were outlawed. Among the zaibatsu that were targeted by the SCAP for dissolution in 1946 were Asano, Furukawa, Nakajima, Nissan, Nomura, and Okura. Matsushita, while not a zaibatsu, was originally targeted for breakup, but was saved by a petition signed by 15,000 of its union workers and their families.

Complete dissolution of the zaibatsu was never achieved by Allied reformers or SCAP, partly because of the support they received from the zeitgeist. Zaibatsu as a whole were widely considered to be beneficial to the Japanese economy and government, and the opinions of the Japanese public, of the zaibatsu workers and management, and of the entrenched bureaucracy regarding plans for zaibatsu dissolution ranged from unenthusiastic to disapproving. Additionally, the changing politics of the Occupation during the reverse course served as a crippling, if not terminal, roadblock to zaibatsu elimination.

Modern-day influence

Today, the influence of the zaibatsu can still be seen in the form of financial groups, institutions, and larger companies whose origins reach back to the original zaibatsu, oftentimes sharing the same original family names (for example, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation). However, some argue that the "old mechanisms of financial and administrative control" that zaibatsu once enjoyed have have been destroyed. Despite the absence of an actualized sweeping change to the existence of large industrial conglomerates in Japan, the zaibatsu's previous vertically integrated chain of command, ending with a single family, has now widely been displaced by the horizontal relationships of association and coordination characteristic of keiretsu. Keiretsu, meaning "series" or "subsidiary", could be interpreted as being suggestive of this difference.

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