The limited liability system of all partners was permitted in Japan first by the Bank of Issue Act (Kokuritsu-Ginko Jorei) of 1872. Business Companies in general started to adopt the limited liability system when the first Commercial Law was enforced in 1893, and the joint-stock company with limited liability in its strict sense was not materialized until the amendment of the Commercial Law in 1899. Before then, however, the House of Mitsui had managed to introduce into its subsidiaries the effect of limited liability system by making full use of the Family Registration Law, and tried to avoid the unlimited responsibility for its subsidiaries.
In this article I tried to elucidate these elaborate means and make it clear that the primary objective of the reorganization in 1909 of the Mitsuis subsidiaries on the basis of joint-stock system was not the establishment of limited liability but was rather the rationalization of management in its own way.
