Abstract
The purpose of this essay is to make clear a key problem of study on the Japanese business history after the Second World War, and to indicate concrete focuses of the study concerned.
The key problem of study on the postwar business history in Japan is lack of a whole perspective which covers not only the rapid economic growth but also the collapse of the bubble boom. On the other hand a recent appearance of comparative institutional analysis of economic development, which insists that company activities follow system-wide institutional changes, means a crisis of business history. Therefore, in order to overcome the crisis business history on postwar Japan must have the entire perspective without delay.
This essay indicates three focuses of the study as follows;
(1) to make clear changes of industrial relations in connection with changes of production control and quality control,
(2) to analyze changes of a consuming trend in relation to changes of distributing structure and trade practices, and
(3) to examine changes of company finance with reference to changes of investment activities and business results. And, as a conclusion, it emphasizes a new perspective, which should be called as “business history of coping with crises”, and an epoch-making change in the first half of the 1960s.
