Aging current active seafarers and a shortage of new recruits has become an obvious problem throughout the industry in Japan. The Maritime Bureau of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism(MLIT) has recommended the system of grouping small coastal shipping companies by utilizing ship management companies to solve these problems. In addition, the MLIT provides the guidelines for ship management and for evaluating the management system. However, under the circumstances where the effective jobs-to-applications ratio of coastal seafarer in 2015 will become twice and a shortage of seafarers will be serious, grouping through ship management companies has not so progressed as expected. The purpose of this research is to elucidate the reason why ship management is difficult to establish management system as a type of business in coastal shipping, and to propose effective measures to resolve it.
