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2023 Volume 40 Pages 102-106
The present volume explains the dynamics of the global luxury industry in business history terms. In the preface, Donzé points out that European companies were in a position of control, and the presence of Japanese companies was insubstantial. In Section 1, the author elucidates the background to how this industry came to be through historical analysis and theoretical considerations from a somewhat macro perspective. Next, in Section 2, Donzé closes in on the various actors in this industry and examines their distinguishing features and attitudes.
While the present volume is a work of business historical research on a specific industry, it is underpinned by a strong critical awareness of present-day Japanese companies. The author argues that we should not see the Japanese market as something special, and that we should not see Japanese management culture as characterized by the pursuit of high-technological standards and lower costs as holy writ. The perspective of this author as a foreign researcher working at a Japanese university is valuable in that it relativizes the conventional wisdom that has become deeply engraved in many Japanese.
Throughout his historical research on this industry, Donzé speaks of the importance of heritage strategies (Chapter 3), putting this at the core of the opinions he offers to Japanese companies. Heritage is defined in the present volume as "a constructed narrative that includes a variety of elements strongly bound up with the past" (p. 78). The observation that the narratives that management actors construct from elements out of the past is important when it comes to corporate strategies may feel particularly fresh to people who are steeped in objectivist perspectives on management.
In my role as reviewer, I want to mention two things I would have hoped for. First, the content of the present volume is deeply related to the topic of the uses of the past, about which studies have accumulated in recent years particularly in Europe. If Donzé had demonstrated the connections with that stream of research, the present volume's theoretical position would have been clearer. Second, a more careful discussion was likely needed regarding the trends of a time when criticisms of voracious capitalism have been on the rise, and its relevance to the luxury industry. This is an important cultural shift for companies in the luxury industry. To be sure, Donzé does touch on this aspect in his analysis of the wine industry, but if his discussion had been more in-depth it would have been better aligned with the interests of contemporary society.
However, these points do not detract from the value of this volume. I recommend this work to a wide audience, including not only business historians but also business scholars, business practitioners, and furthermore people involved with industrial and educational policy in Japan. It is a valuable work that makes us aware of a perspective that is generally lacking in Japanese companies, as well as of practicable strategic options.
Hitotsubashi University
Tohoku University
Japan's oil industry was deeply impacted after World War II by international oil majors in the areas of financing and crude oil supplies. That said, there were also those companies that procured and developed crude oil based on nationalistic principles, with no investments from foreign capital. The present volume is a work of political and diplomatic historical research that, through an investigation into the efforts by nationalist oil companies to secure resources in the Middle East, analyzes the personal political connections, ideologies, and management principles of the entrepreneur who led those companies. Specifically, it takes up such topics as imports of Iranian oil by Idemitsu Kōsan under Idemitsu Sazō, the development of oil fields in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait by the Arabian Oil Company under Yamashita Tarō, and the development of oil fields in Abu Dhabi by Abu Dhabi National Oil by Tanaka Kiyoharu and Sugimoto Shigeru.
The findings laid out in the present volume are considerable. It lays out in specific detail the progress of each project and the personal networks that made them possible. It also provides evidence that while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was quite cool with regard to these projects and the private diplomacy of the entrepreneurs responsible, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry was welcoming. The present volume is also deeply interesting for its conclusions that show the management principles of the entrepreneurs who supported challenging the international oil majors contained a "postwar Asianism" that backed religious ethics centered on the emperor as they rebelled against the monopolistic system of Western capitalism, and the origins of this lay in prewar Asianism (an ideology that put Japanese imperialism at its core, which saw Asian peoples as on par with the Japanese while regarding the Western great powers as the other).
Many sorts of research questions for business history research can be drawn from the valuable results of the present volume. For example, what sort of impact did "postwar Asianism" have on the workers and societies into which advances were made? The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere—which, based on the work of Takeuchi Yoshimi, the present volume sees as both a form and consequence of prewar Asianism—in reality was a hierarchical resource procurement order centered on Japan and a framework for reducing standards of living in the occupied territories (Adachi Hiroaki, Dai-Tōa kyōeiken, Chūō Kōron Shinsha, 2022). Was "postwar Asianism" really able to completely escape the same sorts of failures? This point needs to be evaluated not in terms of entrepreneur ideologies, but rather through a more detailed analysis of business realities.
Kyoto University
The present volume is based on a study into the experiences of those women who were described as hību and the activities of the association they formed as a way of considering what significance there was in Japan for "women to hope that they could play an active role in the workplace" from the 1970s to the 1990s. HEIB, which stands for "Home Economists in Business," emerged in the U.S. in the 1920s. When it was introduced to Japan in the 1970s—a time when consumer movements were becoming radicalized—it underwent a peculiar adaptation. This is because the ambitious Japanese women who thought that HEIB would be useful for dealing with corporate customers removed the college degree condition from the original definition while adding the condition of being a woman. In doing so, they tried to promote "women who work in corporate consumer-related departments" as being hību—i.e., the Japanese version of HEIB.
After the 1973 oil crisis, with the economy slumping, the men working as full-time employees at Japanese companies coped with long hours of overtime and job transfers in exchange for guarantees of long-term employment and seniority-based wages. This work-style, in its exemplified form, was supported by wives who quit their jobs and single-handedly took over housework, child care, and the like. In this context, the author emphasizes, hību asserted "the fact of being women responsible for at-home tasks including doing the shopping means we can handle duties in consumer-related departments." The author then goes on to present the outcomes of the company work they continued to do in terms of developing products and dealing with customers. In due course, the volume relates, they became role models for women who sought duties of the sort that would be regarded as important in a company.
Hību were uncommon women who managed to surmount what were seen as the three biggest hurdles for women of their era: graduating from a university, gaining employment at a well-known company, and handling work that came with responsibilities. On the other hand, in Japan in recent years where remaining unmarried is a growing trend, it is becoming increasingly inappropriate to assume that men do not handle housework (one expects that bachelors do housework). It may be expected that, with future research that relativizes hību both coevally and diachronically, our understanding may deepen regarding how people work in Japanese society.
Meiji University
The Hirooka family that is the subject of this volume has been known as a wealthy Edo-period Osaka merchant clan. They are known for having weathered management crises over the years since the Meiji Restoration, and through having gotten into the banking and insurance industries carried out reforms in their business and grew once again. However, relative to the size of their presence as noted in histories, historical materials on them are scant and one would be hard put to say that research on them have progressed to date as one might think. The state of progress on this research changed has changed entirely in recent years with the opening of company history archives and the discovery of old documents held by relatives of the Hirooka family. The greatest feature and contribution of the present volume lies in the fact that, based on these historical materials that have turned up, it lays out the details about how the Hirooka family handled its business pursuits over the long term as well as how it dealt with the challenges posed by the Meiji Restoration years along with the recessions, depressions, and financial crises that followed. This volume is also deeply interesting because at the same time it directs its attention to such matters as the family's cultural and social footprints outside of their business activities, and in particular to how they went about their affairs as part of the wealthy class in the modern era and their social contributions. To wit, it attempts to position the Hirooka family's presence in Japanese society from the perspectives not only of business history but also cultural and social history.
Here, I would also like to point out a matter regard the outlook for research from a broader perspective in the future that is associated with, for example, the approaches to overcoming crises as laid out in this volume. For example, their approach to compensating creditors at the time of the Shōwa financial crisis by using private funds as described in Chapter 5 is the same one that would be adopted by Matsukata Iwao upon the collapse of the 15th (Jūgo) National Bank. Going forward, if we can find many other examples of similar cases, then it may be possible to situate the Hirooka family's handling of them as strategies that Japan's propertied classes and notable persons adopted when faced with similar crises. Additionally, it may even be possible to engage in comparative analyses with, for example, entrepreneurs in other countries at times when they have been faced with the same sorts of crises. Beyond the content discussed here, I believe there are other aspects regarding the detailed case of the Hirooka family presented in this volume that yield possibilities that will lead to the pursuit of research of various sorts going forward.
Kokushikan University
The present volume focuses on the process through which small-to-medium-sized enterprises run by Jews disappeared from Germany during the years of the Nazi regime, and clarifies how Nazi economic controls progressed. The author breaks down into stages and analyzes the process by which the Nazi regime did away with Jewish-run enterprises. The first important phase taken up is the passage of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums). The author argues that its passage led to the enactment of a series of anti-Semitic laws. That said, the author argues that the Nazi regime of this era stressed tamping down increasingly violent illegal anti-Semitic acts. The author emphasizes that under the Nuremburg Laws, not only were definitions being made about who was a Jew, but distinctions were also being made between those who did or did not display an attitude of loyalty to volk and state. Furthermore, the Four Year Plan launched around that time prioritized economic rationality. Essentially, there was nothing about small-to-medium enterprises managed by Jews being continually subject to obstructions to their business. However, under the impact of the Four Year Plan, some companies came to be faced with severe shortages of raw materials and labor. Companies not managed by Jews were given preferential treatment when it came to the allocation of raw materials, while those companies run by Jews found themselves in trouble and the selling off of their businesses progressed. Above all, because the government had come to attach great importance to securing surplus labor, closing business operated by Jews had become more desirable than seeing them sold. The author further explains that, with the November pogrom (Kristallnacht), many Jewish-run businesses wound up being closed.
The present volume is the result of research that has a particular focus on the middle classes, even for studies done in Japan that have dealt with the process through which Jews were excluded from the economic arena under Nazi Germany. The noteworthy aspect about the research resulting in the present volume may be for how it shows that the disappearance of Jewish-operated small-to-medium sized enterprises was not simply a matter of being something that occurred under the blanket anti-Semitic policies of the Nazi regime, but rather for how it was deeply connected with the various economic policies that were employed to bring the economy under control.
Gakushuin University
