近代日本における企業家の言説空間

財閥創始者世代の自伝的テキストの分析

抄録

　This paper examines the entrepreneurship of those businessmen in the Meiji and Taisho eras who established Japan's financial combines, or zaibatsu. This paper also points up the fact that the ascetic entrepreneurial spirit of these financiers was in actuality influenced by the social conditions and relationships of their era, and in certain aspects was even presented as an outward moral code.
　Past studies of entrepreneurship in modern Japan have indicated, through investigation of the thinking and managerial principles of such men of business, that the characteristics of this entrepreneurial spirit were an emphasis on national benefit and a strong work ethic. But, on the other hand, the thinking of these industrialists also exhibited tendencies toward self-interest and mammonism. Past studies have offered only a one-sided view of their entrepreneurial spirit. Since the Meiji Restoration, many entrepreneurs have been viewed as canny merchants who have taken advantage of periods of social unrest to accrue ill-gotten wealth. And so they can be seen to have used the publication of memoirs as an opportunity to shed this unsavory image. From the mid to late Meiji era, Japanese society produced many young people who could not find work or advance their careers despite having worked hard and earned an education. Entrepreneurs then came to play the role of persuaders in causing these youths to alter their goals to economic successes where education was not a necessary condition. This provided entrepreneurs with an excellent opportunity for casting off their shady imege. In this way, entrepreneurs thereafter occupied the position of orthodox economic successes.