In this study, we examine how female department store staff who graduated from women’s colleges in the 1930s were selected and became active in Daimaru.

First, we will examine the relationship between Daimaru’s reforms, led by Junkichi Satomi, and the selection of female department store staff. Satomi encouraged improvements in the professional status of female department store staff as part of his efforts to improve the treatment of department store staff at Daimaru. Simultaneously, female department store staff who had graduated from women’s colleges were selected for newly opened departments that promoted department store staff’s training, or handled new products, and were expected to make use of the knowledge they had acquired through their studies abroad.

Next, we will examine how the number of female department store staff from women’s colleges increased at Daimaru. From the late 1920s onwards, the hiring of female department store staff from women’s colleges was encouraged. Like other female department store staff, they were assigned to the sales floor in large numbers; however, some also began to take on the responsibility of clerkship training. The number of female department store staff who graduated from women’s colleges also increased, in part because of the recognition they received for these jobs.

Finally, we will address the backgrounds of the selected female department store staff and their efforts at the store. They were expected to demonstrate the abilities acquired before joining the store. While studying abroad, they acquired cutting-edge knowledge, and upon their return to Japan, they took on the role of teaching new sales techniques, new knowledge related to women’s and children’s clothing to other store associates. Fumi Senda, one of these women, took on the new responsibility of educating store associates on new sales techniques and grooming of clothes that she had learned abroad.

This study examines how university-industry collaboration was promoted in Japan during the 1960s and 1970s, a period characterized by the coexistence of science and technology promotion policies and the adversity of student movements. Focusing on the case of the Semiconductor Research Institute established in 1961 to facilitate the transfer of semiconductor engineering knowledge from universities to the industry, this study seeks to elucidate the dynamics of such collaboration. Although existing research has generally characterized the 1960s and 1970s as a period of stagnation in university–industry collaboration research owing to a growing student opposition, this study reveals that the institute remained largely unaffected by such movements, despite their geographical proximity. In fact, commissioned research and the corporate researcher dispatch not only continued but also expanded during the period, accompanied by active informal exchanges of technology. Moreover, the successful commercialization of advanced technologies such as LEDs and static induction transistors (SITs) in the 1970s further illustrates the sustained development of university-industry collaboration. These findings suggest that the “formal” frameworks for collaborative research established in the 1960s served as a foundation for “informal” channels of knowledge and capability acquisition, which in turn, fostered deep and broad partnerships unaffected by student movements, ultimately contributing to innovation and the subsequent phase of high economic growth.

In this paper, we examine the shareholder returns of both bidders and targets for approximately 20 major corporate mergers that occurred in the 1920s and 1930s. Our analysis yields the following findings. First, estimates of the premium, measured by changes in market capitalization, indicate that the premium was positive for the overall period, negative until the early 1930s, and positive again from the mid-1930s onward. Second, shareholder returns measured by abnormal returns were generally close to zero (or negative) for bidders and positive for targets. However, these responses varied across subperiods: bidder-side returns declined sharply during the 1930s, whereas target-side returns increased substantially during the same period. Third, regression analyses investigating the determinants of bidder shareholder returns show that relative performance had a significantly positive effect. In particular, the greater the potential for the transfer of know-how from bidders to targets, the larger the wealth gains for bidder shareholders. Fourth, premium levels did not directly affect bidder returns. Even transactions involving Nissan, which often paid relatively high premiums, were not necessarily valued positively by the market in the short term. However, these high premiums substantially increased the wealth of the target shareholders. Thus, the value-creating effects of the Nissan deals appear to have been asymmetrical between target and bidder shareholders. Although Nissan’s aggressive M&A strategy—often emphasized in the traditional literature on conglomerate history—did not immediately enhance group shareholder wealth from the bidder perspective, the positive premiums paid to target shareholders suggest that these transactions nonetheless generated value from the sell-side perspective.