In the Meiji Period (1868-1912), it became common for Japanese businesses to adopt the form of a corporation - the first was Dai-ichi National Bank founded in 1873 with Shibusawa as President. He also contributed to setting up around 500 other corporations. Shibusawa developed his own management philosophy based on Confucius' teachings, which was to combine economics and morality with the interest of the nation as priority. By the mid-Meiji Period, manipulation of financial statements and dividends had spread amongst Japanese corporations. In 1911, the Imperial Parliament held discussions on: introducing an auditing system run by professional accountants; preventing any one person serving as board member of several corporations; limit the responsibilities of non-board-serving corporate advisors. However, these discussions never made law and allowed some company presidents to pursue self-interests at the expense of shareholders and creditors. Therefore, it is now worthwhile for the present parliament to review the 1911 discussions.

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The recent corporate scandals of Snow Brand Milk Products and Mitsubishi Motors were cases where corporate brands had been damaged by consumers' distrust to unethical ways in management. New economists say that the purpose of joint-stock companies is to maximize their shareholders' profits. These profits should be analyzed not only in terms of quantity but in "quality" or its ethical origin. However, the current accounting standard merely functions as the rule which supports the mechanism in calculating profits. Therefore, audited results do not necessarily highlight the "quality" side of profits although it is essential for going concern. Hence it is vital to close this loophole in business management by checking the origins of revenues and expenses. In this ethical aspect, corporate brands come to be established and maintained, otherwise damaged. In general terms, business management should emphasize more on the social and humanity elements. This paper attempts to structure the business ethics in the 21st century by examining revenues and expenses. Revenues are discussed by analyzing few cases of businesses-consumers transaction problems, whereas expenses are discussed through tax law. Through these methods, the paper concludes that the business ethics can be assessed by numerical index, in which the corporate brand value plays an important role.

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