日本财阀系列企业体系Keiretsu历史背景和面临问题

Question One: Compare the post-war Keiretsu inter-firm structure in Japan with the pre-war Zaibatsus. Explain the reasons why the Keiretsu were important to Japan’s economy in the 1950-1990 period, and why they are now considered to be a major cause of its current structural problems.

Introduction

This paper reviews major theoretical and empirical work on comparing the Keiretsu and Zaibatsus as well as the importance of Keiretsus in the process of Japan development during the 1950s to early 1990s. Firstly, I compare the pre-war Zaibatsus with the post-war Keiretsu in concepts, history, structures and governance perspectives. This article will reviews major theoretical and empirical work on vertical and horizontal Japanese keiretsu. I then discuss changes in the Japanese economy during the post-war period from 1950s till 1992 Japanese economic decline and their implications for the persistence and continued benefits of each form of inter-corporate grouping followed by a discussion of facts regarding the role of keiretsu in the Japanese economy. Thirdly, this article will analyse the structural problems of Keiretsus on the globalisation context.

Backgrounds of Zaibatsus and Keiretsus in Japan

Japanese Zaibatsus developed mostly from the Meiji era (1868-1912). By the turn of the century, Japan had given birth to several groups of widely diversified companies, each of them owned and operated by a single family. With the wealth expansion of these families, they became the nation’s new aristocracy, the “financial cliques” or the Zaibatsus. The Zaibatsu is generally understood to be a diverse group of large industries controlled by a single family, usually through a central holding company. According to Miyashita and Russell (1994), a Zaibatsu is “nothing more

than a l arge industrial combine” on its initial strcuture. The actual growth of the Zaibatsus began in 1914, World WarⅠ, Japan supplied munitions and other goods to the Allies. Without the competition from European companies, Japanese firms were free to expand internationally. During that five years, the export of Japan increased 266%. The Big Four----Zaibatsus are Mitsui, Sumitomo, Mitsubishi and Yasuda used their profits to start their own bank. The Americans initially wanted to dissolve all the zaibatsu after World WarⅡ, as they saw them as undemocratic and the finance behind the militaristic government of the 1930's (see .wa-pedia.).

Even though Japan's economy made huge strides in economic reformation after the WWⅠ, the Zaibatsu interests began to enter the political arena to support their interests. Their activities became entwined with the government in wartime Japan. Eventually, the Potsdam Declaration that was signed in 1945 required the liquidation of the Zaibatsu to democratize Japan's post–war economy. As explained in the previous article, by 1945 the zaibatsu had grown to control a significant portion of Japanese trade and industry. In addition, for the purpose of controlling economic power, special provisions were included in Japan's Antimonopoly Act for the specific purpose of forbidding holding companies and limiting the acquisition by financial enterprises of stock of other companies. In hindsight these provisions might appear to have been ineffective barriers to the creation of excessive economic control and equally ineffective as measures to ensure competition in Japan's economy. These arguments were made when Japan enacted the Act for partial Amendment of the Antimonopoly Act in 1997 by which act Japan finally eliminated the 50–year old ban on holding companies.

Compare pre-war Zaibatsus with the post-war Keiretsus