Mitsui: Three Centuries of Japanese Business

Founded over three hundred years ago, Mitsui is the oldest and one of the largest financial empires in Japanese history. As the present book reveals, this enduring giant owes much to the remarkable men who shaped it. Throughout their long history the Mitsui family and executives of its enterprises have been innovators. This book perceptively traces the political and economic institutions that gave birth to Japan's merchants, nurtured her indutries and fostered her zaibatsu (the gigantic financial combines whose influence and power extended to every level of Japanese society. The entire history of one of the greatest zaibatu, Mitsui: its simple beginnings, its ever stronger ties with the government, its steady growth following the opening of Japan to the West, its increasing independence from family control and finally its phenomenal recovery following World War II is all captured in this book by John G. Roberts.