Paper short abstract:

Scientist-entrepreneurs were catalysts for the birth of Japan's modern medical industry. This paper examines how their entrepreneurial activities contributed to building a bridge between health and business, thus transforming the existing medical culture and social constructs of medicine.

Paper long abstract:

Building Bridges between Science and Business: Considering the Role of Entrepreneurship in the Emergence of an Early Japanese Pharmaceutical Industry’

The emergence of a modern Japanese pharmaceutical industry was achieved through public-private cooperation, scientific advancements, and entrepreneurial initiative. Scientist-entrepreneurs were an especially important catalyst for the development of this industry and others. Trained in Western pharmacy, Fukuhara Arinobu founded Japan’s first Western pharmacy, Shiseidō, where he marketed the nation’s first toothpaste. He would go on to found a second health-related business, Teikoku Life Insurance Company, now known as Asahi. Kitasato Shibasaburō, a renowned physician and bacteriologist, established a highly lucrative serum production operation, with a business model that emulated similar institutions in Europe. Takamine Jōkichi, best known for his isolation and purification of adrenaline, was also the first president of a pharmaceutical firm, Sankyō (now Daiichi Sankyō), which remains even today one of Japan’s largest. The company’s first hit product, Takadiastase, was one of the Japan’s top-selling digestive remedies during much of the Meiji and Taishō periods. Medicinal businesses such as these were founded in response to a variety of factors including the rising incidence of infectious diseases, new concepts in hygiene and well-being, and even the Westernization of the Japanese diet. This paper examines the motivations of these scientist-entrepreneurs, their impact on the existing medical marketplace, and their influence on the development of other modern industries including toiletries, chemicals, and cosmetics. It also explores how their entrepreneurial activities helped to create a bridge between health and business that would gradually transform the existing medical culture and social constructs of medicine.

Paper short abstract:

Shibusawa Eiichi was the most instrumental individual in the introduction and establishment of the joint-stock company system at the modern capitalism in Japan . His approach will be a great hint for the future of capitalism.

Paper long abstract:

Shibusawa Eiichi was the most instrumental individual in the introduction and establishment of the joint-stock company system at the beginning of modern capitalism in Japan . He understood very well that the joint-stock system was a mechanism that could raise large amounts of capital for large-scale modern industry, and there were about 350 companies in which he held director and other positions or invested large sums of money. On the other hand, conglomerates such as Mitsui and Mitsubishi succeeded at a rapid pace by recruiting many modernly educated elites. However, Shibusawa's role in giving people the opportunity for everyone to be involved in business was extremely important. In the present day, businesses in emerging countries are driven by family businesses and state-owned enterprises, but Shibusawa's approach, which is a market type that anyone can enter and at the same time incorporates a mechanism for risk avoidance, will be a great hint for the future of capitalism.

Paper short abstract:

During the early 20th century the competitiveness of Japan's cotton industry increased rapidly, posing a growing threat to the international dominance of British cotton producers. This paper will look at British assessments of Japan's cotton entrepreneurship and management in this period.

Paper long abstract:

During the first half of the 20th century the competitiveness of Japan's cotton industry increased rapidly, posing a growing threat to the international dominance of British cotton producers. Excellence in management and entrepreneurship is widely believed to have been one of the keys to this growth, and recent research on Britain's Lancashire and Japan's Kansai region has suggested that in the late 19th-early 20th century Japan's business culture differed from that of Britain in certain key respects. These differences included ideas regarding the social role of business, attitudes towards technology, the central role of the corporation and its founding household, and the close links between industry and commerce. Some of these same differences had been suggested some 70 years earlier by Arno S. Pearse, who produced for the Manchester-based International Federation of Master Cotton Spinners and Manufacturers Associations an extensive report on the cotton industries of Japan and China, published in 1930. Pearse argued that Japan's success in cotton production was due in particular to the existence of a group spirit that subordinated personal to national interests, the good use of wartime profits, and efficient and rational organisation. This paper will look in more depth at British assessments of Japan's cotton industry in the early decades of the 20th century, relating these assessments to the historical evidence on management and entrepreneurship in Japan's cotton producing firms.