Japanese Trading Research Articles

Trading locomotives between the USA and Japan: Okura & Co. at the beginning of the twentieth century

Abstract This article examines international transactions related to steam locomotives at the beginning of the twentieth century while focusing on Japanese trading companies. In particular, it considers in detail how Japanese trading companies acquired the knowledge and know-how of locomotive trading to carry out their business transactions through a case study of Okura & Co.'s New York branch office. The analysis highlights the following three factors that supported Okura's locomotive trade in New York: first, the company took advantage of business opportunities by collecting information through networks of Japanese contacts in New York and local experts; second, it utilised social and technological infrastructure, including international communication lines, transportation, and financial systems, as key fundamentals of its overseas activities; third, a former oyatoi (hired foreigner) played a critical role as its consulting engineer. In particular, the overseas activities of Japanese trading companies drew heavily on formerly hired foreign engineers, whose technological knowledge and networks became an essential route of knowledge transfer in cross-regional commercial management. These will contribute to the evolution of history related to the starting points of global activities of Japanese trading companies.

The Weaknesses of Kyrgyz Exporters Compared to the Japanese Trading Companies in the Context of Chandler’s Industrial Organization

The Kyrgyz model of export, for example of agricultural products, often demonstrates its organizational weakness which is not stimulating the economy of the country as a whole. This article shows the example of the Japanese general trading companies which successfully developed their own model of optimized outer trade in the context of Chandler’s industrial organization theory.

The Worldwide Expansion of Japanese Trading Companies and US Enterprises in the Oil Market During the Interwar Period

The Worldwide Expansion of Japanese Trading Companies and US Enterprises in the Oil Market During the Interwar Period

일본종합상사의 지속가능경영 활동에 관한 탐색적 연구

일본종합상사의 지속가능경영 활동에 관한 탐색적 연구

“Such business will be impossible”: Mitsubishi Trading Company and the roles of design and tariff policy in the American bicycle market (1933–1938)

During the 1930s Mitsubishi Shoji Kaisha, a Japanese trading conglomerate, attempted to foster a market for adult bicycles in America. They promoted bikes manufactured by Nichibei Shoten (including Fuji, a brand eventually known worldwide). These imported designs were rare for the American market, reflecting European and Japanese use of the bicycle as urban transportation for adults, instead of American predilections for bicycles designed for children’s recreation. If Mitsubishi had been successful – introducing designs for adult practical bicycling that existed in other markets worldwide – mobility in the United States might be different today. But these possibilities were precluded by steep tariff walls, a legacy of xenophobic protectionism, and (eventually) global war. During the war the federal government seized Mitsubishi’s records, which now afford a rare opportunity to explore the divergences between worldwide transportation cultures, and to understand how policies structuring the global flow of goods shape local mobilities.

Mitsui Bussan and the Manchurian soybean trade: Geopolitics and economic strategies in China’s Northeast, ca. 1870s–1920s

This article examines how soybeans became a global commodity, by focusing on the intermediary role of the Japanese trading company Mitsui Bussan. In the early twentieth century, soybeans were almost exclusively grown in Northeast China, also known as Manchuria. Their global commodification was a result of complex imperial rivalries among China, Japan, and Russia in northeast China as well as the rapid rise of vegetable oil consumption in Europe. We demonstrate how Mitsui Bussan navigated the shifting geopolitical terrain by taking advantage of the competition between the Russian and Japanese empires, utilizing Chinese middlemen effectively, and securing support from the Japanese government and military. By placing the soybean trade in a geopolitical context, we shed light on how global commodity markets, trade, and international relations were intertwined.

Strategi Dagang Dan Permasalahan Toko Jepang Di Hindia Belanda Sebelum Perang Dunia II

(Title: Strategy Of Commerce And Issues Of Japan Shop In The Netherlands Indies Before World War II) The early of 20th century was a turning point of Japanese economic activities in Dutch East Indies, along with increasing number of Japanese population, especially in Java. In that era, Japanese trading activities that dominated by Japanese goods pitchman like textiles, drugs, soap and the other daily necessary untill suburb of Java, changed into permanent economic activities in the form of a small shop that popular among Javanese society in that era as Toko Jepang or Japanese Store. In the end of 1910 untill early 1940s, Japanese store’s activities were growing and increasing to become an icon in the economic relation between Japan and Dutch East Indies. During that period, there was increase and decrease in Japanese store’s activities, but at the world economic crisis in 1920s, Japanese Market was able to survive, even Japanese products from Japanese Store was better than Chinese and European products. Japanese store, that popular among indigenous was known for it’s good service, cheap price and good quality products. This research is trying to find how Japanese store can build it’s connection and the factors that supporting and obstacling Japanese store’s growth in that era. In this research, besides the diaries of Japanese immigrants such as Jagatara Kanwa and Nanyou no Seikatsu Kiroku, Japanese newspaper of Touindo Nippou was used as main sources. Content analysis was applied as a method to determine the contents in those sources which were relevant to the topic of this research. It can be concluded that the success keys of Japanese store was marketing strategies that supported by a strong trade connection, beside another factors like the success of observing people’s needs and product marketing strategy.

Developing A Forex Expert Advisor Based on Japanese Candlestick Patterns and Technical Trading Strategies

Developing A Forex Expert Advisor Based on Japanese Candlestick Patterns and Technical Trading Strategies

Toyota Tsusho fuel cells for emergency power project in Japan

Japanese trading giant Toyota Tsusho Corporation has supplied five Ballard FCgen®-H2PM hydrogen PEM fuel cell backup power systems for use as emergency power supplies in the Soma Revitalization Smart Community Construction Project in Soma City, Fukushima Prefecture. The project is currently undergoing verification testing by IHI Corporation.

Japanese firms target cellulose nanofibers

Japanese trading firm Marubeni and Chuetsu Pulp & Paper are joining to make and sell cellulose nanofibers. The firms claim their “nanoforest” fiber is five times as light and five times as strong as steel and could be used in building materials, electronic devices, and cosmetics. Marubeni is developing new applications for the fiber and will be responsible for sales. Chuetsu will produce the fiber and expects to start up a 100-metric-ton-per-year plant next month.

International Transmission of Japanese Monetary Shocks Under Low and Negative Interest Rates: A Global Favar Approach

We examine the implications of Japanese monetary shocks under recent very low and sometimes negative interest rates to the Japanese economy as well as three of its major trading partners: Korea, China and the United States. We follow the literature in using movements in 2-year Japanese government bond rates as proxies for changes in monetary conditions in the neighborhood of the zero lower bound. We examine the implications of shocks to the 2-year rate in a series of factor-augmented vector autoregressive - or FAVAR - models, in which both local and global conditions are proxied by latent factors generated from domestic economic indicators and weighted indicators of major trading partners, respectively. Our results suggest that shocks to 2-year Japanese rates do have substantive impacts on Japanese economic activity and inflation in conditions of low or even negative short-term rates. However, we find only modest global spillovers from Japanese monetary policy shocks, as their impact on the economic conditions of major Japanese trading partners is muted, particularly relative to the impact of innovations in 2-year U.S. Treasury yields over the same period.

Utilizing and Eliminating the Comprador Networks: Turn of the Century British and Japanese Trading Companies in Imperial China

Utilizing and Eliminating the Comprador Networks: Turn of the Century British and Japanese Trading Companies in Imperial China

A Case on the HRM Model in One Indian Based Japanese Trading Establishment

Indian-based Japanese companies tend to concentrate more on providing communications rather than creating a structural human resource management system that incorporates all the essential instruments of effective communication. For a notable progress of any company, human relations are crucial. Proper interpersonal relationships and cross- cultural management are necessary in creating a defined organizational structure. Career development and enlisting of the job requirements are some of the elements that dictate the performance of humans. Similarly, a healthy work environment through a structured human resource model and motivation plays an important role in defining the outcome of productivity. The synergy of all these human resource components is essential in organizational operations and effectiveness. This research paper focused on studying such elements of international management of human resources through a case study of India-based Japanese establishments with their human resource models. On the basis of these findings, recommendations for improving the human resource system and practices are suggested.

Research on Business Networks of Overseas Chinese Textile Importers in Colonial Korea

This article emphasizes the relative independence from state regulations for Chinese businessmen in arranging their trading across national borders. In the 1920s, Japanese power to undermine the access to Korean markets of British and Chinese textiles did not result from state support to Japanese trading firms, as has been generally assumed thus far, but on the flexibility of Chinese business firms, who changed from British and Chinese to Japanese corporate partners in order to sell textiles in Korea, especially cotton and silk, and not only profited from changed market circumstances, but also from import duties imposed by the Japanese on the import of Chinese silk to Korea. (This article is in Chinese.)

How resource-poor countries in Asia are securing stable long-term reserves: Comparing Japan's and South Korea's approaches

Securing stable long-term supplies of raw materials is vital for industrialized nations. China, Japan and South Korea are three countries in East Asia which import large quantities of raw material, especially metals and petroleum products. Unlike the other two, China has large mines and oilfields and so can use this expertise to exploit resources overseas. In contrast Japan and South Korea are resource-poor countries that lack domestic petroleum and mining industries.This paper compares the ways in which these two countries secure supplies. Japanese trading companies and industrial groups invest in mining and petroleum projects run by international groups with the active support from the Japanese government through the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC). In contrast, the Korean government has set up two state run corporations: the Korea Resource Corporation, KORES, for minerals, and the Korean National Oil Corporation KNOC for oil and LNG, which usually take a leading role in choosing projects, though they do work in partnership with large Korean private sector groups. After his election in 2008, President Lee Myung-bak put pressure on public sector entities to speed up investments in mining and petroleum projects, which resulted in unsuitable projects being financed and public money being wasted. We argue that three lessons can be learned from this: firstly, building up a solid basis of natural resources takes decades and should not be rushed; secondly, project finance in the sense of non-recourse funding provides better checks and balances than direct acquisitions do and thirdly more transparency is required when spending taxpayers' money.

Cultural Aspects of the Japanese Business Model Applied in Mexico

This article analyzes how Japanese trading companies (Sogo Sosha, in Japanese) have penetrated international markets, especially Mexico, thanks to their organizational and operating efficiency. It focuses on how these companies operate and presents a model for small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises to follow that consists of continuous improvement through corporate diagnostic processes. Officials from the Japanese International Cooperation Agency prepared this model to increase the competitiveness of small‐ and medium‐sized businesses. The conclusion is that if these businesses in Mexico made the most of the method, they could increase their participation in international markets.

Senzenki Hokubei no Nihon Shōsha: zaibei sesshū shiryō ni yoru kenkyū(Japanese Trading Companies in Prewar North America: Research Based on Documents at U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)

<i>Senzenki Hokubei no Nihon Shōsha: zaibei sesshū shiryō ni yoru kenkyū</i>(Japanese Trading Companies in Prewar North America: Research Based on Documents at U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)

INSISTENCE AND RESPONSE

This essay is one of three responses to Casper Bruun Jensen's article “Experiments in Good Faith and Hopefulness: Toward a Postcritical Social Science,” published in the Spring 2014 issue of Common Knowledge. Jensen suggested that the postcritical mode of knowledge production should focus on a continuous and persistent analytical effort to resist despair by “insisting properly.” This commentary, by one of three authors on whom the original article focused, contrasts Jensen's emphasis on insistence with the idea of ethnography as response. The reconceptualization of ethnographic work as response can have various and divergent consequences, some of which are explored here with reference to the author's own ethnographic research on indigenous Fijian gift-giving and Japanese financial trading. While his immediate interest here is to expose differences in the kinds of openness that insistence and response afford, he concludes that willingness to respond is more basic to anthropology than the ethnographer's cultivation of the internal strength required to keep anthropology going as an enterprise.

Mean Field Approximation for Biased Diffusion on Japanese Inter-Firm Trading Network

By analysing the financial data of firms across Japan, a nonlinear power law with an exponent of 1.3 was observed between the number of business partners (i.e. the degree of the inter-firm trading network) and sales. In a previous study using numerical simulations, we found that this scaling can be explained by both the money-transport model, where a firm (i.e. customer) distributes money to its out-edges (suppliers) in proportion to the in-degree of destinations, and by the correlations among the Japanese inter-firm trading network. However, in this previous study, we could not specifically identify what types of structure properties (or correlations) of the network determine the 1.3 exponent. In the present study, we more clearly elucidate the relationship between this nonlinear scaling and the network structure by applying mean-field approximation of the diffusion in a complex network to this money-transport model. Using theoretical analysis, we obtained the mean-field solution of the model and found that, in the case of the Japanese firms, the scaling exponent of 1.3 can be determined from the power law of the average degree of the nearest neighbours of the network with an exponent of −0.7.

Ghosts in the Shell: On South Africa, the USA and Japan

This article surveys American literary responses to the rise of Japan as an economic power during the period from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, and examines how these responses were anticipated in the writings of the South African author Laurens van der Post. Paying particular attention to van der Post’s autobiography, Yet Being Someone Other (1982), I suggest that the author’s formative experiences aboard a Japanese trading vessel in 1926, coupled with South Africa’s close-knit trading relationship with Japan in the 1980s, enabled a perspective on Japan’s economic ascendancy that was markedly less reactionary than those in the USA. By emphasizing the historical contexts that held true at the time of publication, I situate Yet Being Someone Other in a framework that deliberately circumvents—without necessarily confronting—van der Post’s preferred version of his life story. Rather than “recovering” the author’s ‘place in the canon of South African literature, this article is intended to incorporate the author’s work into ongoing discussions of the representation of Japan and the Japanese in twentieth-century Anglophone writings.