Why Are so Many of the World’s Oldest Businesses in Japan? Example, Kyoto - Kiyomizu Rokubey: Tradition and Vision in Ceramics Kyoto’s leading potteries, was established 245 years ago. Led by the current Rokubey, the 8th generation to take the name.
Family continuity
In Ishikawa, Japan, for a great many people things are very different. Japan is a great country for tradition anyway, but Ishikawa is home to a disproportionately high number of people who have great stacks of ancestors peering over their shoulders. Sake makers, kimono dyers, ryokan owners, potters, confectioners … Hundreds of years of expertise and expectation bear down on them - they carry a name and a trade that must live on through them, just as it has done since the Edo period.
… Like a great many people in his position, for a time he toyed with the idea of leaving the family business. He and his father would fight like tigers when Toshio was a teenager, and the youngster believed he would go on to do something else entirely - hang the 10 generations behind him. But, perhaps inevitably, he came back and now carries his family name with pride. “No one said anything when I was a child,” he says. “But I always felt like someone ways telling me I had a heavy responsibility.” His son undoubtedly knows what’s expected of him too, but has enrolled into a ceramics course at university without too much rancour.
Adoption
Since the Second World War, about 10% of successions in business families have seen control transferred to a son-in-law, adopted son or adopted son-in-law – all non-blood heirs. 98% of all Japanese adoptions are adult men. Not without heirs, they have heirs but deprive them because they r duds & adopt another adult man as their son, as much as 10% of Samurai cohort were so adopted. Usually the adopted man also becomes the son in law through omiai (arranged marriage).
America and Japan have the highest rates of adoption in the world - with one big difference. While the vast majority of adoptees in the U.S. are children, they account for just 2% of adoptions in Japan The other 98% are males around 25 to 30. Mehrotra believes this is the key to one of Japan’s unique differences. Across the developed world, family firms under-perform professionally-run businesses. But in Japan, it’s the opposite. Japan’s strongest companies are led by scions, many of them adopted. “If you compare the performance under different kinds of heirs, blood heirs versus adopted heirs, the superior performance of second-generation managed firms is pretty much entirely attributable to the adopted heir firms.”
Mehrotra explains that adopting a scion is similar to a hostile takeover. Blood heirs are under the constant pressure of knowing that if they under-perform, they’ll be replaced.
The roots of Japanese adult adoption trace back to merchants of the Tokugawa era (1603-1867). It was suspected by scholars that the initial motivation was to avoid field division. Since then, the upper class has embraced the practice in full. The current Japanese business landscape is filled with names you know: Suzuki’s current chairman and CEO, 81 year-old Osamu Suzuki, is an adopted son — the fourth one in fact - first to run the company. When it came time, Osamu Suzuki chose his son in-law, Hirotaka Ono, as his heir, rather than his biological son. Ono period. (Photo via Wikimedia married Suzuki’s eldest daughter, just as Suzuki had done a generation Commons) prior. But in December 2007, Ono died of pancreatic cancer, forcing Osamu to return as chairman and CEO. As of April 2011, Osamu had created a four person board to help run the company, led by his own biological son, Toshihiro Suzuki. Toshihiro might well become the first blood-related Suzuki scion in four generations, but it’s far from certain, and of course, he will always be the second choice of his father.
If a war breaks out, the commanding generals are chosen from among the reigning princes or the nobility. Every noble family has a particular distinction, and the right to keep a train of honour, which is made use of by the eldest of the family. The nobility is also hereditary, and descends to the eldest son, or, according to the will of the father, to the most worthy. If the father judges his legitimate unworthy of this dignity, he may adopt a son from another family ; hence, a good-for-nothing nobleman is a rare phenomenon, which only the too great love of a father for an unworthy son can render possible.
- Memoirs of a captivity in Japan: during the years 1811, 1812 and 1813… By Vasili Golovnin
Measuring inheritance of position by surname for Japanese elites is potentially complicated by the prevalence of adoption among upper-class groups. In Japan, where there is no male heir, it has always been quite common for highstatus families to adopt a son-in-law to carry on the family name and lineage. Indeed, figures on adult adoptions in Japan in recent decades suggest, remarkably, that as much as 10 percent of each male cohort has been adopted by an other family, and that this pattern has prevailed since at least 1955.a Samurai and kazoku families without sons traditionally engaged in this practice on a large scale." A study of the samurai in the Tokugawa era, for example, suggests substantial rates of adult male adoption.
- “Takayanagi, Okayama, and Saiki 1964. “Ando 1999, 259. “Kitaoji 1971, 1046.
- Mehrotra et al., 2011, table 1. The number of adult adoptions in 1955 suggests that about 7 percent of each male cohort were adopted as adults.
- “Lebra 1989, 106-32. “Moore 1970.
The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility By Gregory Clark
Panasonic 2nd head was adopted son in law/son also after marrying Matsushita’s daughter Sachiko. Last 4 Suzuki’s have been such men. I know Risaburo Toyoda who became 1st president of Toyota Motor Corp was the adopted son/son in law of Sakichi (Toyota founder). He became president before the biological son Kiichiro (presumably as per late Sakichi’s deathbed wishes) who was Vice President, latter Kiichiro became 2nd president.
Leaving own family
Kajima is 1 of the big construction firms, now 180 years old. Here Kajima describes his feelings on leaving his own family and becoming an adopted son -
Miss Kajima had only other sister, so the future of the Kajima family was at stake. Finding an heir was of great importance. … that they had to find someone who would marry their daughter and become heir. If such a marriage couldn’t be arranged, it appeared the Kajima family’s affairs would disintegrate. The business enterprise laboriously built by the two preceding generations would fall into disarray.
… As the fourth son I was looked upon as a relief pitcher. So as far as my natal family was concerned. I was expendable. For the Kajimas, however, the lack of a son was a serious matter that threatened the end of the family line. … I received the hand-me-downs of my oldest brother; and at mealtimes, if the rest of us looked envious while my oldest brother ate his fill of meat and fish, we were told to make do with vegetables. I was never much more than second fiddle to my oldest brother.