Asian Business - Case Study of Mitsui Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Asian Business - Case Study of Mitsui - Essay ExampleThe prevailing function during that era was that products were made to order, and Mitsui defied common business sense by making products first and then marketing them.Mitsuis initial foray into the banking and finance industry came in the late 17th century. Moving currency between cities during that feudal era was extremely venturey, so Mitsui established money exchanges in Edo. Much bid a primitive precursor to a Western Union, these establishments accommodated the transfer of funds and reduced the amount of risk involved in the transaction( Shinjo, 1962 11) By 1876, the company had established Mitsui Bank, which was the nation first private bank. Running up to the early 20th century, the company came to be known as one of the largest zaibatsu in Japan. A salient(ip) feature of pre-World War II Japan, a zaibatsu can be loosely defined as a business entity composed of several diversified enterprises owned and exclusively cont rolled by a single family ( Morikawa, 197062) These brassbound monopolies enabled the company to be a central business figure in pre-war Japan.Picking up the pieces later on the war, the remnants of the companies from the dismantled Mitsui zaibatsu improve themselves into the so-called economic miracles of the postwar era, the keiretsu. Resembling the functional equivalent of a western conglomerate, the reformed business group was launched with a capitalization of 195,000 yen and roughly 35 employees. Its forays into foreign trade greatly furthered the countrys post-war economic rebirth. In the 1960s Mitsui took advantage of rapid trade liberalization, and was successful in securing a stable supply of food, oil, and coal for domestic use coursed through its overseas holdings. An investment into inwrought gas resources in the 1970s shielded the company from the decades oil crisis, and helped blunt the do of the worldwide economic downturn. (Mitsui,