Thank you very much for your interest in the Business History Society of Japan (BHSJ). I succeeded Professor Takeshi Yuzawa, the former president of BHSJ, in January 2009. During my tenure, I would like to contribute to the development of BHSJ, which was established in 1964 and now has approximately 860 members.
Business history started in the United States around 1930 and flourished after the Second World War in many countries including Japan thanks to great scholars such as Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. Nowadays the environment for firms is drastically changing, and business history also continues to evolve. Although the main theme of business history has been the remarkable development of big business, particularly the manufacturing industries of advanced economies, the scope of this discipline continues to expand by encompassing small business, industrial clusters, financial and service industries after 1980, etc. Further, with the rise of globalization, research on the activities of multinational enterprises has greatly advanced, while business in developing countries, which until recently received insufficient attention, has also become an important area of interest for Japanese business historians. The drastic changes in the business environment caused by the prolonged recession and their consequences for firms and management have also become popular research themes in recent years.
Our Aims and Activities
The most important mission of BHSJ is to publicize the academic achievements of members through the publication of journals, which include Japanese Business History Review (Keieishigaku) and Japanese Research on Business History, comprised of articles in English. In addition, BHSJ aims to pursue the following activities.
First, BHSJ will continue to make efforts to promote the internationalization of business history in Japan. From 1974 to 2000, thanks to the generosity of the Taniguchi Foundation, BHSJ was able to host a series of annual international conferences, known as the Fuji Conference, between business historians from Japan and abroad as well as publish all of the proceedings. The Fuji Conferences have greatly contributed to publicizing the academic achievements of Japanese scholars outside Japan. At the same time, they have also helped to train Japanese scholars to communicate their findings clearly in English to a non-Japanese speaking audience and have served as a forum for debate and discussion of business history between scholars from all over the world. These conferences have contributed to deepening the mutual understanding of all the attendees or readers of the proceedings.
Although it became impossible for financial reasons to continue to hold the Fuji Conferences annually due to the dissolution of Taniguchi Foundation, BHSJ was able to organize the 27th and 28th Fuji Conferences in 2003 and 2006. In 2007, the name, Fuji Conference, was changed to International Conference on Business History, and two conferences have been held since in 2008 and in 2010. I sincerely hope that International Conference on Business History will continue to thrive for many years to come.
Inspired by the Fuji Conferences, BHSJ has also organized bilateral meetings with scholars from the UK and Germany. In recent years, we have also been able to hold conferences with Korea and France on a regular basis. In the future, I would like to promote further collaboration between Japan and other Asian countries.
Second, in order to promote our international activities, I would like to utilize the marvelous achievements of IT. In particular, I hope to make the proceedings of our international conferences and Japan Research in Business History accessible to a wider audience by making them available online. I would like our website to serve not only as a valuable link to scholars from overseas but also as a vital medium for diffusing information to the academic world. For those reasons, we will endeavor to augment and improve the contents of our website.
Third, I would like for BHSJ to help familiarize people especially the younger generation with the wonderful and interesting field of business history as well as educate them through books, lectures and the other media. Many Japanese people love the historical novels of such famous writers as RyMtarM Shiba and SaburM Shiroyama. However, non-specialists seldom read the works of business historians, whose writings are often the main information sources for historical novelists. Although it is important for the members of BHSJ to receive high recognition from their academic peers, we should not be satisfied with such a limited audience. We should make more efforts to be understood by people outside BHSJ and strive to stimulate their intellectual curiosity as well as interest in business history. In Japan, we sometimes hear that young people in general lack interest in the natural sciences. We can see a similar trend among students of economics or business administration, who often have very little fundamental knowledge or interest in economic and/or business history. The members of BHSJ should make a conscious effort to tackle this problem by improving teaching methodologies and course contents in undergraduate and graduate schools, which are often the incubators of future researchers!
I have briefly explained the mission and activities of BHSJ. I do hope that scholars in Japan and around the world who share an interest in business history will continue to support us in our endeavors.
Thank you very much.
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