Abstracts of the Shashi Group Sponsored AAS Panels from 2011 to 2016

s of the Shashi Group Sponsored AAS Panels from 2011 to 2016

their path to recovery, and how they recorded these actions to share with future generations. Martha Chaiklin investigates how western footwear was adopted and produced in nineteenth century Japan by researching shashi, newspapers, magazines and literary sources. Bringing these three papers together as a panel provides an opportunity for critical discussion of the potential and limitations of shashi as resources for various kinds of academic research. The researcher of modern Japanese economic or business history will undoubtedly run across references to commemorative in-house histories of specific organizations--Shashi--in the initial stages of research. The utility of these histories to the researcher will of course depend on a variety of factors, but as they become increasingly available in the West through the collaborative efforts of librarians and scholars both in the US and Japan, examples of how such materials have informed specific research should encourage scholars to explore their potential.
This paper introduces the company history of Nippon Express (Nippon Tsūun Kabushiki Kaisha, or Nittsū), now a global transport and logistics corporation. While Nittsū's 1962 company history commemorates the 25th anniversary of the company as a post-war private business, this shashi directly traces Nittsū's origins to the late Tokugawa period , and indirectly to the emergence of the great merchant transporters of Edo, Osaka, and Kyoto. For the researcher of Japan's early modern communications Nittsū's history is an indispensable guide to the emergence of major transporters and their relationships to their clientele, the Tokugawa government, and to each other. But in drawing both explicit and implicit connections with the foremost transporters of early modern Japan, Nittsū's history leaves the researcher with compelling questions about the extent of Tokugawa Japan's interconnectedness and development of competing transporters as Japan modernized. * Her research note was published in Shashi Vol.1 no.1 (2012) http://shashi.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/shashi/article/view/7 3. Martha Chaiklin, University of Pittsburgh Paper title: The March Forward: The Mechanization of Shoe Production in Meiji Japan

Abstract
One of the most iconic images of modernization in Japan is the photograph of Sakamoto Ryoma in full samurai regalia, except for his feet, which were shod in brogans. Nevertheless, Ryoma's boots were not a symbol of modern production, but instead were probably custom-made by hand using time-honed techniques. Images of Japanese people dressed in Western clothing are commonly used to exemplify modernization, yet the shift from traditional dress forms was neither immediate or linear.
Shoes represent one important aspect of this change and in terms of technological development are a more interesting case study than clothing. Specifically, weaving and sewing are some of the earliest mechanized technologies, but shoe construction is complex and requires a number of steps that require different technologies. This paper will examine how western footwear was adopted and produced in nineteenth century Japan. Contemporary newspapers, magazines, company histories and fiction will be utilized to place mechanization within a social, political and economic context. It will discuss the interaction between the Meiji government, especially the Ministries of the Army and Navy, and the private sector and the introduction of technologies that led to a from traditional footwear produced by burakumin or as a byindustry on farms to cordwainers, cottage industry and ultimately mechanized mass production. The company has built originality that is worthy of being called the Shiseido Culture with its excellent business sense and design and becomes world renowned brand. The company has cultivated and re-edit and continually communicate the Shiseido Culture within and outside of the company and it makes contributions to society Shashi: The Journal of Japanese Business and Company History AAS Abstracts| http://shashi.pitt.edu Vol. ５, No. 1 (2020) | DOI 10.5195/shashi.2020.45 6 through design and marketing. The company has also considered the Shiseido Culture and its history to be an important management asset and has published more than 60 titles of shashi, or company history books, and publications related to design and advertisement since 1957. For researchers who study art history, cultural history and business history, these publications are very important primary resources. This panel invites four researchers to discuss how the Shiseido Culture have had effects on history of design and advertisements in Japan, relationship between imperial Japan and women's fashion, and Japanese marketing in colonies. Abstract This paper analyzes how Komai Reiko-the first "Miss Shiseido"-and Tanaka Chiyo-"Japan's first fashion designer"-shaped modern ideals of femininity and transformed women's cosmetic and fashion practices in 1930s Japan. In 1933, Shiseido recruited Komai to work as a full-time consultant to launch the company's "Miss Shiseido" marketing campaign, designed to bring Shiseido's image of feminine beauty directly to consumers through beauty demonstrations. A prominent advocate for working women's rights, Komai accepted Shiseido's offer precisely because she knew it would increase her visibility as an example of the progressive Japanese woman-she subsequently gained fame as a beauty expert who was at once a wife, mother, and successful, working woman. In 1932, Tanaka began her career at Kanebō, where she taught women how to use the company's textiles to make Western-style clothes and quickly became a leading expert on women's fashion. Like Komai, Tanaka balanced her career with her duties as a wife and mother and she fiercely disagreed with the notion that Japanese women should wear kimono for the sake of the nation or Japanese tradition, arguing instead that women deserved the right to choose clothes that suited their modern lifestyles. Komai and Tanaka did not identify themselves as feminists, but their careers enabled them to challenge traditional feminine norms and empower Japanese women to act as subjects with the capacity to shape ideals of femininity through their consumption practices and the choices they made in assembling their appearance.
in Japanese, qingniao in Chinese) of soaps, detergents, and toothpaste made by Mitsui for "Manchurian" customers and exported to Manchukuo after 1932. Shiseido targeted marketing strategies specifically to colonial Japanese and "Manchurian" consumers, with Blue Bird's signature yellow boxes featuring Japanese script instead of English to communicate Japanese modernity. In 1940, after the company built its own Manchukuo-based factory, Japanese-born Manchurian Film Association star Ri Kōran even posed for cosmetics posters as the archetypal Chinese modern girl with bobbed, permed hair. Shiseido's unique modernist visual culture sold images of an empire of beauty, where women consumers on the continent helped support an emerging politics of national identity in their product choices. The company's intersection of modernist advertising and national propaganda reveals the multifaceted interests of organizations like Shiseidō involved in marketing the Japanese empire and its appealing modernity. Renowned designer and art director, Yamana Ayao (1897-1980) worked for Shiseido on and off from 1929 until 1969. When he first joined the Shiseido design division, critics humorously asked, "Will Yamana become Shiseido-ized or will Shiseido become Yamana-ized?" They quickly came to the conclusion that Shiseido was Yamana-ized, as the designer's distinctive style became synonymous with Shiseido advertising all the way through the early postwar period. While the war often stands as an insurmountable divide that seemingly severs cultural developments in Japan right at mid-century, the transwar continuities can be more striking than the ruptures. This divide is particularly apparent in the history of design, despite the fact that advertising and propaganda production seamlessly traded places through the war, and the same roster of professional designers and advertising specialists who worked throughout the 1930s and 40s reconstituted the design world immediately after the end of the Occupation. As a founding member of the important advertising design associations: the Tokyo Advertising Art Association (1931), Nippon Kōbō (1933), and the influential Japan Advertising Artists Club (1951), and as a key designer for Shiseido and many major corporations into the postwar period, Yamana's enormous contribution to the public visual sphere across the twentieth century is indisputable. Thus, his work for Shiseido provides a valuable opportunity to explore often neglected transwar connections, illuminating how postwar design and advertising was built on a deep foundation of practice and a professional network developed in the prewar and wartime periods. • Some of the transwar material will be incorporated into a book project in progress which has not yet been published.

Moral Vision and Economic Organization: Shibusawa Eiichi and the Re-Invention of Capitalism in East Asia
Sunday, March 30, 2014 Philadelphia Marriott, Philadelphia, PA

Panel Description
The circumstances of the global economy since the Lehman Shock have provided opportunities for reflection on the sustainability of the capitalist economy. In this turbulent economic context, it is worth revisiting the ideas of Shibusawa Eiichi , the father of Japanese capitalism, and exploring his vision of capitalism and its application in East Asia. Tracing the process of "reinventing" capitalism by Shibusawa and those who were inspired by him enables us to see capitalism in a comparative perspective, across societies and over time. Such a comparative perspective on the impact of capitalism on East Asian societies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries makes this topic of direct relevance to contemporary issues of capitalism, and can shed light on the kind of capitalism that should, or could, emerge in the future.
In this panel, John Sagers discusses Shibusawa as institutional entrepreneur through his public statements and financial contributions. The following two papers are concerned with Korea and China, two countries strongly influenced by Shibusawa through his visits and his business and other relationships with people there. Myungsoo Kim takes up the case of Choseon businessman Sangryong Han, and analyses Shibusawa's influence on him and on the Choseon economy. Chen Yu delves into Shibusawa's vision for a developing economy and discusses how Shibusawa was received when he visited China in 1914. Making reference to the ideas of Adam Smith and Michael Porter, Kazuhiro Tanaka analyses Shibusawa's doctrine of "inseparability of morality and economy" and its relevance to capitalism today.  , one of the most important financiers and industrialists of Meiji Japan, is also remembered for his use of Confucian language to promote the "Unity of Morality and Economy." While Shibusawa's speeches, publications, and contributions to business education were efforts to improve the behavior of future business leaders, they also served the critical purpose of improving the status of capitalism in Japanese society.
In his autobiography, Shibusawa recalled that, growing up in a prosperous family, he had been appalled by the attitude of "revere officials and despise the people" which was prevalent in Tokugawa Japan. Joining the Japanese delegation to the Paris International Expo in 1867, Shibusawa found that commercial and industrial leaders enjoyed much greater prestige in European countries. For Japan to prosper, Shibusawa concluded, the status of merchants in Japanese society would have to improve.
Economic historian Douglass North has noted that when entrepreneurs find established institutions and social norms to be obstacles to their objectives, they may "attempt to devote resources to restructuring the rules at a higher level." Through an examination of Shibusawa's statements and financial contributions, we will see that Shibusawa was indeed an institutional entrepreneur focused on changing the rules of The second part deals with Eiichi Shibusawa's viewpoints on China by examining his words and actions related to the management of Sino-Japanese joint company and the other organizations. His visit to China in 1914 and his attitude toward anti-Japanese agitation arising in China at that time will also be investigated.
The last part argues the problems that Eiichi Shibusawa was faced with by revaluating the so-called "same race and same script" idiom which indicated the intimate relationship between China and Japan at the time. Meanwhile, this part fosters a debate on the possibility of a form of diplomacy to be untaken by industrialists instead of official governments. Shibusawa's argument concerning the relationship between morality and economy in the capitalist world has key things in common with those of Adam Smith and Michael Porter, who argue that (1) pursuit of self-interest by individuals can lead to, and even be vital for, social value creation and social prosperity, but (2) it should be allowed as long as they comply with justice or passive morality. There is one thing, however, on which Shibusawa would not have agreed with Smith and Porter, and which distinguishes him fundamentally from the other two. As a Confucian, he placed paramount importance on the practice of benevolence (active morality) and, in this context, expected each and every person in business to make a conscious effort to contribute to the welfare and advancement of society. Shibusawa certainly championed pursuit of self-interest itself, but regarded it as a means to an end, namely the promotion of public welfare.
For the capitalist economy to be sustainable, there need to appear a succession of business people of this kind who eagerly seek their own profit but at the same time prioritize over it the interest of others and of society at large.

Panel Description
This panel explores how Japanese companies shaped regional and global markets during the interwar period. WWI marked a turning point for Japanese commerce as Japan increasingly became an important regional and global exporter. Amidst increasing global trade during the 1920s, Japanese firms nevertheless continued to operate in an environment of inter-imperial competition. In this panel, we examine how Japanese firms carved out a niche for commodities to distinguish their products from domestic and European competitors. Japanese businesses interacted with state authorities in a wide range of areas from regulating the quality of exports to overturning overseas patent rights. Through three case-studies of Japanese companies, we explore how domestic, regional, and global markets were re-defined through attempts at product differentiation. The activities of Japanese firms and government not only reveal Japan's imperial interests but also the process of how markets are constructed during the interwar period.
Kjell Ericson examines how the pearl cultivator Mikimoto Kokichi sought to regulate the quality of pearls leaving Japan, even as European countries attempted to track Japanese pearls in European markets through distinctions between "cultured" and "natural" pearls. Timothy Yang uses the case of Hoshi Pharmaceuticals to demonstrate how the interwar drug industry often depended upon state authorities for legal protection, subsidies, overseas markets and resources, and even innovation. Ti Ngo focuses on how state support helped a monopolistic Micronesian sugar company to overcome Javanese competitors by distinguishing the quality of its sugar to match the changing taste of Asian consumers. Abstract Japan's pharmaceuticals industry did not fully come into being until World War One. Although some businessmen begun importing Western medicines as early as the mid-nineteenth century (at a time when the majority sold Chinese herbal medicines), most drug merchants became manufacturers only after the outbreak of the First World War disrupted imports of European, particularly, German, medicines. With Europe mired in conflict, Japanese companies seized the moment to manufacture their own Western-style medicines. Under the banner of "self-sufficiency" (jikyū jisoku), which identified the shortage of essential medicines as a threat to national security, the Home Ministry voided overseas patent rights, ordered state laboratories to reveal drug formulae to private firms, and provided monetary incentives to promote domestic production. Government intervention during the war led to a rapid expansion in the pharmaceutical industry, as firms old and new rushed to satisfy the demand at home and carve out new markets abroad. In a six-year period, the total production of pharmaceuticals had increased almost three-fold, from 19.9 million yen in 1914 to 51.2 million yen in 1920. This paper uses the case of Hoshi Pharmaceuticals, one of the largest and most influential drug companies at the time, to show how the industry emerged in an interwar global context defined by uncertainty, scarcity, competition, and most of all, state sponsorship. * Related paper • "Selling an Imperial Dream: Japanese Pharmaceuticals, National Power, and the Science of Quinine Self-Sufficiency," East Asian Science, Technology, and Society, Volume 6, Number 1, 2012, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/472140 became a high-profile target of this surveillance impulse. This paper compares two styles of 1930s-era trade control as they operated in Europe, where some of the world's richest pearl entrepôts could be found, and in Japan, where virtually all cultured pearls were produced. During the 1920s, pearl dealers across Europe sponsored technical and legal methods to distinguish "cultured" pearls from the "natural" ones they bought in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere. Amid the financial turmoil of the following decade, British and French governments pursued active roles in overseeing cultured pearls throughout their empires. European pearl protectionism took on the trappings of border control (contrôle)--in the French case, complete with gem passports. In Japan, established cultivators linked falling cultured pearl prices to domestic overproduction. The largest among them, the "Pearl King" Mikimoto Kôkichi, experimented with ways to keep "poor quality" pearls from leaving Japanese ports. Mikimoto spearheaded attempts to group large cultivators (and their smallholder competitors) under state-authorized control associations (tôsei kumiai). Institutions of pearl control reflected parallel visions of local commercial order amid inter-imperial competition. If backers of European import control strove for separation of "natural" and "cultured" markets by policing newcomer merchants, their Japanese export counterparts tried to maintain a distinction between "good" and "bad" cultured pearls by policing newcomer cultivators. Their ethos, personnel, and apparatus persisted in reconfigured postwar forms.

Panelist: Ti Ngo, University of California, Berkeley
Paper title: Cornering the Sugar Market: The South Seas Development Company and Japanese Imperial Interests in Southeast Asia

Abstract
As appetite for sugar soared in the 1920s from 13 to 24 million metric tons, consumers in Asia increasingly preferred a newer "factory white" grade of sugar which they deemed to be more hygienic and "modern" than less processed brown sugar. When Japan acquired the Mariana, Marshall, and Caroline Islands as a League of Nations mandate in 1920, Japanese administrators saw the islands as an opportunity to further extend Japanese market share in the lucrative market for sugar in continental Asia. Japanese officials such as Tezuka Toshiro, the first director of the South Seas Government, subsidized the creation of a sugar company in Micronesia, the South Seas Development Company (Nanyō Kōhatsu Kabushiki Kaisha or Nankō). Utilizing Nankō as a case-study, this paper explores how the South Seas Government worked alongside Nankō to make the islands another outpost of sugar production alongside Taiwan. As consumer tastes gravitated towards white sugar, Nankō's founder, Matsue Haruji, believed he could compete with Javanese sugar, which was cheaper in price but required further processing to become "factory white" grade. The history of Nankō reveals how interimperial competition in an age of increasing global trade took on the form of controlling regional markets through state support of industries and the enactment of greater quality control. The ultimate success of Micronesian sugar production enabled Nankō to expand its enterprises into other industries in Indonesia, making sugar production a fulcrum for later Japanese economic activities in Southeast Asia during the 1930s. Most historical studies of Japan's phenomenal postwar economic growth have revolved around how government-driven developments in the archipelago rippled through world markets. However, our panel argues that much of the success of Japanese exports can be attributed to initial grassroots corporate efforts in the U.S. markets. Diverging from typical economic histories, we use various postwar Japanese commercial exports to examine the networks, discourses, and methods behind the intersection of business and cultural construction processes that have made Japan resonate with American audiences.
William Chou shows how Japanese automobile manufacturers used technical and marketing collaboration with U.S. partners to create images and responses to the Japanese "small car" in the American market. Alisa Freedman demonstrates how misrepresentations of Japan on American television comedies have perpetuated national stereotypes while verifying Japan's international influence. Robert Hegwood highlights the role of Japanese Americans in shaping cultural images of Japan and in helping Japanese food corporations Kikkoman and Aji-no-moto re-establish a presence in the American market. Yoshiko Nakano explores how Japan Airlines inaugurated its international service with Orientalist images created in conjunction with American market researchers and advertising firms. Discussant Sayuri Shimizu contributes her expertise on U.S.-Japanese cultural and business relations. Through examination of the business models these case studies represent, our panel re-evaluates the history of Japanese growth, peers into the dynamics behind the evolving image of postwar Japan abroad, and contributes to discussions of Japan's current soft power projects. The continued market dominance of Japanese automobiles is an enduring icon of Japan's successful postwar economic development. Yet existing accounts of the automotive industry's growth and penetration of the U.S. market isolate their attention on Japan-centric production processes to the exclusion of advertising and marketing. Moreover, these business-only studies also ignore the larger diplomatic and cultural circumstances in which Japanese automotive exports advanced. An approach that integrates a wider set of factors and contexts can explain how sustained engagement between Japanese automobile manufacturers and U.S. government officials, businesses, and consumers created reputations for quality and appeal for Japanese small cars.
This paper focuses on the Japanese automobile industry across 1957-82, arguing that transpacific technological exchanges, market research, cultural reception, and trade negotiations were central to the industry's development and evolving global strategies. By using a multidimensional approach that integrates diplomacy, business, and consumer culture, it situates Japanese automotive exports within concurrent developments such as the Cold War security environment and the postwar consumer boom. This creates a more holistic understanding of postwar U.S.-Japanese relations, and also speaks to ongoing research on national-branding discourses and local approaches to globalization.

Panelist: Alisa Freedman, University of Oregon
Paper title: TV Japan: Screaming Samurai Join Anime Clubs in the Land of the Lost Abstract I will discuss the serious political, economic, and cultural issues underlying misrepresentations of Japan in American comedy television from the 1970s through today. I will focus on the United States because of the global domination of American television and because many Japanese marketers have viewed brand familiarity in the United States as a benchmark for success. Television reacts things in the public eye and tends to perpetuate rather than subvert dominant discourses. Television cannot take controversial stances as easily as novels, fine arts, and other media due to the need for mass audiences, advertisers, and state support of commercial networks. I will focus on three well-known examples representing different genres and comedic forms: samurai parodies (prevalent in the 1970s), Bubble Era in "Sesame Street's Big Bird in Japan" (1988), and "Cool Japan" parodies (especially after 2010). These examples show changing patterns of cultural globalization and different views of Japan in the American imagination; they perpetuate national stereotypes while verifying Japan's international influence. Parody, which works only when the subject is mainstream enough for audiences to easily get the joke, shows the extent of the export of Japanese culture and cements fan communities through shared jokes. Parody also renders possible competitors less powerful by exaggerating their characteristics and making them laughable. Television comedies can be viewed as an alternative history of American fascinations with and fears of Japan.

Panelist: Robert Hegwood, University of Pennsylvania
Paper title: A Natural Affinity for Shōyu: Japanese Americans and Food Exports to the United States, 1945States, -1965 Abstract The 2014 designation of washoku on UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage has fueled the already lively field of culinary history and cultural diplomacy. Indeed, the decision is merely a recent reminder of the enduring popularity of Japanese food among foreign consumers --a popularity that has long worked to the advantage of Japanese food corporations. However, historians have tended to treat this phenomenon as merely part of the rising tide of popularity of Japanese culture in postwar America, with little explanation of how Japanese food was popularized at the social level. Japanese food products did not merely flow into American markets as a result of cultural exchange, it was the result of a transnational network of collaboration between Japanese corporations, Japanese government officials, and Japanese American entrepreneurs.
Through an examination of corporate histories, nikkei community histories, and oral histories, I examine how grassroots collaboration with the Japanese American community was essential to the success of Aji-no-moto and Kikkoman Soy Sauce corporations' reentry into the American market in the 1940s and 1950s. Particularly, nikkei-owned sukiyaki restaurants and trading companies provided an initial foothold for marketing efforts to win over American palettes. Drawing on the insights of studies linking the cultural dimensions of the Japanese empire to the colonial periphery and a burgeoning field of transnational studies of the Japanese diaspora, I argue the nikkei community served as a vital social foundation for these corporations' efforts to reshape the American image of Japanese food, one bite at a time.