Why So Many of the World’s Oldest Companies Are in Japan

‘Respecting tradition’

Yoshinori Hara, dean and professor at Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Management, says these long-standing entities, at least 100 years old, are known as ‘shinise’ – literally meaning ‘old shop’.

Hara, who worked in Silicon Valley for a decade, says that Japanese companies’ emphasis on sustainability, rather than quick ma... See more

As I mentioned, most of the oldest companies in the world are in Japan. In a survey of 5,500 companies over 200 years old, 3,100 are based in Japan. The rest are in some of the older countries in Europe.

But — and this was a fact I found curious, and one that speaks to the cyclical nature of things — 90% of the companies that are over 200 years old

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Several of the oldest known continuously-operating companies in the world are Japanese. Seven were founded prior to the year 1,000. The size of companies in the database of Japanese firms over 100 years old clearly proves that firms do not have to grow large to survive. In fact most shinise are small- to medium-sized, private (often family-owned) b

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