This is the first time I write a commercial novel with a foreign background. In addition to the indistinguishable trouble caused by the names of people, the level and distribution of foreign background forces also make everyone feel a little dizzy.

Let’s do a sorting explanation here.

1. Consortium

The Nippon Foundation has a long history, which can be roughly divided into two stages: pre-war and post-war.

【Pre-war stage】

Before the war, Japan gradually formed four established chaebols: Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, and Yasuda.

(1)Mitsui Foundation

The founder, Mitsui Hachirobe Kori, opened silk and satin shops in Edo (today's Tokyo) and Kyoto in 1673, and later also ran money shops. From the 1820s, he opened the Mitsui Exchange Shop, which mainly handles money exchange business, and became

Commercial capital plus usury capital; at the same time, he supported feudal princes, arranged exchanges for the Tokugawa shogunate, and became a wealthy businessman as a privileged merchant.

In the early years of the Meiji regime, the Mitsui family changed their identity from a royal privileged businessman to a political and businessman in the new era, ensuring that their identity and interests would not be affected by regime changes. 1876

In the early years of the Meiji Restoration, they transferred to the new imperial court and received the care of the Meiji government to control the country's financial industry. At this time, the Mitsui family established the foundation by integrating the Mitsui Exchange Shop and its affiliated financial institutions and taking control of the then official bank.

He founded his own private bank, Mitsui Banking Corporation. Mitsui Banking Corporation was the first private bank in Japan after the Meiji Restoration. Since then, it has relied on Mitsui Banking Corporation to continuously expand its industrial scope.

With the implementation of the wartime system, the Mitsui Zaibatsu cooperated with the military to expand its business into the military industry and occupied areas. Finally, before World War II, it developed into a large chaebol with 151 direct, collateral and investment companies. Among them, only Mitsui & Co.

The turnover reached 3 billion yen in the early 1940s. During World War II, Mitsui Banking Corporation, the core of the Mitsui Zaibatsu, merged with Japan's Daiichi Bank and changed its name to Imperial Bank.

. Its operating strength soon surpassed Yasuda Bank and ranked first among zaibatsu banks, allowing the direct and affiliated companies of the Mitsui monopoly zaibatsu to obtain stronger and stronger financial support through this bank merger, and gain opportunities for faster development.

By the end of World War II, the Mitsui Zaibatsu was 1.5 times the size of the Mitsubishi Zaibatsu, twice the size of the Sumitomo Zaibatsu, and about three times the size of the Yasuda Zaibatsu.

(2) Mitsubishi Zaibatsu

The history of the Mitsubishi Zaibatsu can be traced back to the transportation business run by Yataro Iwasaki in the Tosa Domain. In 1870, Yataro Iwasaki took charge of the Tosa Domain Kurayashiki (an organization responsible for storing and selling goods from various local daimyo) established by the Tosa Domain in Horie, Nishi-ku, Osaka City.

Leaders of 99 chambers of commerce in China

In 1871, Japan abolished feudal lordships and established prefectures, and 99 chambers of commerce became individual enterprises. So Yataro Iwasaki purchased three ships from Tosa Domain, established Mitsubishi Chamber of Commerce in 1873, and began to operate shipping (later developed into Nippon Yusen) and commerce (

Later it developed into Mitsubishi Corporation) and other businesses.

The Mitsubishi Foundation started with shipping and commerce. By the time of the fourth generation Iwasaki Koyata, Mitsubishi Shipbuilding and Mitsubishi Paper were established in 1917, Mitsubishi Corporation and Mitsubishi Mining were established in 1918, and Mitsubishi Mining was established in 1919.

Bank, in 1920 Mitsubishi Shipbuilding was divided into subsidiaries such as Mitsubishi Internal Combustion Engine Manufacturing and Mitsubishi Electric. Since then, as Japan continued to launch wars, domestic demand for military products surged, and Mitsubishi's industry achieved unprecedented development.

(3) Sumitomo Zaibatsu

Sumitomo is one of the oldest corporate groups in Japan, with a history of more than 400 years. As early as the 16th century, the Sumitomo family started and operated a copper mine on Shikoku Island and grew from strength to strength, becoming Japan's official copper supplier.

It served some of the most powerful and famous families in Japan at that time, including the Tokugawa Shogunate, which ruled Japan for more than 260 years from 1603 to 1868.

After the Meiji Restoration, while absorbing Western technology to continuously expand copper production, related businesses such as the machinery industry, the coal industry, the wire manufacturing industry, and forestry were also developed one after another, gradually developing into a modern consortium centered on the industrial, mining, and financial industries.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the Sumitomo family had rapidly developed into Japan's third largest financial chaebol. In the 1930s and during World War II, some politically influential monopoly groups became the main followers of Japan's Communist Party.

The Sumitomo Foundation is no exception. During this period, the family concentration of the Sumitomo Foundation became more obvious, and most of the consortium's industries were concentrated in the hands of the Sumitomo family. By 1937, the 16th generation of the Sumitomo family had mastered the total share capital of the consortium.

As much as 90%.

(4)Yasuda Zaibatsu

The Yasuda family was originally a privileged businessman during the Meiji Restoration era, and started out as a money exchange business. In 1863, Zenjiro Yasuda opened the "Yasudaya" bank in Tokyo with 250,000 taels of gold as capital, and it developed smoothly. In 1879, Yasuda received government approval

, founded on the basis of bank

Private Yasuda Bank, and gradually expanded to textile, construction, railway transportation and other fields, forming a management group including a number of enterprises. In 1912, Yasuda established a holding company of "Yasuda Maintenance Company", thus initially forming a business in Japan.

The Yasuda Zaibatsu has great influence on the economy.

In 1923, the ambitious Zenjiro Yasuda annexed 10 banks at once. By the early 1930s, the Yasuda Zaibatsu owned a large consortium including 14 banks, 12 industrial and commercial enterprises, and 6 insurance companies.

The Yasuda Zaibatsu is the predecessor of the Fuji Foundation.

[Post-war reconstruction]

Before the war, in addition to the four major conglomerates, there were of course more than a dozen other chaebols in Japan. These chaebols were basically controlled by a certain core family, realizing a monopoly chaebol that combined industrial capital, commercial capital, and financial capital.

After World War II, for its own economic interests and in the name of antitrust, the U.S. government implemented suppression policies against the old chaebols and disbanded Japan's chaebol organizations, but retained the existence of its banking organizations. Since 1951, the United States, out of the need for the Cold War,

, and gradually adopted policies to support monopoly capital, prompting the reorganization of Japan's chaebol organizations.

The 1953 revision of the "Prohibition of Monopoly Law" relaxed restrictions on holding shares and part-time jobs in competing companies. For example, the shareholding limit for financial institutions was expanded from 5% to 10%.

Under the new policy environment, the financial institutions of the old chaebol have regrouped their original subsidiaries and evolved into Japan's new consortium based on the high integration of financial capital, industrial capital and commercial capital. Among them, Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Sumitomo, and Fuji

, Sanwa, Daiichi Bank and other six major consortiums are the largest, thus forming Japan's famous six major consortium-type enterprise groups. In the subsequent development, some other medium-sized consortia gradually emerged.

After the war, Japanese conglomerates are no longer completely controlled by a certain family like the pre-war conglomerates. Because of the policies formulated by the United States, Japan's post-war consortia can only achieve control of the conglomerates through closer alliance-style relationships. In

In this context, the old aristocrats, old plutocratic families, political families, and business families that were originally in high positions were gradually connected through marriage and interest exchange. Although the consortium was no longer under the full control of a certain family, through marriage,

Cross-shareholding interests, and even darker controls, can still achieve relative control.

In the post-war consortium system, the core is still the bank, followed by the presidents' coordination meeting among the presidents of the core companies under the consortium. Due to Japan's special history and the control needs of the United States, Japanese consortiums cannot be as blatant as Korean chaebols.

At least today, it seems that Japanese consortiums are no longer continuously controlled by a certain family. However, the establishment of the six major consortiums and other emerging consortiums after the war has always been inseparable from the efforts and continued operations of certain core families.

In this book, one of the core families behind Mitsubishi and Sumitomo is still set as the founding Iwasaki family and the Sumitomo family, while Takao Hirano and Atsushi Kitagawa represent these two families in the front management of Mitsubishi and Sumitomo.

In the top roles, Tokuo Suga and Zenue Anzai are the assistants of Takao Hirano and Atsushi Kitagawa respectively.

In the Japanese consortium system, becoming the core enterprise of the consortium has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that it can receive unprecedented resources and financial support, but the disadvantage is that the independence of development is damaged, and it is difficult to further become the core family of the consortium. Mori Group

He Mogami Hangsan is an upstart that has developed relatively well. The consortium has become their shareholder and provided a lot of support. If these upstarts are further allowed to become the core companies of the consortium, the consortium will invest in the upstart companies through its core banks and other core companies.

, so that the total shares held by the consortium members occupy a controlling position. Afterwards, the development strategy control, personnel dispatch and other matters of the upstart enterprise can be realized through the coordination of the core bank board of directors and the core enterprise president meeting.

Those who have watched "Naoki Hansawa" may not understand why, for example, Naoki Hansawa and Kondo are sent here and there, even in industries that have nothing to do with finance.

That's where it lies. In addition to the core banks and core enterprises, the consortium also has many supply chain supporting enterprises and peripheral enterprises.

All in all, there are six top Japanese conglomerates after the war, and there are others, such as the fictional Tomowa in this book. On the surface, the consortium is just an "alliance organization" with the core bank as the link and the president association as the platform, but

Secretly, it is still a close organization deeply influenced by the old chaebol families, old aristocrats, and new political families. Their means of achieving stable control and coordination are often inseparable from interests, marriages, and handles.

2. National Railway Reform

In the 1980s, the most popular economic trend in the world was called "neoliberal economy". Under the banner of "neoliberal economy", Britain Thatcher carried out the reform of state-owned enterprises, and Japan was also affected.

It is necessary to separate fat and bloated state-owned enterprises from government assets in order to "reduce" the government's burden.

The Prime Minister of Japan at the time, Yasuhiro Nakasone, who we often mentioned throughout this series, proposed a great "privatization reform" and targeted Japan's three major state-owned enterprises: NTT Japan Telecom Corporation and JR Japan Railway Corporation.

,JT Japan Specialty Co., Ltd.

Among the three major state-owned enterprises, NTT is the weakest. It started discussing the reform plan in 1985 and announced the plan in 1986 to prepare for listing.

The second one is the National Railway.

Japan Railways was state-owned from the postwar period to the 1980s. Due to competition from highways and the aviation industry, Japan Railways' profits have declined year by year since 1964. By 1983, railway passenger transportation accounted for 10% of all transportation

The industry's share dropped to 23%. The next year, the freight share dropped to only 6%, with operating losses reaching hundreds of billions of yen. Total debt exceeded 20 trillion yen in 1986, and by 1987, losses and debt totaled

37.5 trillion yen.

During the national railway reform, the government's main goal at that time was to repay debts. However, the trillions of yen in debt were not borne by the private consortium forces that wanted to participate in the national railway reform. Therefore, the main issue was how to compete for advantageous assets and how to get rid of them.

With high-debt assets, how can we acquire good assets and still take the leading position in the enterprises that have been divided after the national railway private reform?

In this book, the land owned by Takeda Manufacturing and the Mogami Industrial and Mori Group has attracted much attention because it is close to the assets of National Railways and helps all parties to gain benefits in the private reform of National Railways.

But it should be noted that everyone may be wondering why the consortium seems not to pay enough attention to such a huge benefit. In fact, this is an underestimation of the size of the large consortium. To use figures as an analogy, the land manufactured by Takeda is 4 billion yen.

At the bottom, the core of the incident at the moment is the position of the Ueda family, which has assets of 40 billion yen, and the Mori Group, which has a size of several hundred billion yen, and Mogami Honsan.

However, it was previously revealed that large consortiums such as the Iwasaki family are more concerned about the election of the ruling party, the next prime minister, government officials leading the private reform of national railways, and competition with other consortiums. Even if these are put aside, the core of the consortium's

There are often dozens of companies, each of which is at least one of the Sen Group, the most constant-production-level company. The total scale of assets it can control actually exceeds the entire national railway itself.

Take the Mitsui Foundation as an example. The well-known Toshiba, Sony, Sanyo, NEC, and Toyota are all Mitsui's core companies. There are so many things to take care of, and they have devoted their attention to the national railway reform, but not all their efforts.

, is a very normal thing.

3. Old Chinese

The Chinese are the aristocratic class that existed in Japan between the Meiji Restoration and the end of World War II. The emergence of the "Chinese" began on June 17, 1869, and the "Chinese Order" that formally established the "Chinese system" was

It was enacted on July 7, 1884. "Chinese" was officially abolished on May 3, 1947, when the Japanese Constitution came into effect after the war.

In 1869, after the books and books of various local princes in Japan were returned, the original titles such as "Gongjia" (Gongqing) and "Daimyo" (Princes) were abolished, and they were collectively referred to as the Chinese. In 1871, Japan abolished the old status system and divided the citizens into royal families.

, Chinese, gentry, and common people were divided into four categories. The Chinese became the aristocratic class second only to the royal family and enjoyed many political and economic privileges.

In 1884, the "Chinese Order" was promulgated, dividing the Chinese into five levels: Duke, Marquis, Earl, Viscount, and Baron. Among them, the old Gongqing family was awarded the title of Viscount or above based on their family background. The old Daiming family was awarded the title of Viscount or above based on Shi Gao (salary and salary amount).

) and his performance in the Boshin War were awarded the title of Baron or above.

In terms of economics, according to the laws at the time, the hereditary property of the Chinese people was specially protected, and transfers and mortgages with it as the "subject" were invalid. This prevented the loss of Chinese property and ensured their basic economic status. In addition,

The Chinese also raised funds to establish the 15th National Bank (also known as the Chinese Bank) to ensure the preservation and increase of the value of their property. In order to protect the Chinese people in Jiu Tangshang who have always been poor, the Japanese government also set up the "Protection of Chinese People in Jiu Tangshang"

funds" to help the poor Chinese.

In terms of politics, the majority of the members of the House of Lords are Chinese. Dukes and marquises over 30 years old are ex-officio members, while earls, viscounts and barons are elected from among people over 30 years old who hold their titles. Among them, earls

The quota of members is 18, and the quota of viscounts and barons is 66 each, with a term of seven years. According to convention, the chairman and deputy speaker of the House of Lords, the minister of the palace, and the president of Zongzhiliao

Can only be held by ethnic Chinese. In the Meiji and Taisho eras, since the prime ministers were appointed by the emperor, most of the prime ministers were of Chinese origin. Among them, famous ones such as Ito Hirobumi, Kuroda Kiyotaka, Katsura Taro, and Saionji Komochi,

Konoe Fumimaro and others. As the head of the Tokugawa clan, Tokugawa Iedatsu was also ordered by the emperor to organize a cabinet, but he rejected the emperor's order due to the opposition of the family meeting.

In terms of honors, the titles of the Chinese are hereditary. All Chinese retain seats in the palace. How high is the status of the Chinese? Taking the lowest-level baron as an example, his palace seats are above those of the House of Lords and the House of Representatives.

Higher than the third-class senior official. The third-class senior official is equivalent to today's army colonel, local tribunal judge, first-class secretary or cabinet of the embassy abroad, and provincial secretaries.

In terms of education, all Chinese children have the privilege of studying in the Gakushuin. In the future, as long as their grades in the Gakushuin can be ranked above average, they can enter Tokyo Imperial University, which is the best in Japan. Gakushuin students with lower grades can also

To study at Kyoto Imperial University, ordinary people have to go through countless years of suffering and hard work to get into these two universities.

In addition, the Chinese also organized and established a Chinese guild hall to strengthen communication with each other. The head of the Tokugawa clan, Tokugawa Ketatsu, has been the director of the hall all year round.

In 1947, according to the new "Japanese Constitution", the Chinese system was officially abolished. According to statistics, those with titles at that time included: 17 dukes, 38 marquises, 105 counts, 351 viscounts, and 378 barons, a total of 889 people

.

Although the Chinese system has been abolished, the old Chinese system is still very active.

What is certain is that there are still many descendants of the Chinese who are active in politics and business. Among them, the head of the Hosokawa family even serves as the prime minister of the cabinet, and the father and daughter of the Kamei family also serve as members of the House of Representatives and senators respectively. In addition, "Chinese

The clan guild hall has not died out either.

The name "Xiaguan" (named after it is located in Xiaguan) continues to exist, with hundreds of members (membership is restricted). Xiaguan covers an area of ​​5,000 square meters (about 16,000 square meters) and was built in 1968.

It was the first tall building in Japan at the time.

Members of the Xia Guild Hall must be male contemporary family heads, and must be recognized by other members. The connections between the old Chinese clans represent an upper-class circle.

In this book, if Tao Zhiming had not been the adopted son of the Ueda family's son-in-law and had a son with Ueda Shana in a legitimate way, but had given birth to a son with the surname Ueda, it would not be in line with the rules and would not be recognized.

Therefore, due to the information gap caused by this, it is difficult for everyone to imagine that Masahiro Ueda is willing to give up this circle on his own initiative, and thus they have excessive associations with the four words Taro Ueda.

【Summarize】

Although writing about this subject may bring freshness to everyone, it also creates this threshold, which is really helpless.

All I can say is that I tried to balance the propriety of plot advancement and background explanation.

Actually, I don’t want to be the Riddler, but I always feel like there’s something wrong with Balabala’s explanation in the text!
Chapter completed!