Multinational enterprises have played a crucial role throughout Japanese economic history since the Meiji Restoration of the late 19th century. Although the evolution of several Japanese multinational enterprises in the last decades of the 20th century parallels the American multinational development experience, in early Japanese multinational organization certain innovative forms and unconventional business strategies deviated from some common Western practices and traditional multinational development theories. The Japanese effectively “changed the rules of the game.” They played a key role in revitalizing Japanese companies and industries and contributed to economic progress of host countries abroad. Japan exhibited the “fastest sustained rate of industrial production, GNP, and per capita income over the last century.” During that century Japan became a prominent and powerful home country for successful multinational corporations.

The innovative multinational enterprises that effectively “broke the mold” rose in response to the unique historical conditions of the environment they faced, including the industrial composition of the domestic economy, the nature of the domestic market, and associated opportunities.

JAPAN'S EARLIEST MULTINATIONALS: SOGO SHOSHA

General trading companies in Japan, known as sogo shosha (defined simply as “a firm that trades all kinds of goods with all nations of the world,”) are a Japanese organizational invention and among the earliest and perhaps most prominent multinational organizations in Japanese business history in scale of physical size and in the range of businesses and commercial activities.