Organization and Technology: 1912–1930

A crucial point about Koransha and the other firms briefly discussed in the final section of Chapter 5 is that, having been established as modern corporations some time during the period from the last quarter of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th, they are still up and running as viable LMEs having made it to the 21st century. This infers a lot about the organization of the industrial structure in Japan and the arrangement of firms as discrete performers within that structure, as well as about how technology is dispersed and how it is acted upon and by whom. The shape of this organization and the implications of technology dispersal were to take on clearer definition in the second period, that following the end of the Meiji era in 1912 through to the culmination of the Second World War. So we now turn to how the samurai and the artisan confronted and contributed in their respective ways to this new phase, and then to the extent to which they merged their efforts, albeit haltingly and imperfectly, to meet the common challenges. Emerging from this activity, it will be argued, is a further substantiating stage in the evolution of the Japanese LME. This chapter explores the unfurling of events to the start of the 1930s, while the following chapter looks at the charged atmosphere of the nation on a war footing up to 1945 and the further implications this had for the industrial structure and the LME within that structure.