IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/kob/dpaper/dp2014-15.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Accounting for Dissolution: The Case of Japanese Mining Corporations 1946-1950

Author

Listed:
  • Masayoshi Noguchi

    (Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration (RIEB), Kobe University, Japan)

  • Yasuhiro Shimizu

    (Graduate School of Business Administration, Kobe University)

  • Tsunehiko Nakamura

    (Faculty of Business Administration, Momoyama Gukuin University)

Abstract

The study, which makes extensive use of official Holding Company Liquidation Commission (HCLC) documents possessed by the National Archives of Japan, examines accounting practices adopted by three Japanese mining corporations in their dissolution in the immediate postwar period from 1946 to 1950. The study finds that (1) the conventional accounting practices adopted by the zaibatsu companies were adequate to enable them to implement their own dissolution and that (2) forecast balance sheets prepared by the companies, produced after the HCLC decided to split them up, provided an important basis for the development of the postwar corporate accounting system. This was because they supplied a practical precedent, in which features of the new system materialized before it was formally instituted, as the forecast balance sheets make use of provisions in the 'Instruction for the Preparation of Financial Statements of Manufacturing and Trading Companies', issued by the General Headquarters (GHQ) in July 1947. The study's results contribute to the literature on the quality of accounting information provided by the Japanese zaibatsu organizations. Early research generally assessed the financial statements submitted to the HCLC as having many defects, while more recent research indicates that the accounting practices adopted by these companies were not deficient in their own domestic environment. Since neither assertion is founded on empirical data, the examination conducted in this study provides important evidence to support the latter view.

Suggested Citation

  • Masayoshi Noguchi & Yasuhiro Shimizu & Tsunehiko Nakamura, 2014. "Accounting for Dissolution: The Case of Japanese Mining Corporations 1946-1950," Discussion Paper Series DP2014-15, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University.
    • Handle: RePEc:kob:dpaper:dp2014-15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rieb.kobe-u.ac.jp/academic/ra/dp/English/DP2014-15.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2014
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Okazaki Tetsuji, 1993. "The Japanese Firm under the Wartime Planned Economy," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 175-203, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Randall Morck & Bernard Yeung, 2017. "East Asian Financial and Economic Development," NBER Working Papers 23845, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Osano, Hiroshi, 1997. "An Evolutionary Model of Corporate Governance and Employment Contracts," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 403-436, September.
    3. Kandel, Eugene & Pearson, Neil D., 2001. "Flexibility versus Commitment in Personnel Management," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 515-556, December.
    4. Hannah, Leslie & Kasuya, Makoto, 2015. "Twentieth century enterprise forms: Japan in comparative perspective," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 64489, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Morck, Randall & Nakamura, Masao & 中村, 政男 & ナカムラ, マサオ, 2004. "Been There, Done That: The History of Corporate Ownership in Japan," CEI Working Paper Series 2004-4, Center for Economic Institutions, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    6. Randall Morck & Masao Nakamura, 2005. "A Frog in a Well Knows Nothing of the Ocean: A History of Corporate Ownership in Japan," NBER Chapters, in: A History of Corporate Governance around the World: Family Business Groups to Professional Managers, pages 367-466, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Chiaki Moriguchi, 2000. "The Evolution of Employment Relations in U.S. and Japanese Manufacturing Firms, 1900-1960: A Comparative Historical and Institutional Analysis," NBER Working Papers 7939, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Singh, Ajit, 1998. "Review of the role of government in East Asian economic development, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997, Aoki, Kim and Okuno - Fujiwara (editors)," MPRA Paper 54972, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Mitsuru Sunada, 2012. "Competition among movie theaters: an empirical investigation of the Toho–Subaru antitrust case," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 36(3), pages 179-206, August.
    10. John Buchanan & Dominic H. Chai & Simon Deakin, 2018. "Unexpected Corporate Outcomes from Hedge Find Activism in Japan," Working Papers wp494, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    11. Chiaki Moriguchi & Emmanuel Saez, 2006. "The Evolution of Income Concentration in Japan, 1886-2002: Evidence from Income Tax Statistics," NBER Working Papers 12558, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Holding Company Liquidation Commission; Zaibatsu; Dissolution; Excessive concentration of economic power; Mining corporations; Coal; Metal;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kob:dpaper:dp2014-15. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Office of Promoting Research Collaboration, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rikobjp.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.