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Structures autour de la famille et de structures holding, les zaibatsu sont de veritables investissements relationnels. Cette caracteristique de gouvernement d’entreprise est propre a la structure organisationnelle du Japon avant la seconde guerre mondiale. Aussi l’economie de marche joue-t-elle un faible role dans les relations de la societe mere avec ses filiales. Le cas des zaibatsu est alors caracteristique d’une corporate governance sans marches financiers et qui n’en conserve pas moins une certaine efficacite.

In this paper I set out my reasons for opposing Professor Takafusa Nakamura's view of "the era of balanced growth from the Meiji Restoration to World War I". For this purpose, this paper explores the change of Japan's industrial structure in 1890-1910, using the growth rate of individual industry. It is well known that cotton spinning industry was the leading-sector. However the growth rate of cotton industry apparently showed slow-down in the 1900's. In contrast, heavy industry such as machine tool, shipbuilding and iron & steel showed high speed growth. It follows from that the leading-sector among industries changed in the 1900's. Moreover, the slow-down of growth rate of cotton spinning, cotton weaving and other traditional goods manufacturings, which are most important part of Nakamura's argument suggests 'the imbalanced growth' is the characteristic of the era before WWI.

In 1917, the Furukawa family established a family-dominated Konzern, consisting of Furukawa Gomei as the group's holding company, Furukawa Mining, Tokyo-Furukawa Bank and Furukawa Shoji in foreign trade. In the first two years of its operation, the Konzern expanded itself remarkably relying on bank loans. But in the spring of 1920, Furukawa Shoji went to bankruptcy, because it lost heavily in bean speculation in Dairen. In order to make up the loss of 26 million yen, Furukawa Gomei had to dispose of its assets, mainly stocks of its subsidiary companies. Moreover, Furukawa reduced its business and gave up foreign trade activities in 1922 and banking activities in 1931. Thus, the main business of Furukawa became nothing more than mining. As a result, the development of Furukawa-Zaibatsu was retarded and it lagged far behind the other major Konzerns such as Mitsui and Mitsubishi.