Social Science Japan Journal Advance Access originally published online on October 18, 2006
Social Science Japan Journal 2006 9(2):203-219; doi:10.1093/ssjj/jyl032
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Social Science Japan Journal 9:203-219 (2006)
© 2006 Oxford University Press
The Role of Matsunaga Yasuzaemon in the Development of Japan’s Electric Power Industry
KIKKAWA Takeo is a Professor of Japanese business history and the comparative study of modern economies at the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo. He is the author of numerous book, including Matsunaga Zaemon (Minerva Shob
, 2004) and Nihon Denryokugy Hatten no Dainamizumu (The Dynamism of Development in the Japanese Electric Power Industry) (Nagoya University Press, 2004). In English, he is the co-editor (with Hideaki Miyajima and Takashi Hikino) of Policies for Competitiveness: Comparing Business-Government Relationships in the ‘Golden Age of Capitalism’ (Oxford University Press, 1999). He can be contacted at the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan or by email at kikkawa{at}iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp.
Since 1883, when the nation’s first electric power company, Tokyo Electric Lighting Co., was founded, Japan’s electric power industry has developed largely through private enterprise. The exception was the period 1939–1951, spanning World War II and the Allied Occupation, when it was under state control. This path of development contrasts sharply with that of another electricity-related enterprise, the telecommunications industry. The Ministry of Communications also controlled telecommunications during and just after the war, but unlike the electric industry, telecommunications had no history as a private enterprise at any time from its start in 1869 until it was privatized in 1985. Until that year, the government ran it either directly or indirectly. This article reviews the history and development of Japan’s electric power industry and analyzes the influential role of Matsunaga Yasuzaemon (1875–1971) in that process. While identifying the factors that lay behind Matsunaga’s enormous contributions to the industry, it explains the reasons that the electric power industry, in contrast with telecommunications, has been run predominantly as a private enterprise.