Shinise: Long-Established Businesses

Overview

Business. It’s a dog-eat-dog world. And nowhere is that more true than in Tokyo’s uptown Shibuya neighborhood, with its high rents and discerning customers. For those who work in the area, the rise and fall of new businesses is part of the fabric of everyday life. Yet the average lifespan of a business in Japan is considerably longer than in most countries: roughly 30 years compared to 18 or so in the US. Contributing to this statistic is Japan’s abundance of long-established businesses. So many of these companies exist that there is a special word for them: shinise. Japan has around 26 thousand companies with a century or more of history. Of these, more than a thousand have passed the bicentenary mark, and a handful have battled through for a staggering thousand years or longer. What are the secrets of Japan's many centuries-old firms? Peter Barakan meets with expert Yoshihiko Takubo, while Matt Alt visits Nihonbashi, the old heart of Tokyo, guided by shinise expert Haruki Kawasaki.