Why does Japan have such a heavy presence on the list of oldest companies[1], compared to say, China or India or Egypt?
These companies have survived because any time the family had only girls, one of the women would marry and their husband would be adopted. Thus making the husband the eldest man, and keeping the business in the family.
Japan having family businesses is not the factor, all businesses were good family businesses before the invention of the stock company. Instead what doomed most family businesses in the west was the eventual chance of getting unlucky with inheritance.
The general acceptance of adult adoption to continue a family line, kept those businesses in a single family and justified passing the business whole to the "eldest son".
> In some odd ways, you can view many of Japan's famous and historical companies such as Mitsubishi and Mitsui as having assumed the role of the lords from feudal Japan, and the employees working for these companies can be seen as the modern day warriors. They devote absolute loyalty to their companies/modern day lords, who in turn vow to take care of these warriors by providing life-time employment, etc.
> However, if these warriors tarnished the image of their companies somehow, e.g., involving in a scandal whereby their companies get blamed, or the reputation is severely damaged, then these corporate warriors would assume responsibility by kneeling down to apologize in public, and/or in some cases, jump off a building in an extreme expression of their deep regrets for failing to defend the honor of the company.
Historically, warriors who protected the feudal lords would also commit suicide when they failed their master. See the Bushido book for more information about Japanese culture in English terms. It's really hard to express the culture in English, I think, because some is lost in translation and some is just hard to put in words.
Japan is one such country and also happens to have been around a long time too.
Also, for a group to be resilent, there actually needs to be a lot of creativity at in its members as otherwise it will collapse when it meets challenges.
Could you elaborate on this some more? It was my understanding people were discouraged from even dressing different, for example.
And keep in mind that China had the Cultural Revolution which reset the counter to zero.