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Interesting that the top 5 is all Japanese companies. Any reason why this is? They didn’t experience the dark ages like Europe did (just a very wild guess) ?

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Small, mountainous, resource-poor island at the far end of the world meant few were interested in conquering it. That meant Japan had the luxury of maintaining their culture unhindered for a very long period of time.

The Japanese royal family is the longest continuous royal bloodline on record. Oral records say its 2600 years old while archives exist from the 6th century.

There is long-standing tradition that if a company's "core competency" is retained, it remains the same company. And also of adults being adopted into a family (including when done as a means of producing a successor when there is no suitable heir).

So, a family of weavers going back hundreds of years, now switching to carbon fibre production under the direction of an unrelated (adopted) heir can said in Japan to still be the same company if that carbon fiber is woven.

But also, sometimes "core competency" is re-interpreted. Perhaps the original core competency was as dyers, which morphed into weaving at some point, and might eventuall change to "anything involving carbon fibre"…

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