The sogo shosha, Japan's general trading companies, are regarded as a key element in the country's rapid economic growth after World War II and its great success in international trade. In Japanese fiscal year 1975, the ten largest sogo shosha had total sales of $155 billion, accounting for 56 percent of Japan's exports and imports, 18 percent of domestic wholesale trade, and 31 percent of GNP. On the international level, the transactions of these companies in the same year were 5 percent of world export trade. This book—the first comprehensive, English-language work on the sogo shosha—systematically describes and analyzes the basic characteristics, business methods, sales and profit trends, strategies, national roles, global reach, strengths and weaknesses, and future prospects of these global trading conglomerates. In examining both the national and the global facets of the sogo shosha, the author presents the economic and social origins of the ten largest companies, how they differ from the pre-World War II zaibatsu, and how they resemble and differ from Western multinational corporations. A wealth of statistical and tabular material supplements his account of the sogo shosha as Japan's chief importers of foodstuffs, raw materials, and equipment; as the advance guard of Japanese exports; as a driving force to rationalize the domestic distribution system; and as investor-organizers of multinational overseas natural resource development programs.

A sogo shosha is like no other type of company. "The Invisible Link "provides a systematic and well-balanced description that covers virtually all aspects of sogo shosha operations, from finance to personnel.The sogo shosha is not defined by the products it handles or even by the services it performs, for it offers a broad and changing array of goods and functions. Its business goals are equally elusive, for maximization of profits from each transaction is clearly not the major goal, at either the operating or philosophical level. The sogo shosha could be broadly defined as a large, diversified, multinational enterprise engaged primarily in trading. Yet it is a uniquely Japanese business operation whose structural and strategic dynamics have no close counterparts in North America and Europe.There are only nine sogo shosha in Japan - six of them of major significance - and the largest employs fewer than 15,000. Among them, they handle about one-half of all of Japan's exports and imports. The sogo shosha typically deal in bulk in products that are highly standardized and technologically unsophisticated - raw materials, commodities, intermediary products. A large sogo shosha will finance, develop, manufacture and/or carry over 20,000 different items, "from noodles to missiles" as one slogan has it."The Invisible Link "gives detailed coverage to such topics as historical evolution of the sogo shosha, strategic responses and competitive dynamics, culture and organization, administrative structures and processes, human resource systems, career outcomes, interunit and interfirm coordination, sectional and network organization, and emerging challenges as the nature of the Japanese economy changes.M. Y Yoshino is Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Two of his books, "Japan's Managerial System" and "The Japanese Marketing System," were published by The MIT Press. Thomas B. Lifson is an Associate in the Program on US-Japan Relations at Harvard University.

Business practices in Japan inspire fierce and even acrimonious debate, especially when they are compared to American practices. This book attempts to explain the remarkable economic success of Japan in the post-war period - a success it is useful to understand in a time marked by controversial trade imbalances and concerns over competitive industrial performance.

This book is the first to analyze the environmental impact of Japanese trade, corporations, and aid on timber management in the context of Southeast Asian political economies. It is also one of the first comprehensive studies of why Southeast Asian states are unable to enforce forest policies and regulations.