oly and also, to some degree, the intent of the antitrust laws. Yet the commission has done much toward ridding the business world of vicious competitive practices.JapanTo put present day keiretsu into context, it is essential to understand some Japanese history, particularly because of the strong respect for tradition in Japan. In 1953, a US naval fleet anchored in Yokohama Bay and, using gunboat diplomacy, forced the Japanese Shogun to sign a trade agreement. Fifteen years later, after 250 years of self-imposed isolation, the last Shogun was toppled and the Emperor restored the Meji Restoration. Newly alert to the outside world, the mostly agrarian, feudal society of Japan dispatched missions to the industrialized West to discover how to industrialize and arm. Their reports showed that enormous wealth was concentrated in just a few hands. Families like Krupp, Tyssen, Rothschild, Rockefeller and Morgan controlled huge industrial empires based on industries such as steel, oil, mining and railways. The new government, therefore, rapidly established a number of such basic industries, including shipping, shipyards, coal mines, cement and glass, bringing in foreigners to run them. During the 1880s, short of funds, the government offered them for sale. However, since private capital was also in short supply, there were only a limited number of bidders. Those who bid were almost all newly rich businessmen. Thus a new group of wealthy family-based concern, mostly centered around their own bank, had come into being, just as in the West. These families became the new Japanese elite, or the zaibatsu. Among the earliest to form, four zaibatsu grew faster than their rivals, becoming known as the Big Four: Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo and Yasuda. The murder in 1932 of the head of the Mitsui zaibatsu by a right-wing assassin shook the family-held combines. As a result they made public 'conversions' (tenko) and proclaimed their true 'patriot...
