MUFG became Japan’s largest bank and invested $9 billion in Morgan Stanley at the crisis peak.
Startup · Topic
Japan Company Stories — Page 2
Expert guides, analysis and tool comparisons on Japan Company Stories from the kurums.com Startup desk — written for business decision-makers and updated as the market moves.
- 55 guides
- 11 subtopics
- Updated Jul 25, 2026
All guides · page 2
Itochu: The Trading House That Bet Against Resources
Itochu became Japan’s standout trading house by deliberately avoiding the resource businesses its rivals dominated.
The Sogo Shosha: Japan’s Unique Trading House Model
The sogo shosha combines trader, investor and financier in a model no other country replicated.
WeWork: The $47 Billion Cautionary Tale
WeWork’s fall from $47 billion to bankruptcy became the defining cautionary tale of the startup boom.
SoftBank and Alibaba: The Greatest Bet Ever Made
A twenty-minute meeting in 2000 turned $20 million into over $100 billion for SoftBank.
ARM: The Chip Architecture SoftBank Bet On
ARM designs the architecture inside nearly every smartphone, and SoftBank owns most of it.
The Vision Fund: The $100 Billion Experiment
The $100 billion Vision Fund tested whether capital alone can manufacture market winners.
Masayoshi Son: Japan’s Boldest Technology Investor
Masayoshi Son turned a $20 million Alibaba bet into billions and became tech’s highest-variance investor.
Kazuo Inamori: Amoeba Management and the JAL Rescue
Kazuo Inamori built Kyocera and KDDI, invented amoeba management and rescued JAL at seventy-seven.
Kiichiro Toyoda: The Founder Who Invented Just-in-Time
Kiichiro Toyoda bet a loom company on cars and originated the just-in-time thinking behind Toyota.
Konosuke Matsushita: Japan’s God of Management
Konosuke Matsushita built Panasonic from poverty while defining Japan’s most influential management philosophy.
Soichiro Honda: The Mechanic Who Built an Empire
Soichiro Honda built a global empire on engineering obsession and the belief that failure teaches everything.