The Shiseido Archives: Sustainability and Top Management Change
Yuko Matsuzaki
Information Resources Center, Shibusawa Eiichi Memorial Foundation
Published on May 14, 2016ContentsIntroduction
Shiseido
120th Anniversary
Uses of the Shiseido Archives
New Management and the Shiseido Corporate Museum
Final remarks

This presentation was made possible by the kind cooperation and support of Shiseido’s Corporate
Culture Department, particularly the current director of the Shiseido Corporate Museum, Mr.
Mitsunori Ishii, who is here with us today, and former Director Mr. Atsushi Isoda. I am indebted tothem for their assistance, but the opinions expressed in this presentation are mine alone.

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2Introduction
When a company chooses to replace top management in order to change
company policy or direction, the repercussions can obviously be felt throughout thecompany. If new management does not understand or value the role of an in-housearchives program, however, the archives, if not its scope or budget, may be cut or eveneliminated all together. Today I would like to look at one example of a Japanese
in-house corporate archives program and how it has endured through corporate
management change.

Shiseido
Shiseido was established in 1872 by Arinobu Fukuhara when he opened thefirst Western-style pharmacy in Japan, in the Ginza district of Tokyo. The company’s
cosmetics business was launched in 1897 when Shiseido began selling a product they
had developed themselves, a high-class skin lotion called Eudermin. Incorporated in1927, Shiseido has continued to expand ever since with the dual missions of “pursuing
beauty and health” and “helping people live beautifully” and is now active inapproximately 120 countries around the world. As of December 2015, Shiseido included
97 group companies with a total of 64.5 billion yen capital, 763.1 billion yen inconsolidated net sales, and roughly 46,000 employees.
Within Japan, Shiseido is involved in the manufacture and wholesale ofcosmetics in various price ranges, digital business (e-commerce), healthcare (including
beauty foods and pharmaceuticals), and training and education in the beauty industry
and medical cosmetic activities through group companies and institutions. Company
brand names include: Shiseido, Clé de Peau Beauté, Benefique, BareMinerals, and Nars

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3in addition to fragrance brands manufactured or sold by the Shiseido Group such as:
Elie Saab, Issey Miyake, Narciso Rodriguez, and Serge Lutens.

120th Anniversary
The Corporate Culture Department (CCD) was established in 1990. The newdepartment was based on the beliefs of then CEO Yoshiharu Fukuhara, a member of thefounding Fukuhara family who recognized corporate culture as a valuable management
asset and who saw the need for a department to archive and manage corporate records tosustain Shiseido’s corporate culture.
Although the CCD was a new department, part of its work is the managementof previously existing in-house cultural institutions such as the Shiseido Gallery and theShiseido Art House and the publishing of the existing monthly corporate culture
magazine “Hanatsubaki.”
The CCD also took on new responsibilities, the largest of which was theShiseido Corporate Museum (SCM), which was opened in April 1992 as part of thecelebrations for the 120th anniversary. The museum is located next to the Shiseido Art
House in the city of Kakegawa in Shizuoka prefecture, approximately two hours bybullet train from Tokyo. Open to the public with free admission, the SCM has
approximately 30,000 visitors each year. Audio guides are available in Japanese,
English, French, Korean and Chinese for the 560 square meters of exhibit space overtwo floors. On the first floor are exhibits related to the history of Shiseido from its
establishment until the current day and merchandise produced during the company’s
first 100 years as well as special exhibitions and a small theater space for viewing
Shiseido TV commercials. Shiseido design history, packaging and advertising materials

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4from the start of the company to the present day, products from the company’s second
century, current CSR activities, and production technologies are exhibited on the second
floor. Through these exhibits, the SCM aims to increase interest in and appreciation ofShiseido.

Uses of the Shiseido Archives
In addition to the exhibits, the SCM also manages corporate records andinformation on corporate history and related topics. Including materials and objects on
display, there are approximately 200,000 items in the collections. These archives are
made available for both internal and external use. Examples of internal Shiseido use
include: brand support through the provision of materials for brand renovation and new
brand launches; HR and training support; legal support through the provision ofinformation for trademark-infringement suits; collaboration with subsidiaries
domestically within Japan and around the world; and “Shiseido History,” new content
for the company’s intranet, set to go live in April of this year.
External use of the Shiseido archives has also been actively pursued by theSCM. One example is reference and research services for media and other external use;such as in the participation of the preparation of an online course offered at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States. Shiseido provided
historical materials including marketing materials, advertisements, and corporate PR
magazines dating from the early 1910s to the late 1940s. A team of scholars andeducators used these to create educational materials for courses on modern Japanese
history and culture. The site went live in May 2009 and has been utilized for educational
purposes not only at MIT but also other universities and high schools around the world.

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5The SCM has also been active in exhibitions outside Japan since the 1980s.
The CCD and SCM have provided corporate archival materials to various exhibitions in
the United States, Brazil, Britain, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Russia,Israel, Australia, Taiwan, China, and Korea. In recent years, these exhibitions have beenused as tools to support subsidiaries and stores in newly emerging markets.

New Management and the Shiseido Corporate MuseumOver the past decade Shiseido’s market share has decreased significantly andthe company decided that a change of management was necessary. The new president &CEO, Mr. Masahiko Uotani, took office in April 2014. Mr. Uotani’s appointment
surprised many in both the media and business world as Shiseido had recruited himfrom outside of the company, something that they had not done before and is largely
unseen in Japan in general as lifelong employment and advancement based on seniority
are the norm.
Soon after taking office, Mr. Uotani visited the SCM and, upon finishing histour, commented that: “a series of continuous innovations have made Shiseido what it istoday.” Since then Mr. Uotani instructs new Shiseido employees at all levels to visit theSCM. I believe this is because the SCM has successfully built a corporate collection that
concretely demonstrates the sustainable development of the company over a long periodof time and has made this history tangible in the form of the museum’s exhibitions. Thisis essential, as Ted’s predecessor, Phil Mooney, the former director of the Heritage
Communication Department of Coca-Cola noted in 1986, because “The types of records
preserved in corporations tend to reflect the character of the organization itself… the

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6archivist strives to develop a collection that represents the totality of the institution.”1
Central to the SCM’s success is a hybrid model of human resourcesmanagement that utilizes trained and highly skilled professional curators and archivists.
The Corporate Culture Department combines this foundation of long-term specialized
personnel with the traditional Japanese system of staff rotation to achieve a synergy ofexperience in curation, archives management, history and editing with an understandingof business and corporate culture and strong loyalty to and affection for the company.
In Japan it is extremely rare for companies to hire individuals mid-career, even
if they are highly trained in a specific skill set. I was thus surprised, although pleasantly
so, when I discovered that Shiseido was bucking tradition in the CCD as well as with
top management. First of all, Ms. Tomomi Sato, a professionally trained curator, wasplaced in charge of the Shiseido archives program in the early days of the SCM. Morerecently, at an event put on by the SCM in Tokyo in February 2013, Ms. Kyoko Okada,
the general manager of the CCD at the time, was visibly delighted to introduce her“newly hired professional curator/archivist,” Ms. Chisako Koizumu.
Another factor contributing to the CCD’s success is the high researchcompetency of its professional curators and archivists. One example of this is theresearch journal Oiderumin (Eudermine), published from 1996 to 2012. Named after
one of Shiseido’s longest selling products, the journal was a high level scholarly
publication that compiled research on themes such as Shiseido or makeup and culture,
cultural patrimony, and the sharing of culture. The journal was spearheaded by Ms. Sato,
who conducted research herself and also facilitated the articulation of implicit and tacit
1

Philip F. Mooney, “The Practice of History in Corporate America: Business Archives in the UnitedStates,” in Public History: An Introduction, ed. Barbara J. Howe and Emory L. Kemp (Malabar, Florida:
Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company, 1986).

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7corporate knowledge within Shiseido from management and employees. Although theprevious Shiseido management terminated the journal in 2012, while it was published it
played an important role in building bridges with the scholarly community outside of
Shiseido resulting in concrete projects such as that with MIT as well as a valuable
accumulation of corporate knowledge.

Final remarks
Although it seems clear that Mr. Uotani values Shiseido’s corporate history andthe SCM, it remains to be seen whether the CCD will restart Oiderumin or how it willleverage the company’s historical legacies under the new management. As this video
clip of a Shiseido commercial, created under the new management, demonstrates,
however, the company’s dedication to innovation is still strong.

High School Girl? (The Secret of High School Girls)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n3Db6pMQ-8
http://www.shiseidogroup.com/news/detail.html?n=00000000000001&rt_bt=top-main_002

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