The Impact of Changing Times and Changing Contexts
on Shashi:
A Comparison of
the JTB's 50-Year and 70-Year Histories

Lonny E. Carlile
Associate Professor
Center for Japanese Studies / Asian Studies Program
University of Hawai’i at Manoa

Presented before the Shashi Interest Group Discussion Panel at the annual meeting of the
Association for Asian Studies, Chicago, April 2, 2005.

Abstract
Shashi, or company histories, are published periodically by Japanese corporations
to commemorate landmark years in a company’s history. Since landmark years are arecurring phenomenon—e.g., the 10th year anniversary of a company’s founding, the 25thyear—over their lifespan corporations will typically publish multiple shashi, withsubsequent shashi retracing events and developments covered in earlier versions. Does it
therefore matter which version a researcher uses?
The proposed paper argues that although differences can be subtle, the time of
publication more often than not does have a significant impact on the treatment ofhistorical events and it is important for researchers to be cognizant of such differences inthe treatment of identical events in differing shashi editions. The paper demonstrates thispoint through a concrete deconstruction of the treatments of identical time periods in two
different editions of shashi published by the Japan Travel Bureau (JTB). It then explains
how the differing historical contexts in which the two versions were published explain
the differences noted. Finally, the paper uses these examples to draw out broadly
applicable pointers regarding the utilization of shashi in academic research.

Shashi, or company histories, are published periodically by Japanese corporations
to commemorate landmark years in a company’s history (Murahashi 2002). Since
landmark years are a recurring phenomenon—e.g., the 10th year anniversary of acompany’s founding, the 25th year, and so forth—over their lifespans corporations will
typically publish multiple shashi, with subsequent shashi retracing events anddevelopments covered in earlier versions. Does it therefore matter which version a
researcher uses?
The following paper compares the treatment of the 50-year period from 1912 to1961 in two different editions of shashi published by the Japan Travel Bureau (JTB).
Specifically, it looks at the coverage of the period in the JTB’s gojūnen shi, or 50-year
history published in 1962 and the coverage of the same years in the company’s
nanajūnen shi, or 70-year history, published twenty years later in 1982. It begins with abroad overview of JTB’s development during these years. It then moves to a comparisonof the general structural features of the respective volumes. It then zeroes in on the
differing treatments of the so-called Pacific War years between 1941 and 1945 as a way
to highlight how sociopolitical context can affect the content of a shashi. Finally, thepaper attempts to draw out of the preceding discussion some pointers regarding theutilization of different versions of shashi in academic research.

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Table 1 Chronology of JTB Operational Areas
Inbound Tourism
Promotion
1912
1913
1914
1915
1916
1917
1918
1919
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
1925
1926
1927
1928
1929
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944

Domestic Market Travel
Services

Travel Education

ticket sales

ticket sales

New York office est.

Kokusai Kanko Kyokai
major expansion
Absorbs NRK

Reconstituted as Toa Ryokosha
propaganda in
Coprosperity Sphere

1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962

Inbound Tourist Services
guide, assistancealmost no activity
Renamed Nihon Kotsu Kosha
primarily Occupation
Forcesgovt subsidy

overseas travel resumes

JNTO est.

3

Background on JTB
JTB, or the Japan Travel Bureau (Nihon Kōtsū Kōsha in Japanese), is known
today for being the largest travel agency in Japan. It employs around 10,000 people andoversees a network of 160 subsidiary and associated companies worldwide. The
company has gone through a number of transformations and name changes since it wasestablished in 1912. Arguably the most drastic instance of the latter was the adoption of
the name, Tōa Kōtsū Kōsha or East Asia Transportation Company in 1942. The majororganizational transformations for the period that is the focus of analysis in this paper are
roughly outlined in Table 1. One of the interesting features of JTB is that historically, it
has had a kind of semi-governmental status, and in fact when the company was originally
set up it was set up as a nonprofit organization for providing complimentary guideservices to foreign visitors in Japan under the supervision of Japan’s Railway Ministry. It
subsequently expanded to take on inbound tourism promotion. It was only later that it
began to provide services to Japanese travelers, mainly those traveling to and fromdifferent parts of the Japanese empire. Another distinctive function taken up by JTB wasthat of traveler education—that is, overseeing campaigns designed to promote “good”
travel habits among the Japanese and to bring Japanese accommodations and travel
services—particularly those that foreigners might utilize—up to international standards.
Nowhere is the “public” nature of JTB revealed more succinctly than in the InboundTourism Promotion column where one can see operations being transferred back andforth between JTB and other governmental and semi-governmental agencies. Arguably, it
wasn’t until the mid-1960s, that JTB became a full-fledged private company, and even4then it maintained a certain “public” cachet by virtue of its close association with theJapan National Railways. As Figure 1 indicates it was really not until the 1930s, when
JTB began to focus heavily on selling services to Japanese clients that the company
began to grow dramatically in size and really takes off only during the war years. The
number of employees dropped dramatically after the end of World War II and it is not
until the early 1960s that the number of employees recovers to the level attained during
the wartime peak. In terms of branch offices (Figure 2), those outside of Japan proper
played a key role in JTB’s early history and in fact surpassed those in Japan in number
during the war years. Right after the end of World War II (not depicted in the chart) the
number of offices outside Japan proper was zero and recovered only gradually thereafter.
And it was only in the 1980s, as part of a boom in overseas package tours, that outboundJapanese tourists became the largest source of revenue for the company.

Figure 1

Employees
6,000
5,000
4,000
3,000
2,000

1960

1956

1952

1948

1944

1940

1936

1932

1928

1924

1920

1916

1912

1,000
0

Employees

5Figure 2

Offices
160

70%

140

60%

120

50%

100

40%

80
30%

60

20%

20

10%

0

0%

19
1 91 2
1 91 3
1 91 4
1 91 5
1 91 6
1 91 7
1 91 8
1 91 91 92 01 92 1
1 92 2
1 92 3
1 92 4
1 92 5
1 92 6
1 92 7
1 92 8
1 92 91 93 0
1 93 1
1 93 2
1 93 3
1 93 4
1 93 5
1 93 6
1 93 7
1 93 8
1 93 91 94 0
1 94 1
1 94 2
1 94 344

40

in Japanoutside Japan% insideFigure 3

Comparison of Pages Devoted toSpecific Period in JTB Shashi

1000
800
pages

673

600
400

138

200

266

177
90

0
Gojunenshi
prewar period

Nanajunenshi

postwar to 1962

1962-1982

6

Comparing Versions: General Overview
Figure 3 graphs the number of pages devoted to specific time periods in the two
editions. Since both versions are published using the same size paper with roughly thesame size font and spacing, the figures provide a reasonable indication of the relative
amount of space utilized in covering a given time period. Several observations can be
made. First, the earlier history devoted considerably more space to the first 33 years thandoes the later 70-year history. Conversely, the 70-year history devotes considerably more
space to the first 17 years of the post war period than does the 50-year history. Obviously,
only the 70-year history covers the period between 1962 and 1982.

Table 2 Content Comparison

Focus

Presentation
Documents
Statistical Data
Language

Gojūnen-shi (1962)
Key leaders and changes
in formal organizational
structure—i.e., who wasin charge andorganization chart typechangesLinear progression
combined with “zoom in”
As a rule, inserted in text
Limited in appendix,
scattered in text

Nanajūnen-shi (1982)
More emphasis on
functional processes—
i.e., how and why
things were done theway they were
Narrative
Key documents placed
in appendix
Systematicallypresented in appendix
Furigana on nonobvious names7Insight into the reasons behind this differing quantitative distribution of coveragecan be divined when we consider it in light of the information in Table 2. As noted in thefirst row of the chart, the focus in the earlier 50-year history is on the formalorganizational structure and on key leaders. This focus is particularly suited to coverageof the prewar years when the “public” character of the JTB was dominant and changes ingovernment policy led to major organizational reconstitutions. Furthermore, the war
years aside, JTB was a relatively small organization—closer to a network of individuals
than a mass institution—and in this context the focus on individuals is perhaps much
more a propos. By contrast, when we consider JTB after 1960, we are talking about arather different organization. By that time, JTB had shed much of its “public organ”
character and, particularly following the listing of the company on the Tokyo Stock
Exchange in 1964, the organization was transformed into something much closer to themodel of a private, for-profit corporation. It was also a much larger organization in theearly 1980s when the 70-year history was being written, both in terms of personnel andthe sheer number of clients serviced. At the time JTB was in the process of developing astate-of-the-art mainframe-based, global reservation system that took advantage ofdevelopments in microelectronics during the 1970s. Systems and managerial process
were thus very much on the minds of the company’s leadership and employees. It istherefore quite understandable that the coverage in the 70-year history would be verymuch about managerial systems—or about how the company operated. In historical terms
this is a concern that really did not begin to emerge until the 1950s, and it is therefore
consistent with this interpretation that the 70-year history should pay greater attention to8

the period between 1945 and 1962 when these concerns were beginning to besystematically addressed within the company.
As for presentation, the respective volumes clearly contextualize company history
differently, but there are some structural commonalities as well. Both shashi are
structured using a linear, if not teleological, trajectory of development. In the earlier
version we have a sequence of parts that unfolds as follows, with the last part presenting
the postwar years as a kind of denouement:







prehistory (sōgyō zenshi), to 1912
establishment period (sōgyō jidai), 1912-1919
period of trial (shiren jidai), 1919-1927
expansion period (shinten jidai), 1927-1942
great leap period (yakushin jidai), 1942-45
postwar period (sengo kara konnichi made), 1945-1962

Although the specifics differ, it is not hard to detect a linearity in the sequence of parts
that make up the 70-year history, as well, in this case with the prewar and immediate
postwar years presented as a set of false starts:









From Establishment to the East Asia Travel Company (to 1945)
Restarting as the Nihon Kotsu Kosha (1945-55)
Aiming for Financial Reconstruction (1955-1960)
The Road to a Modern Enterprise: Reorganization as a Stock Company(1960-64)
Gaining Strength as a Stock Company (1965-1970)
The Advance to Full-Fledged Commercial Product Development(1971-1974)
Reforms of Operational Systems under Stable Growth (1975-1979)
The Challenge of Being a 1 Trillion Yen Company (1980-1982)

Interestingly, both versions utilize what might be termed a “zoom in” approach inwhich the historical period being covered is introduced with a broad overview ofdevelopments during the period in question, that is then followed by sections which deal
with specific aspects—e.g., inbound travelers, ticket sales, travel education, publication,9etc. In the case of the 70-year history, the prewar chapter functions as an introduction to
the postwar years, and is presented as a chronological narrative. This presentation style is,
not doubt, less a reflection of the peculiarities of the writers of these particular shashi
than it is of generic and largely static convention in the writing of self-publishedcompany histories. Detailed coverage of developments in large, complex organizations
demand functional differentiation in coverage to make the task of writing manageable.
By contrast, it is much easier to package developments in a chronological narrative when
the period being written about serves as a prehistory to the main historical subject.
As for the placement of documents, statistical data, and language, the differences
between the two volumes are a reflection of evolving conventions in shashi writing.
Although still common even now, the earlier convention of a sequence of documents andsnippets of statistical data interspersed among narrative text is gradually being replaced
by a preference for greater segregation between documents and statistical data, on the
one hand, and the narrative text, on the other. Needless to say, other things being equal,
the latter is clearly more preferable to the contemporary researcher. It is much, mucheasier to refer to documents when they are sequentially housed in an appendix.

A Case: The Pacific War Years
As preceding charts make clear the war years, and in particular the Pacific War
years, represent a critical period for JTB from the standpoint of organizational
development. As is true of the war years in any number of Japanese government agencies,
semigovernmental organizations, and corporations, JTB’s wartime activities constitute a
politically sensitive and potentially controversial subject. Under such conditions,10selectivity and framing in the presentation of historical events are more readily apparent,
and for this reason the Pacific War years serve as a useful case study of the consequencesof different approaches to the presentation of shashi material.
The 1962 50-year history, written at a time when the war experiences were still amatter of recent memory, gives the Pacific War years much more prominent treatment—
quantitatively, 58 pages versus 23 pages, or about 2.5 times the amount of space allotted
for the same period in the later 70-year history. The 50-year history provides great detailin the form of a large number of document reproductions, organizational charts, andstatistics on branch sales, travelers handled, and printed material distributed. A historianintent on quantifying JTB’s activities during this period would have to go to thecompany’s archives and sift through the original documents to do better than what isoffered here. The 70-year history, by contrast, barely summarizes what is presented in theearlier volume and instead zeroes in on several specific developments. Here I would liketo highlight the following: an example of an item covered differently in the two shashi,
three items missing from the earlier volume, and one that is mentioned in neither.
The first item, the one that is covered in both but treated rather differently, is therole of Ōkura Kinmochi, a prominent political figure active in the formulation of Japan’s
Manchuria policy. During the war years, Japan’s leading corporations and public entities
were encouraged to reorganize themselves in accordance with the so-called fuhrer
principle modeled after that in Nazi Germany—that is, in a manner that would facilitate
centralized dictatorial control in the hands of a single leader. JTB was reorganized alongsuch lines in 1941 with Ōkura placed at the apex. The earlier volume (pp. 217-219)
presents Ōkura as adopting the form of the fuhrer principle of leadership but in day to day

11practice actually undermining the principle through regular and systematic behind-thescenes consultation with subordinates. In light of the times in which it was written, what
we have is a presentation that is probably intended to exonerate Ōkura from the chargethat he assisted in the spread of fascism. If you read only the later history (pp. 80-82),
however, you would miss this entirely, as the presentation of Ōkura’s role is restricted todescribing official, public pronouncements, or the tatemae, if you will.
An example of a subject ignored in the 1962 volume but given focused treatmentin the 1982 volume is the role and status of foreign and female employees. A perusal of
the statistics and discussion in the earlier volume makes it easily evident that the numberof foreign employees (and women) grew dramatically during these years. What is notpresented in the 50-year history is the reason for this increase, something which isaddressed directly in the 1982 history. The later version explains how the inability ofsalaries to keep up with accelerating inflation on the Chinese mainland, along with losses
to the draft, made it extremely difficult for the company to hire and keep Japanese male
employees. To quote directly from the text (p. 68): “Because the hiring of new Japaneseemployees became increasingly difficult, the switch was made to a policy of hiring
locally in Manchuria and Northern China and it was decided that numerous Manchus,
Chinese, Russians and women would be hired in place of Japanese male branch
employees.” The later history thus exhibits a greater willingness to acknowledge theethnic and gender hierarchies that were exploited by the company during the war years.
A similar willingness to adopt a more open and critical look at the war years canbe seen in a second development that is missing from the 50-year history but given
considerable space in the 70-year history. The 70-year history (pp. 70-75) explains how

12the Manchurian office used operational autonomy given to it earlier to expand
aggressively in Northern China, so much so that by the early 1940s the Manchurian
branch had more offices and more employees than the rest of the company. This
eventually leads to a confrontation between the Manchurian branch and JTB central’s
staff in Tokyo that ends in an organizational reform that reins in the Manchurian branch.
What is interesting and illustrative of a willingness to acknowledge the problematiccharacter of the historical period is the way in which the actions of the Manchurian
branch are likened to the actions of the Japanese Kwangtung Army, or Kantōgun, withwhich the JTB Manchurian branch had close associations, and which engaged insubterfuges and ultimately an invasion of Manchuria without direction from Tokyo in the
Manchurian Incident of 1932. Along the same lines, in a third instance of a section
dealing with a topic that is missing from the earlier version, the 70-year history (pp. 8889) details JTB’s role in the transport of Korean rōmusha to Japan. On the other hand, the50-year history written in 1962 (pp. 259-266) takes puts great effort into describing thepost-Surrender situation, among other ways, by taking the trouble to insert a specialreference section in smaller and more densely packed print that provides vivid, interviewbased descriptions of what happened in each of the colonial branches of the company justafter Japan surrendered. The emphasis here is on the way in which the company lost its
very substantial overseas assets and how employees suffered or were lost during chaotic
evacuations from the far reaches of the empire.
It is not hard to see the connection between this differential treatment of the
Pacific War years and the sociopolitical circumstances in which the respective shashi
were written. The earlier 50-year history was written in a period when JTB’s activities

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were still largely domestic in orientation and memories of wartime suffering were still
fresh in the minds of the Japanese population. As such, it is not surprising that there
should be an emphasis on the “victimization” aspect of the period. By contrast, by 1982
there was a much greater span of time separating the time of writing from the war years.
JTB, furthermore, was riding a phenomenal wave of exponential growth in overseas
travel on the part of the Japanese, and Japan itself was experiencing a process ofinternationalization in which the population was growing increasingly conscious of thenation’s expanded role in the world. Taken together, it is not surprising to find a greater
willingness on the part of the writers of the later JTB shashi to take up the matter of its
wartime operations in East Asia.
Before ending this discussion of the Pacific War years it is useful to point to one
other development. Missing from both versions is discussion of the way in which JTB’s
monopoly during the war years was forcibly imposed through the state-mandated
dissolution of competing firms in the early 1940s (Nishikawa 1998). By the time the two
histories were written, JTB had evolved into a private travel agency in a market in whichit competed with other Japanese travel agencies for the spending of the same Japanese
traveler pool. At the same time, however, JTB continued to maintain a dominant positionin the industry not simply in terms of sales, but also in terms of maintaining its executive
in the top positions of various industry associations and forums. This leadership position
was clearly a product of the advantage and higher status that JTB was able to garner as aconsequence of its history of serving as a semi-governmental agency, and this in turngave rise to festering resentments on the part of other firms in the industry. The apparent
reluctance of JTB to address its state-enforced monopoly status during the war years was

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no doubt closely related to the company’s own sensitivity and ambivalence about thislegacy.

Conclusion
What, then, does this comparison suggest about how the researcher might
approach the problem of utilizing shashi under circumstances where multiple shashi
cover the time period that the researcher is interested in? Perhaps the key is to keep inmind the very basic point that differing contextual circumstances tend to produce
differing perspectives and approaches. While it is not unknown for a section on aparticular era in a later shashi to be a virtual carbon copy of an earlier treatment, this is
usually not the case. If at all possible, it is best to first study the respective table ofcontents and try to get a sense of where the various versions are “coming from.” Thetitles of chapters and section heads listed in the table of contents are often indicators of
the particular “slant” of a given edition. It is also helpful to compare and contrast thecontent of the appendices and through this to ascertain which version provides the longest
usable data set or has organized key documents in a manner that can be utilized mostefficiently. I personally find it most effective to begin by reading the shortest treatment ofa given time period, as the summational character of these treatments allows one toidentify right off the bat the larger historical context and historical trends that shapedevelopments. It is all too easy to miss this larger picture when one is inundated withmountains of facts, figures and minutiae that one encounters in more detailed andextensive treatments. And, as highlighted in the preceding examples, more detail does notin and of itself mean more complete coverage, as earlier histories often leave out—or
perhaps their authors are simply not aware of—developments that subsequently prove to15

be historically significant. History is constantly being reconstituted by historians, and thisis certainly true of the practicing historians who write shashi.

References
Murahashi Katsuko. 2002. Shashi no kenkyū. Tokyo: Daiyamondo sha.
Nihon Kōtsū Kōsha, 1962. Nihon kōtsū kōsha gojūnen shi. Tokyo: Nihon Kōtsū Kōsha.
Nihon Kōtsū Kōsha, 1982. Nihon kōtsū kōsha nanajūnen shi. Tokyo: Nihon Kōtsū
Kōsha.
Nishikawa Chifumi. 1998. Ryokō no rekishi bunseki. M.A. Thesis. Tokyo: Meiji
University School of Commerce.
(http://www.isc.meiji.ac.jp/~w_zemi/soturon/sotnisikawa.html).

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