How to Make a Company History to Activate Your Business (New Edition)

Contents
Preface. Pg 9
Section 1: What’s a Company History?. Pg17
1.

Before you start producing your company history. Pg 18

2.

How to remember an anniversary and producing company history. Pg 29

3.

The background to and reasons why company history publications have become somuch more widespread. Pg 39

4.

The meaning and purpose of a published company history. Pg 46

5.

Latest trends in Company History. Pg 60

6.

The differences between Personal History, Biography and Commemorative
Magazines. Pg 76

Section 2: When Planning your Company History. Pg 89
7.

Planning conditions which your company needs to be aware of. Pg 90

8.

Previous histories and writing from the second book onwards. Pg 95

9.

The role of your company’s managers. Pg 99

10. Outsourcing editing processes of your Company History. Pg 107
11. Setting up competitive bidding. Pg 113
12. Tips on selecting outsourcing partners. Pg 119
Section 3: How to edit and produce your History. Pg 123
13. How to go about collecting and sorting data and material. Pg 124
14. How to create a structured layout. Pg 135
15. Interesting plans which you can use in your Company History. Pg 144
16. When penning a readable manuscript. Pg 149
17. How do I handle things which are hard to put in writing? Pg 156
18. Choosing the right book binding. Pg 158

19. The horrors of proof-reading. Pg 165
20. Important points in your publishing schedule. Pg 168
21. Preparing for distribution and methods of shipping. Pg 170
Section 4: Know the Costs. Pg 173
22. What the costs are and how to manage them
23. The types of costs and knowing their specifics. Pg 182
24. How to capitalize on your expenses. Pg 184
Final Words. Pg 188
Appendix (Not translated):Pg 193
Shashidzukuri ni benrina kodougu. Pg 194(Little tools for creating Company History)
Shashi de tsukawareru kanren yougojun. Pg 197(Glossary of terms used in Company history)
About the Shuppan Bunka Sha Corporation ltd. Pg 226==In the beginning==“In the post-war recovery and growth and in the current period of peace andprosperity there has stood no single hero, no one company founder, but rather it has
been the many and various Japanese citizens who have strived in their various
pursuits to give birth to the products which fuel modern Japan.
In order to understand the modern Japan which went from defeated nation toeconomic giant, we must understand the thoughts and ideas of the many people whohave left their mark on the process. The meaning of this is that those who survived
the war have a responsibility to transfer their knowledge and experience to future
generations.
Words are easily drowned out by the sound of the wind, and thoughts like water canleak from the mind.
However, a book is a common and everlasting asset to mankind.

Today many people want to turn their knowledge and experiences in the form of abook.”
These are the words spoken by Taiichi Sakaiya upon the foundation of our company in
1984.
The Japanese cities to which many young men returned had been laid to ash, and it
was within this setting that many companies were founded. Beginning the year after
the war in 1946 many passed their 50th anniversary in 1996 by focusing oncelebrations or on the publishing of their history“.
When you think of Company Histories you think of large companies with an in-housegroup of employees dedicated to its production in their “Company History Editing
Room” that have produced such volumes in the past, but recently small and medium
sized enterprises have increasingly been at the centre of these books. These books are
generally produced through a process where the company’s appointed managers
research the company history and create exhaustive reference materials from which thebook can be created. You can divide the structure here into two broad categories; thefirst is to have an outsourcing company examine your plans before you undertake theprocess, the second is to have an outsourcing company come onboard mid-production
and check on your progress. No matter how inexperienced your team is in producing
books and in the publishing world in general these two structures make it easier tounderstand.
When I founded this company in 1984 I had envisaged it becoming a publishingcompany involved in selling books in book stores; however I learned greatly from thewisdom of my friend Taiichi Sakaya, and his influence had a great guiding force on ourcompany.
Those words were:“The Japanese post-war recovery was not simply the formation of the country ofJapan, but was earned through the hard work of individual managers and individualcompanies. When writing the story of these people and organizations, there is noother option but to interweave the history of the Japanese economic miracle.”
Whilst writing a white paper on trade during his time as the Minister for International
Trade and Industry he remarked that when looking at the size of the change on themacro scale there was a need to summarize such specifics in writing. These words
stimulated the core of our publishing spirit, and become a huge motivating influence onour drive to produce company histories and entrepreneur biographies.
When we began producing company histories our staff were not only involved in editing
but many were also fully engaged in managing and planning, with various editors being
occupied with editing specific tasks. To be recognized as a highly professionalorganization in publishing we had to ensure that there were no notions of taking thecustomer’s words at face value and putting them directly into book form. This is not to“generate sales” but the editor’s responsibility to draw out the meaning of publishing agiven book. That is a fundamental standard of operation in any company history, andmust simultaneously be validated by the company’s staff, to whom you direct questions
such as “What are the reasons you are publishing this company history?” and etc. For us
this is a significant underlying theory of company history which we have held from thestart.
Then after 5 or 6 years of operation, a line up of 7 or 8 employees and experience inproducing only 5 or 6 company histories, the foundational knowledge needed to produce
company histories was not existent in our awareness of problems and our preparedness.
There was a strong sense given such a state of affairs that if we were not to grasp thesignificance and necessity of company history and where company history stands in themodern organization then we would remain at where we were. Even though companies
willing to produce histories were small, the number of companies with a history longer
than 30 years was on the scale of at least 100 companies and as such the basic input forthe market was set to grow, and in addition to this it was obvious that the newcustomers would demand a standard of ethics on the side of the producers.
At that point there began a meeting of those involved which was conducted at theconclusion of regular business and held weekly for 6 months. There they discussed thetheory of company history and its place in the modern company, and as this was being
heaped on we also received an offer from the Asahi Culture Centre to set up their“Shashi Kouza” (Company History Course). The Asahi Culture Center engaged us tobring together the knowledge and wisdom needed in company history production and to
apply this in a course that aimed to increase the ability of companies to manage theirheritage.
Our company history production had consequently begun from quite a theoretical andideological standpoint, and the mere reasoning of “making company history” was anultimately insufficient starting point. Up to now we have had a hand in producing over
400 company history books, and making a point of studying them from the beginningand I believe that making an asset of that knowledge has been an outstanding
methodology. In “What’s a Company History” we lay out the knowledge that we use andhave gleaned from our productions that has become second nature so that all of those
involved in company history production, from new employees to those involved in theplanning, can know which aspects need to be considered from the beginning.
What is a company history? To define this from the start, there is no doubt that it isfirstly a collection of “historical materials which testify to the management of acompany or a group of people”. To place a high value on the historical path that one has
walked and to put this on display in the future holds great social value for the company
which it is published for.
However, to say that “the history is in the data” for us doesn’t seem at all sufficient.
“What’s a company history” is a base reference to use when planning your company’s
history, which is obviously the same as starting with the somewhat theoretical “What iscompany history to company X”, which for each company will be brought about throughtheir individually contrasting histories, their corporate culture and their place in theirindustry among others. Company history is, regardless of size or length of history, theultimate personalized product.
If you set out on this footing then there is the question of how much socially relevant
historical material to put in your company history, whilst simultaneously balancing thisagainst the question of whether or not your historical material truly reflects the culture
and values of your organization. The balance of these two is a very important point toconsider. Regardless of whether a company history is produced well or produced badly it
will be a permanent reflection of your company. If your company produces a bad history
then it is hard to claim it as a temporary lapse of a failure on the part of the editors. It isalso worth mentioning that many companies have made poor judgment in the past andthere are times when management decides to put a history together for the express
purpose of putting this on display.
In essence a company history is really a way of bringing out your company’s coreidentity and to express you’re your company’s key characteristics. This is the true valueof company history, its “ultimate technique”. For outsourcing staff such as our own
company’s, the question of how far we can offer our objective viewpoint to managers andleaders is always a matter of differing opinions. When it comes to this we are left withlittle option but to build up our courage and make our proposals to company, where ourdays spent rationalizing various strategies makes us able to leverage our experience inthis setting.
The things discussed on the pages of the company history are not always exactly whatsuits the company, however many companies and organizations are planning theircompany history or history magazine and we serve many of them through only planningand editing at first, before they decide on writing.
Many companies lack a full time company history responsible working on the project
exclusively and instead appoint someone to work on it alongside other responsibilities.
Such managers bear an emotional burden on the success of the project, which, when
they see a refined product as a result, often leads to unexpected levels of relief andexcitement.
Company histories, first being produced on the central reasoning of “let’s make acompany history”, are now however being used to exhibit company information,
motivate individual employees and open their eyes to the real impact of their work. The
generation of company histories made solely to the suit the managers of a company isgone, and a stakeholder focus has replaced it.
After the bubble hit many of these companies experienced the brunt of deflation. Manyof these companies produced histories for the sole reason of saving face, and today manyof those companies, regaining their success, have lost the sense of value that they saw inthe history of their company. There has been a recent explosion of demands in vein of“When we put it down we want this to be this way and that to be that way” which iseroding the concept of the modern company history.
A company history is most certainly a medium through which you record history,
however defining it as solely limited to past phenomena is to limit its role to speaking
only about things which have already finished. Company histories are not something
you can put together without the active participation of management; rather it is a formof creating your current reality, whereby a major role is played by management indetermining what kind of future the employees will create then the company history
acts as a guide from which employees can build their and the company’s future. This issomething that needs to be written in from the planning stage. It is from thisperspective that we have written this book “How to Make a Company History to

Activate Your Business”.
When more companies make better company history, those histories will motivate more
employees and they will create stronger bonds of trust with your networks. By following

“How to Make a Company History to Activate Your Business” in creating your history, I
sincerely believe that your writing progresses smoothly into a great history.
Atsushi Asada
Shuppan Bunka Sha=== Section 1: What
What’’s a Company History?===== 1. Before you start producing your company history==
1. Company history’s connection to your business“Company history is just an added cost and won’t be profitable right?” are words weoften hear in response to our suggestions to managers on writing up company history.
To be honest I believe that if you approach company history with such an attitude thenof course it will of end up as such. Corporate profits are not just in semantics but inreality derived from the subtraction of production costs from the company’s sales
revenue less any costs required to get those goods to market. This remainder is what weknow as profit. Along with sales, supply costs and sales management costs are related to
the work of every employee. The question of what workers are thinking about as they go
about their business, or what managers are really striving towards is a question which
managers all too often leave unasked, and is a question with a deep reflection in thecompany’s profitability.
What motivated people to start the company in the first place? What kind of company
did this all start as? What did we sell? How has our company changed through its
history? Furthermore what impact has our industry had on society? How have wehelped our community? How did management respond to the challenges that the badtimes brought? These are all pertinent question of history which define the company
and bring a deep meaning to the work of employees.
When an employee understands this that employee knows their corporate DNA. They
understand the connection to themselves and are imbibed with the sense that thestruggles of their predecessors were a test of strength. A Company’s management will
also benefit greatly from knowing when strategy is revolving back onto things whichhave failed in the past.
Company’s greatest readership is its employees, and stemming from this it is importantto understand how this group of people will react to which kinds of company history. If
the company history is encouraging to the employees then it will certainly become thefuse which ignites their hunger for a challenge. In such a case I believe that thecontention that the company history bears no relation to profit becomes a hard case toargue.
If you often hear your employees referred to along the lines of “It doesn’t matter what
we do, the employees don’t get in the spirit” or “The employees lack vision” then you willneed a company history which can give them a sense of purpose and meaning whichmakes it difficult to say that it’s a mere waste of money.
If you would like to develop closer relations with your business associates then acompany history is an excellent tool through which you can breach the gap and develop
trust through understanding.
There is the example of an apparel company with dozens of contacts in their network
consisting of many company presidents and section chiefs. To engage their partners it
was decided to create a company history which included an interview with theircompany president. When they conducted the scheduled one hour interview they wereable to cover ground and broach topics which their partners would not have considered
before. They were also able to conduct interviews with some of their associates whichtalked about the shared history of their companies and gave insight into the long
histories of their companies. We often hear of the extremely strengthening effect on therelationships with their partners that this history had. The company president had
even been able to distribute copies to main partner companies in person while giving hiscompliments to the author. It was twice made the top discussion points in partnerorganizations.
The ability of the president of the apparel company to drive such a plan was amazing,but more than this it shows the modern rationale behind producing company histories
and stands as a fine example of the potential of the company history format.
There is also the kind of company history used as a management tool.
This is not a format designed to be read by many employees, it is a format designed todeliver structured content to clients and partners.
Consider the example of a tools and manufactured goods wholesaler who, whencelebrating an anniversary, distributed a company history to their clients. The history
was designed as a personalized thank you which fostered trust in the company from theclients. As a wholesaler they considered it imperative that they inform their clients ofjust how many manufacturers they carried, and so they added advertisements from 50%of the manufacturers in the industry. Many pages carried one advertisement with larger
ones taking up and entire page. They created a highly personalized production while
advertising over 100 suppliers. Not only did they mark their anniversary but they also
used it to advertise their products and send a clear message of celebration to theirpartners.
Ask the wholesaler and they will tell you in no uncertain terms “We didn’t charge any
money for placing the advertisements”, however the company did apparently make backits approximate publishing costs in “Shuugi” (Japanese anniversary gift of money).
Through this the company was able to achieve its objectives for the publication whilst
cutting the costs of the production, and the result was to hit two birds with the onestone.
If you first consider who is going to read the book, then follow up with the question ofwhat you want to convey to that readership and focus on that then the objectives will
gradually become clearer. This is not a simple planning trick but is conclusive of any all
types of company history and is the starting point for all company histories.
“Data File A: Reader demographics and their motivations”
When you think of all of your possible readers out there start out by considering what
you would expect them to read, this is the first step in determining the objectives of yourpublication. Distribute this information to all employees involved in the company
history production to allow them to add their thoughts, exchange ideas and understandeach what various people have in mind for the end result of the reader reading the book.
This is what will shed light on your objectives. Use a format similar toIf you distribute this to company presidents or senior managers first then it becomesvery hard to make any changes to the content. When setting your objectives be sure to
add the perspective of upper managers, and come to a conclusion which is both highly
appropriate and based on shared opinions and perspectives.
Pg 22 の資料 A 読者設定とその理由
Data File A: Reader demographics and their motivations

1. Why do they want to read it?
Demographic

Number of People

2. What is the impression we want them

Number of Companies

to walk away from this book with

Number of Copies

3. What is the result we expect frompeople who read this book?

Executives
Managers
Employees
Clients
Suppliers
Shareholders
andAssociatedcompanies"Old Boys"
Retirees
Competitors,
Peak Bodies
Schools,
Public Offices
Mass Media
Miscellaneous
readers
Other
Summary ofabove

2. The worst way to make a company history

There is no mistake that many companies thinking of putting out a history, thereasoning of “why are you making a company history?” is only generally considered once.
There are various reasons for producing a history (which are covered from page 46 to 60of this book). The company may present about 8 representative examples but the ones
considered most important by any company are generally cited as “to activate
leadership in employees” or to “bring the company together” (lit. strengthen centripetal
force). With this in mind they consider the most important measureable to be how many
employees see and read their book. They place a disproportionately large significance on
this, deciding that the most important success factor is having every employee read thebook.
This thinking leads them to immediately focus their planning on readability of thewriting, or on including that which the employees find interesting at cost to otherimportant inputs. However, when planning along these lines it becomes very easy tofocus too much on content relating to the mechanisms and the core business of thecompany. If you were trying to increase readability for your employees, would it reallyend up as a focus on the company? I’d like to look into the theory of such a company
history.
The top priorities of a readable company history:
1. Reduce written material as much as possible. Replace with many photographs of
employees.
2. Include many articles written cooperatively with employees
3. Have the written section be set out in the most plain, readable language possible
Methods such as this are certainly ways of making your company history more readable,
however when you review the imperatives you realize that there is one important rolethat company history plays which is at risk of being left in the dust.
It is perfectly reasonable to focus on the number one readership demographic; however
it is necessary to ask whether it is appropriate to hang your entire plan from this fixing
point.
In reality, creating a history which is highly readable to employees is not function ofplanning. Questions of positioning such as when to make the production known to youremployees, or how early you should begin talking about your upcoming anniversary areof great importance and should be addressed throughout the process of planning andexecution.
Many companies don’t place enough thought into the positioning of their anniversary.
This is also not limited to anniversaries of foundation but anniversaries of many
turning points which are usually not scheduled to a strategic timeline. The worst casescenario when going about a history such as this is to have your employees respond with“our company was making a history?” after being handed the final product.
In such a case it doesn’t matter how much thought you have put into your objectives forthe production, or how well it fits with an anniversary date. Would it not be wise to put
out your history on the anniversary date, at a time when, after a strategized positioning
campaign, your employees, suppliers and clients have higher awareness and emotionalrecognition of the event? This would certainly take care of continuity problems.
For instance, it is traditional for Japanese people to clean out their house for new years
in the days leading up to the 31st of December, which provides time to carefully consider
what kind of new year your would hope for. It is usually a time to wear those traditional
kimonos which have never been brought out of the closet, head to a shrine to pay make aprayer to the gods, and hope a fresh start for the coming year.
There are 365 days in a one year cycle, and so to get through gives a sense ofaccomplishment. It gives a feeling of the day being both the end of one year, and the
beginning of another. If new years day was not expected to be the celebration that it is,and as such not positioned with the expectations that is has, then it would not have thepower to be such a moving celebration for so many.
Whether it is December 31st 2000 or January 1st 2001 the sun is not about the rise in thewest, and in reality the day is a day like any other.
The fact that such significance is quickly forgotten in the days following is the hallmark
of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. In remembering an anniversary there isceremony, and the ability of well run events to strengthen a company’s “centripetal
force”, and additionally can be an opportunity start fresh, bring out new thoughts andcreate a new beginning. 20, 25, 30, 40 and 50 year anniversaries are excellent times tofind value in such things. You could say for instance that it would be difficult to generatesignificance and hence value for a 17 year history without other factors contributing to
the significance of the 17 year mark.
The knowledge of anniversaries that an employee has when he or she receives thehistory will affect the result, and if they haven’t been warned then they will focus on thedistinction of the anniversary or turning point and won’t take the information on board
and try to make something of it. Does this mean that it will become the pre-New Year’s
clean up or the New Year’s Eve prayer? To be honest, the anniversary may just be
handled like any other year, but it will still not be such a total waste of effort. In
addition to the benefits of raising consciousness of the event in employee’s minds, theanniversary can be the opportunity needed for giving thanks to suppliers and customers
or to launch a sales expansion which only comes once every ten years. For these kinds ofapplications where a strong and deep significance needs to be given, the role of company
history is paramount.
Throughout our company history business writing plans and setting schedules for 18
years and over 400 histories, we have only ever been late twice. The second time wewere late was due to the sudden and unfortunate hospitalization of the writer
responsible for the production after only half of the manuscript had been written. We
were unable to find a stand-in writer who could finish the manuscript with both anunderstanding of the client and in writing consistent with the original. We had to find a
new writer and with the understanding of the client we delivered on the manuscript.
In other words, the timing of various elements needs to have been tackled fully in theplan. The necessity if this is driven by the timing’s importance to company management.
Simple anniversaries such as the foundation of a company happen every year to every
company; however anniversaries which are multiples of 5 or 10 do not come aroundevery year. These particular anniversaries are the opportunities to grasp at. These
anniversaries give pretext for what cannot be said to be an ordinary anniversary, andbring what was previously deemed impossible into the realm of possibility. This will
maximize the impact of your anniversary, and of the tools you use to celebrate thatanniversary, the company history is indispensable.
We generally ask that our client companies start up a countdown to the anniversary intheir office. For instance if you are 2 years out from your anniversary then count down
in months in the order of 24, 23, 22, 21, 20 etc. Place it on the bulletin board to remind
everyone of how far away it is. This can of course also be used as a space where you can
inform employees about the progress of the history with statements such as “Currently:
Shooting the photography” or “Looking for people who know anything about X person”
which not only provides profile for your project.
Whether or not this provides a great source of information or data is not of huge
importance; the benefits of a countdown are below:

1.

The editing team and the editing manager often consider it necessary to bring
employees into the fold, and to alert employees to the current status of the
production

2.

It can provide the opportunity to people to volunteer information or materials
which can be used in the history.

3.

It will raise awareness of the upcoming anniversary

4.

Providing constant updates on the progress of the history will place implicit
pressure on the editing team to stick to the timeline.

Of course if this does actually supply good information, documents or photographs thenconsider yourself lucky, however if it fails to provide even one lead then the fact that you
have announced that the anniversary is approaching and it is this thorough profiling of
the event which is the most important.
When handling people who provide information, remember that there will be times
when they have to be told information sensitive to the plan. There is an inherent riskhere regardless of the application. You may hope that your history is going to be read by
employees and may by extension be limiting it to merely yourself to the production of a“history book” lacking input; the result of which is that you may not be catering toemployee’s expectations in the plan. Please understand the special importance thatneeds to be placed on tackling the questions of how much of the process of production toreveal, how much help you want from employees and how much of a focus you would
like to place on the anniversary itself.

=2. How to remember an anniversary and producing company history=
1. What are the kinds of things you can do to mark an anniversary?
It is a good generalization that a history production is a good way for a company orgroup to see it anniversary, however before we speak in detail about company history it
is I feel necessary to talk a bit considerations in engaging that anniversary.
The reason is I wish to link this definition into the wider discussion and also becausemuch of this tend to get summarized only briefly in many discussion of the topic. I
believe it is important for even the managers of the history to occasionally re-examine
their positioning.

1. Management = Fresh project profiling, strengthening/changing systems andprocesses, corporate identity setting, memory management and distribution
2. Production/Sales = Strengthening sales and production plans, sales campaigns
3. Human Resources = Company trips, employee-family recreational days, new welfare
systems
4. Corporate Culture = Events (e.g. Commemorative ceremonies and inaugurations),
essay writing prizes, the creation of company history and company songs
Let us examine the role of the company history within this context. From amanagement perspective 1 and 2 are obviously important; however when you consider
that you are focusing on an anniversary and extending the content to epoch-making
plans may not be appropriate for content which is often deemed fate. In contrast 3 and 4
are opportunities which cannot be undertaken at the convenience of the company, andthe content and thought-processes, in other words the recent lifestyle of the company
referred to as the company culture, can be reexamined, revived, and restructured withthe perspective of what the company looks like up to now.
This is to say that company history takes the opportunities given by 1 and 2 in theabove list by examining the life of the company from the perspective of what it has done,
how that has looked, what was being considered and how the company culture affected
this. The gathering and editing of perspectives such as these are indispensible tomanagement. Whilst the results of 1 and 2 are immediately felt in what the company isundertaking, the effects of 3 and 4 are not felt in so quick a measure, nor are they aseasily visible. However their effect on the company’s values and culture, its thinking
and individuality, are the inputs to company culture, and as such are important factors
in how the company fares in all aspects of business.

2. How do I capture the value of our anniversaryYour first decision in making a company history is the publication date. The problems ofwhat objectives your history will achieve and when you plan releasing it are closelyinterrelated. So what factors are there to consider in the timing of your history? We
have prepared a brief list below.
1. A date which aligns with your anniversary date

2. A date which aligns with the first day of your fiscal new year for the anniversaryyear
3. A date which aligns with the last day of your fiscal year and your anniversary year
4. Releasing as soon as possible after the posting of financials for your anniversaryyear
5. The day on which you conduct an anniversary ceremony
6. A date which ties in with, and is published close to, an anniversary ceremony
7. Beginning production after the year of your anniversary
8. Coinciding with large turning points in the company’s history (Moving offices,
construction of new building, initial public offering of shares, etc.)
9. Timed to coincide with the founder’s, or top executive’s birthday
10. Aligning with dates of the Japanese western calendar (for instance the first year of agiven period or 2001)
1. A date which aligns with your anniversary dateThis is the most common date to set your schedule to. Of course, when you’recelebrating the year your company was founded or incorporated it is a general rule thatyou would want to remember it on the date that it happened. Given this structure andenough months of advance preparation, then despite the fact that actual production
does not take as long, you can say that you are placing the history within the frame of
the anniversary. Additionally, setting the anniversary date as the release date add extra
meaning to your history which carries on after the release, and gives a more consistentlooking plan for the company to relate to and draw upon.
2. A date which aligns with the first day of your fiscal new year for the anniversaryyear
As an anniversary year designed to commemorate the foundation of your company,
there are many companies who wish to incorporate their good financial reports. A
company in its 30th financial year may wish to have its history published on completionof this. If you the company were releasing its past financial data as well then this would
be for the first 29 years of your company’s financial history.
3. A date which aligns with the last day of your fiscal year and your anniversary year

For any company, asking what measure of year is most fundamental will show you thatthe accounting year is firmly rooted. With this in mind it can sometimes be beneficial to
combine your anniversary with your financial year, releasing the book only after you
have completed your anniversary financial year. This enables you to say for instance“our company has completed 30 financial years.” One thing to consider however is thatyour 30th year financial data would take approximately a further 2 months to collate
and report and hence it would not be possible to include this data. If you are considering
including this data then please read onto the nest section (4)4. Releasing as soon as possible after the posting of financials for your anniversaryyear
If you are considering this then you can, for example, release you history along withyour financials for the final year of the historical period, which positions the content of
your history very well. However in this case the history can only be published after the
release of the financials, with the release date of the financials generally serving as astarting point for counting days to the publication of the history. Therefore thepublication date for the history can often only be announced about one month before theactual publication. This format is less a statement of an anniversary and more a releaseof information heaped together on a short timeframe, and by eliminating the release
date’s potential alignment with other important dates the production looses a degree ofsignificance.
5. The day on which you conduct an anniversary ceremony
There are companies which hold events aimed at commemorating events or thanking
people. A considerable number of those companies wish to be able to give a gift of anarticulated company history to the attendees on the day. We refer to these books as“manju books” because they are given as gifts to the attendees in the much the same
way as we give manju cakes and other sweets. Handing your company history toattendees as they leave a commemorative event is an effective may to hit your objectives
for the impact of the event.
6. A date which ties in with, and is published close to, an anniversary ceremony
An obvious request we commonly get when our client is running a commemorative
event is that after going to trouble of commemorating their achievements in such a way,
they want to have this events written about in their book also. In this case you’ll need tobook a photographer, select the photographs you wish to put in after they have been

developed, add explanatory paragraphs of the photographs, write an article about thenight etc; hence it will take an amount of time between the event and the publication
which will need to be considered well in advance. The best method for this is to leavesome pages empty for the event, which you can then structure, color and edit from themoment the event is over reducing the time it takes you to get the book to print to theminimum possible. You cannot approach this thinking that 1 or 2 months is a viable
time frame for final editing post-event
7. Beginning production after the year of your anniversary
We have seen an example with a Tokyo based pharmaceutical goods manufacturer thathas produced a 10 year history. However this company began its history only after
reaching its ten year milestone and then produced the book to look back on those ten
years in a complete review. When you consider this strategy you can certainly
understand its ability to create a clear picture of the recent history of the company on alarge scale, and because the period of history being covered is set down from the outset
comparing this period with future periods of ten years will become easier. In such a casethere are important points in making this “company history kind of book”, such as theinvolvement of employees in celebrations, or whether there are fundamental changes
which have occurred through the hard work of employees will be duly covered. This
creates a gap in one of the largest objectives of any company history, but in the view of
the company this creates consistency in their strategy and the employees seem tounderstand this.
8. Coinciding with large turning points in the company’s history (Moving offices,
construction of new building, initial public offering of shares, etc.)
Another anniversary which can act as a period of reference for your company’s history
may well be linked to some other non-foundational event, the celebration of which canbe of far greater significance depending on the company and the event. For somecompanies a more significant event is which year they were first publicly listed, or when
they built their new office building and using this date as a reference makes more senseto these companies. Aligning your event with the date of an event which sparked aturnaround in your company and integrating the content of your history to focus on thechange that this had is likely to stir up stronger reactions in your employees than asimple anniversary of foundation.
9. Timed to coincide with the founder’s, or top executive’s birthdayIn cases where the founder is an almost sacred figure in the company the history willsubsequently focus on his/her influence on the company at length and in such cases theline between a company history and a biography of the founder becomes and incredibly
fine one. If it is a manager has left very large and indelible fingerprints on thecompany’s success, then one method may be to time the release to coincide with his/herbirthday. However if the managers do not understand the difference between a company
history and a manager’s biography then to them the methodology and objectives willseem to be subjective. (See chapter 7: The differences between Personal History,
Biography and Remembrance Magazines pg 76 to 87)
10. Aligning with dates of the Japanese western calendar (for instance the first year of agiven period or 2001)
At the end of the Showa period (Japanese traditional calendar, each era represents thereign of a different emperor) there were many people who talked about writing their
histories in reference to coming and going of the Showa period. This is not ananniversary for the company but more of a turning point in society and a place topunctuate your history which is readily understood by observers. Also, by choosing theyear 2000 as a turning point a given company may be able to structure their history as“X Company in the 20th Century” as a time period of focus.
There are many turning points in the company’s history which can be made the focus of
the company history as we have outlined above, and so looking to an anniversary date
which is very near and abandoning the project on time concerns is perhaps a little hasty.
There are many anniversaries that you can draw the line at, and so it pays to consider
which one is right for company.
The question of how many years to cover will vary from company to company however
the leading healthcare company we mentioned previously decided that 10 year intervals
would be necessary to hit its strategic targets.
The company history is a format which is not simply a record of the history of thecompany, but is something which maintains good coordination and aids in knowledge
management and transition. One reference to consider is the Isei temple (Shinto) which
conducts a transfer ceremony, moving the shrine from one building to another, every 20
years. According to the household the shrine’s architecture is rebuilt and changed overat the same time and the elders get the experience of sharing the construction with
their pupils and passing on their knowledge. This tradition has been maintained since
the reign of Emperor Temmu, with the latest in 1993 being the 61st time it has been

held.
When you consider this, the successful exchange of techniques and ideas between people,
spacing it by 20 years seems to be a good suggestion. More than a publishing cycle, thisis a point of reference for your company.
There is also the approach espoused by America’s Peter F. Drucker is the “30 year
review”. In this a company tracks its own peaks and troughs over a thirty year period
and parlays that information into a perspective on things such as new products andinstances where it had failed to exploit the market. When you think about it, notproducing such a history every thirty years makes it almost impossible to maintaincohesive records.
If you set a 30 year period, then those employees who joined the company in their
twenties will be in their fifties when it comes out and so from the perspective of creating
an accurate record given their many years of recollection. In other words, there arefewer limits on the amount information you can retrieve.
When a company fails to record its history in the first thirty years of operation it makes
the compilation of that history at a later date far more complex an undertaking. Written
into the company’s being in the period after being founded is the base foundation onwhich the company was built. In many cases the records from the period whether on
paper or other mediums are missing, making the data and materials are very hard to
get your hands on, which is why in many such cases the memory of workers must be
relied upon to fill the gaps. I can’t help but to mention that relying directly on people’s
memory of events long since passed is not a very surefooted way to produce your firstcompany history.
The publishing cycles of the above books are run on timelines from a short period of once
every ten years to a broad once in 30 years, however many first histories cover 20 yearor 25 year periods. Once the first history is recorded then companies generally choose to
produce on a ten or thirty year cycle.

==Chapter 3: The background to and reasons why company history publications havebecome so much more widespread ==20 or 30 years ago company history was only created by large companies which often
had a single employee dedicated to the task, but nowadays large companies are making

way for the small and medium sized companies and there is a corresponding change inthe makeup of companies producing history. In this chapter we consider the origins of
this phenomenon.
1. Companies founded after the war get through their first period and are now seeing
their anniversaries
Many companies were founded in post-war Japan. The final days of the war occurred in
1945, which after fifty years of reconstruction brings the year 1995. The majority ofcompanies were founded between 1948 and 1972 and so these companies are currently
experiencing their 50 year anniversaries one after the other. Before this they of course
experience their 30 and 40 year anniversaries. Despite these opportunities many choose
to forgo their 30 and 40 year anniversaries but don’t want to ignore the opportunity of
their half-century mark and hence numbers of company histories are increasing. If thecompany were to miss the 50 year anniversary then the next really round number tostart at is the 100 year history, which given another 50 years of the loss of ageing
records presents and extremely difficult challenge in reproducing anything but the later
history of the company.
2. Internal changes in the state of the company (Changes in employee structure as well
as changes of and in products, in place of management
management))
Young men in their late twenties towards the end of the war and who began businesses
at the end of the war, are now entering their nineties and many are no longer in the loop
and have retired. Having managers step into the void created by the loss of a founder isan extremely significant event for a company, and at the same time these changes inleadership often lead to a change in direction for the company.
Their skills and experiences are, from the perspective of tradition, subject to the “2007problem” (The year the baby boomer generation is set to begin retiring). Those born
immediately after the war started entering companies in about the 40th year of Showa(1965), from which times they became responsible for the high economic growth Japan
achieved and during which time the companies accumulated a mass of experience andknow-how. From the year 2007 those employees of most importance to the future of thecompany will start retiring, and the transition of knowledge from one generation to thenext will be of urgent importance.
The makeup of the employee base was nearly all male in the period from year 20 to 30
Showa (1945-55), however females currently make up approximately one third of allemployees. It is a certainty that in such a case the company culture will have changed
since the company was founded.
Such a problem is an intrinsic element of the company, but it is extrinsic elements
which are generally met with strategies based on main product lines and products
development. Companies by and large change the times, and with the life cycles of theirproducts, from introduction to growth, from growth to maturity and finally into decline.
If these companies do not produce histories in a shorter term then they will lose thehistory of their products, and the significance and meaning this brings to the company
and to management will be lost along with it.
Immediately following the war there was a company founded in Osaka which was a
direct sales outlet for hoists made by the Hitachi Company. The company from the
beginning down smokestacks with fervor, and once they found them they used sample
products and demonstrations to sell many units.
Today this company is not satisfied with only 5% of the total hoist market, but is moving
into soil freezing technology with broad applications in undersea tunnel construction.
What was originally a hoist sales outlet has now become a civil engineering company,
and as such most employees understand it to be a civil engineering company. From amanagement standpoint it is only natural to want to outline the footsteps of thecompany from its first fundamental business application.
3. The price of producing company history is dropping
I think it’s hard to imagine a company without printing equipment or partners who areprinters, which some many readers have probably noticed has led to a decline in theprice of printing. The prices began dropping in 1995 and in the past two or three years
have been widely recognized as a facet of deflation. According to leading printing
companies their predictions for the size of the market in 2005 will be one quarter ofwhat it was during the bubble period. When you ask specific leaders in the field they
will tell you that they expect this downturn to continue, and that they feel they are notnearing the bottom. The printing costs take up somewhere in the realm of 30% of thetotal costs of producing a history, so on a total cost basis the effect has been a drop in theprice per volume of somewhere close to ten percent.
On top of this printing is undergoing a period of great innovation. The days of laying out
your manuscript and handing it to the printer to have them set typeface, photographs
and etc are gone. The structure the industry is moving towards is one where a publishercan now lay out each page individually in-house, sending the draft to the printers forprinting alone. Through the higher production efficiency at both our company and ourprinters, the time to print for any project is dropping rapidly.
This has wide implications for securing high quality prints and at the same time theincreases in efficiency at the printer means that a production costing 10 million yen in
the past is now being priced at 9 million yen.
Given the large influence this has on price, company history production companies mustalso respond to the competitive markets and must not leave the battlefront. Given ourown company’s estimates we consider it necessary to drop our prices by something close
to 10%
With these societal factors and the hard work of production companies, the costs ofcompany history are dropping significantly. With price for an average history droppingfrom 10 million yen to 9 million yen, the obvious conclusion is that it is much easier tohave the history of your company recorded.
4. Calling for the selection of past data and material to keep in the face of amanagement rationalization
It has been a while since the beginning of the information age. There was a time whenBill Gates used to boast that he was going to “digitize everything”, however in thecurrent environment the moves by Google to “Systematize the world’s data, and makemore useful methods of access possible” seem more appropriate. The companies thatwere exposed to the post-bubble waves of rationalization made moves to eliminate
information and data that was deemed “Muri, Muda, Mura” (Impossible, Wasteful,
Uneven) as a means to increase efficiency, with the success thereof driven by the
implementation of computerization and efficient management systems.
Translator
Translator’’s note: The above quotes from Bill Gates and Google representatives havebeen retranslated back to English from Japanese and hence may not be in the original
wording.
This rationalization gave rise to an era in which all past data and materials were either
kept or all were thrown out.
Until now people such as the company mail clerk would use their own judgment indetermining which items to keep, which to throw away and which to edit. It is only
recently that decisions have been made as a company as to the kind of data andmaterials that should be kept, and which should be thrown away. By standardizing yourprocesses in this way you can integrate your data and materials, and many company
can produce a history directly from this.
5. The increase in company publications due to the spread of personal computers andthe technological change in printing and the familiarization of publishing to companies
The rationalization of the publishing industry can be defined on three key points. The
rationalization is not confined to publishing and printing companies but has spread to
non-publishing companies. The rise of the personal computer means that companies can
now go to individual printers directly and have the content which they have createdprinted directly to the page.
Printings often run by companies through a desktop publishing system can generally be
produced in-house, with the exception of high quality final products aimed at thecustomer.
The sight of companies producing such materials within the company has become afamiliar one, brochures and pamphlets are now often self-produced and self-publishedby the company. With the increase in internal company publishing capabilities,
companies are showing a lack of discord with industry, and there is no mistake that thisis a significant contributor to the scene of rising company history publishing.
In classifying the reasons for the increase in company history publishing the abovesated reasons can be seen a very significant factor.
20 years ago the most common years on which to put out a history were 40 year
anniversaries, with the second most being 30 year histories. When we say 20 years ago,
we mean approximately 1987. With the final year of the war in the pacific being 1945,
1987 becomes just over 40 years since then. It is easy to see that the companies foundedjust after the war would be the bulk of the companies producing history at that time.
Because of this is it is easy to see the very close relationship between the year
companies were founded and the years they publish their history.
Here I would like to give an introduction to the older company histories which were
published by large companies in the prewar years.
Meiji Confectionary published “a 15 year history” in the 9th year of Taisho (1920), with“a 15 year history since foundation” being published by the Meiji Refined Sugar
Company in the 10th year of Taisho (1921) celebrating the 15th year of their sugar

refining business.
The history of Mitsubishi Shipbuilding’s Kawasaki Shipyard released in the 3rd year of
Showa (1928) entitled “Company History”
The history of the Kawasaki Shipyard published in the 11th year of Showa (1936)
entitled “40 year Company History”
Japan Battery published their “20 year Company History” in the 12th year of Showa(1937)The Kobe Steel Foundry published its “30 year History” in the 13th year of Showa (1938)
Such publications led an era of company history productions.
Additionally the Bank of Japan published their history in the second year of Taisho(1913), which was followed by a stream of histories from financial services company
histories from the likes of the Daiichi Bank, the Bouchou bank of Yamaguchi prefecture,
the 107th Bank of Fukushima prefecture, the 90th Bank of Iwate prefecture and well asother assorted banks, security and trading companies.
From this we can see that company history publishing is not a recent phenomenon but
was being published in relatively high numbers as far back as pre-war times. Readers ofthese books are liable to consider such representations of the company as being“unreadable”, however even in changing times the necessity of these books does notchange.
==4. The meaning and purpose of a published company history==
Whatever the objectives of your company history may be it is fundamental that yourreaders have an understanding of them before they open the book. Before getting into a
detailed description of producing a company history, I would like for you to go over yourown objectives again.
Firstly the primary reason that clarity in objectives is necessary is that if yourproduction’s objectives are in any way unclear then after a long period of editing yourplan will be only weakly applied and your production’s direction will be blurred.
Company histories in general take about 2 years to produce from start to finish; longer
ones are on the scale of 5 years or more. During this time many small things pop up.
The company’s profitability changes, trading partners change, the company history
responsible is changed or takes extended leave, management and company

representatives change, the company history gets outsourced to external managers etc.
When events like this happen to company histories with unclear objectives, it isnecessary to once again consult with the readership and rebalance the factors of plan’scontent and material as well as the structure of the content.
Even company histories which have had their plans changed mid-way are not a total
loss. However, if you make changes to the plan due to external factors such as thosepreviously mentioned and your objectives have not been examined properly and arethus subjective or abstract, then being hit with an externality in these circumstances is
to invite disaster. When you are unsure as to whom you are producing the history for
and why then the perspective from which evaluate the work will become blurred andsomething as simple as having a proof read of the manuscript will lead to 2, 3, 5 or 10
rewrites. When this occurs you will lose time, money and control of the project as the
project goes from simply being adrift to being lost in space, and it will be almost certainthat you will not achieve the objectives which you will have lost sight of.
Examples situations in which you may want to change the plan:
1. In the research stage you collect far more materials and interviews than expected
and this changes the content of the history you want to make
2. When conducting interviews you find that statistics cannot be found to back animportant aspect of the history, and hence you want to either reduce that aspect orreplace it with information on a different aspect.
3. After finishing the manuscript you find that it is more interesting than you
anticipated and wish to change your publishing strategy.
4. You find that you were not able to obtain sufficient photographs from in and outside
the company, and in order to make up for the lack of photographs you wish toincrease the volume of the manuscript (for instance, by adding illustrated graphs
etc)
Plans which can accommodate unexpected changes such as those outlined above
indicate a structure focused on continuous improvement, and which can do so without
risking the quality of the publication. These changes to the plan are aimed at creating
new objectives which exceed or expand the previous objectives, and so it is necessary to
put policies and procedures in place.
When you look at the plans set down and changed by former and latter parties, theformer party charts a path to a destination over territory he doesn’t know and sets out
without knowing the roads the car will have to travel ahead. Furthermore, the former
party decides on the arrival time. The latter party decides which roads the car will takeand will adjust pace of progress by adjusting variables such as the speed of the car, tirechanges and backup plans in order to make the required time.
I believe it is wise to run an adequate assessment of the goals and plans before
proceeding on the execution thereof
There are many small judgments which need to be made on a daily basis throughout theediting process on a company history, but if the objectives of the publication are unclear
then standards on which you base your decisions (i.e. the perspective you take) will
become blurred. The objectives which we will discuss from here should be thoroughly
reviewed by yourself, and furthermore your company should decide which objectives are
the best fit for you and seek to prioritize them as such. Through the process ofprioritizing these objectives you will go a long way towards deciding what kind ofcontent is most appropriate for your company, what kind of publication is mostappropriate for your company, and what kind of time, energy and costs your company
can realistically put behind such a project. If such decisions are not forthcoming then itmeans that you have not adequately considered this section of the company historyplan.
Our company has compiled the following 8 main possible goals for compiling a company
history:
1. To adequately sort management data and materials to pass on to the next
generation of leaders
2. To study the footsteps of the company and use this as a management tool
3. To affirm the company’s corporate identity
4. To raise awareness of turning points such as anniversaries among the employees
5. To deepen understanding of the company among the employees and their families
6. To express gratitude to stakeholders in and outside the company
7. To build an image of the company
8. To consolidate the company’s contributions to society and the industry into one

1. To adequately sort management data and materials to pass on to the next
generation of leaders
After the war Japanese companies had great ambition and this led to quite active
management. There was the urgent problem of having to eat and at the same time there
was the gargantuan aim of rebuilding Japanese society. For companies which existed
before the war there was the strong wish to rebuild their company and get their former
employees back from the frontlines to restart operations. For the companies born after
the war ended there was the fundamental need to eat, as well as the priorities ofmaintaining and building safer lives.
Firstly, with those kinds of priorities in the post-war environment, there wasn’t muchtime to look back for the first twenty years, and most companies failed to do this. In thecompanies that we have run histories for we have found that the records of mostcompanies have dissipated. In the period after the war companies were groping aroundfor innovative ways to increase production or sales, and on the same track it is now
nearing the time for these people to retire and so the problem of how to pass on thewealth of knowledge and skills that these workers have cultivated is an obviously
pressing one. Even in companies that produced so many goods or had so many ideas or
was so effective in application of its core abilities, you cannot say that a simple lookback at how they maintained stability and developed the company is adequate, muchless say that the loss of the people who were fundamental to the creation of businesses
management systems would not be damaging to the business.
It follows that the company’s materials to this point, the unwritten knowledge of thecompany’s undertakings held by the employees and other information to be passed on
and that this information be tied in with a rational project of the company’s. The
everyday data and materials used by management, production and so forth, arecomparatively well managed but without being arranged, rationalized and titled assuch much important data is scrapped and forgotten. Also, many companies undergochanges of direction many times and often key material on past undertakings is thrownout with the old business models.
After experiencing these problems countless times I hope you too can see theimportance of sorting out which material’s to keep and which to throw away, and apply
this from the start in your company.
Until now the standards against which to judge the value of materials were mostly
vague and their interpretation differed from person to person, and so a consistentarrangement was difficult. If this happens then the company which has gone to great
pains to preserve its know-how in management, production and sales, will not be able toapply it, and the company’s spirit and the ethics on which it was founded will not betransferred to the younger generation.
You cannot save all of your material. Using the publishing of a company history as anopportunity to define a classification system on which things will be kept and which will
be disposed of, and then from what is being kept the content of what to republish in thecompany history can be determined. Once this history has been made it can serve as areference on what selection standards for the gathering and arrangement of historicmaterials going forward.
2. To study the footsteps of the company and use this as a management tool
There’s the old saying about learning lessons from the past (Onkochishin in Japanese),but up until now companies have simply looked back and considered it as one of theingredients in their current makeup.
The past of any company contains remarkable events, and occasionally a company’s top
management has considered these events in selecting the new route for the company tofollow. Such companies find it important that each of their employees hold a shared setof values.
There is also a connection which gives those with the knowledge of the past an insight
into the future. In order to extract value from this knowledge, the merit of the each of
the past events must be evaluated and explicitly defined. For a company to exist today,
it follows that in its past its ratio of good to bad events favored more good events.
At the same time the company should, while reflecting on the events of the past, focus
on the reflections of those good events with clarity. The objective should be to have theway forward for employees and management defined within the company history. (Seechapter 17 “How do I handle things which are hard to put in writing?”, reference pg
156~158)
3. To affirm the company
company’’s corporate identity
For each and every human being, the questions of “Why am I here?”, “What am I doing?”and “Where have I come from, and where am I going?” are of fundamental importance,
and as such can be the source of fundamental problems. During the course of our long
lives and during our long working lives, nearly everyone runs into some of theseproblems, which leads to trouble.
Is not the same true of corporations? With a company history the significance of yourcompany’s existence and the value of your company to society can be made clear, andthrough this questions such as “Why does our company exist?” and “What benefit does
our company have for society?” will be given much more clarity as people connected tothe company develop a clear understanding of the environment of the company policies
and ethos.
It is necessary that company history be used to clearly answer the fundamental
questions “What exactly is our company? Where have we come from, and where are wegoing?” For the company itself it is necessary to pose such questions to itself on an
ongoing basis. For people and employees who are troubled by the search for meaning inwork, making it clear what contribution they can make to the company and what thosecontributions in turn bring in the form of the company’s significance to society will bringspirit to their lives. In this way an important role of the company history is to clearly set
out the company’s corporate identity.
4. To raise awareness of turning points such as anniversaries among the employees
When you publish a history it will not be to celebrate any other turning points than yourown, and so to have your employees go about the business of the company post-history
production it will be necessary to develop lucid recognition of those turning points.
To achieve this you must link as many people as possible to the project by using thespecific devices of content in your book.
Throughout the process of making a company history you will need your editing teamleaders and editing employees to cooperate to generate excitement in the content as astarting point for generating interest throughout the company. Expanding the circle ofpeople which have an interest in the project is one of the secrets to making a goodcompany history.
5. To deepen understanding of the company among the employees and their families
In companies which exist long enough surpass landmark anniversaries, differences inthe thinking of top management and junior employees often come to a head. Manycompanies for example experience gaps in their feelings of solidarity, the company spirit,
thoughts on future direction as well as differences in such things as the feelings ofgratitude towards partners and stakeholders, however many of the gaps are bridgedthrough sharing the company’s history and sharing the experiences that go with that.
New employees and in particular younger employees were brought up in a different
environment and so it is natural that their generation will be born with different values.
However as a company such things cannot be left as they are. Having every person in
the company share the company culture is necessary to have the company’s projects andcore business to be tackled in a positive and pro-active manner.
When structuring the history to become a shared history is not possible the history will
be published from the perspective of giving everyone a shared knowledge of the history.
This means that not only will you expect that your employees will be the number one
readers of the history, but that more than just knowing the history of the company butthat there will be no shortage of material on which to train and educate employees. For
the high-potential employees an understanding of what kind of thinking has led thecompany to overcome the difficulties of its worst troughs and knowledge of the link
between the company’s past and the company’s future will generate a sense of trust in
the company.
In addition to this, for a company’s employee to be able to perform diligently in theirroles the understanding and cooperation of their families is absolutely necessary. Whilst
the primary readers of company history are the employees themselves, company historyis the best kind of teaching material which will lead to the inclusion of families and thedevelopment closer ties to the company. Hence the importance of producing histories
which are easy to look through whilst still maintaining focus.
6. To express gratitude to stakeholders in and outside the company
The historically accurate company history as we know it plays a large and importantrole in conveying the relationships between the company and local communities, andbetween the company’s products and everyday people without mistaken information. A
company history can convey accurately the sense of gratitude and sincerity towards
customers and society, and this can be a big factor in the image of the company. To turnthe tables and take another perspective; if you company were mentioned throughout thecompany history book of another company along with all manner of thanks, would you
not be incredibly happy? When you meet with a supplier it’s a manner of etiquette to say“Thanks very much for your continued service”, but instead of simply words which will
be forgotten in a day, define your courtesy in a clear medium, and consider applying it in
a company history.

7. To build an image of the company
Let’s separate the main structural elements of the company history into the following
four points:
�

The image of the company held by employees�The image of the company held by other companies in the industry�

The image of the company held by trading partners

�

The image of the company held by the local community

Nowadays local communities and residents are developing a stronger focus on theirlocal companies, and company’s daily activities come under the watch of many
concerned parties. When the company grows to become a large company and its effecton the industry and the community is correspondingly large, its thoughts and attitudes
towards trading partners, peak bodies and the local community becomes a very
necessary position to be clear on. Company positioning, PR and the congruency of
external messaging are significant reasons for undertaking a company history project.
The economic historian who coined the term “Industrial Revolution”, Arnold Toynbee(not to be confused with his nephew and social historian Arnold J. Toynbee) once said:“There is prosperity in cities with a respect for history. There is a future for companies
with respect for history” (translation, not original wording)
If we could take the liberty to write this another way;
“Companies which hold history to be important, hold the future to be important” is theway in which we consider that statement.
For example; throughout a company’s process of development, there are many products
and services, as well as trading partners which may today be only a small proportion of
the company’s overall business today, but without the contributions of which thecompany would not exist; for such companies the possibility that young employees walkaway from such important factors in the company’s makeup is to embrace instability.
It is safe to say that for employees and trading partners, that the act of embracing acompany is deeply connected to the moral status of that company is an undisguised fact.
8. To consolidate the company’s contributions to society and the industry into one

When a company has a firm economic base the company’s ability to influence society
will increase, and because of this the company will be expected to show leadership when
it is needed, and to lend its abilities where it can which will lead to a point where it
seems to exist to serve only the community. In response to these demands mostcompanies tend to act somewhat as public institutions do and respond with as much
help as they can. Despite a company operating in a small market it may still beconsidered a leading company by pretense, and for society, the industry and thecommunity the meaning of the company’s existence is multifaceted and must be
strengthened. Many may think that a company is only working in its own self-interest,
but in reality as the scale of the business expands the influence of the business expands,
and the interests of the business correspondingly expand into areas unrelated to
profitability. This means that once a company becomes a mid-level player in theindustry or better the company its interests appear to stop shifting, and thoseindustries and societies also stop looking at all aspects of the company. In such a case, is
not demonstrating the human aspects of the company the most adult thing to do.
The creation of company history necessitates revealing some company weaknesses to adegree, and so a company cannot go into a publication without confidence in itself. The
creation of a company history is a natural way to overcome such hurdles, and is easily
combined with perspectives on the company’s contributions to society and the industry.
The making of a company should act as a corpus of the works of the company. The
company has the ability to reinterpret the process of development the industry took,
and to reproduce this with words and historical materials. That is to say that in order toshed light on the process by which the products and the industry developed and took
shape, the publication of your company’s internal materials must play an importantpart, and you must understand the significance of the contribution that this makes tothe industry and to society.
There is a wholesaler located in the Kanto and central regions which focuses on the saleof personal items to hoteliers and resorts. For a long time before the war until after it
hotels operated by placing a large bar of soap much like a bar of clothing soap, at every
bath. The customers would use the soap everyday until the bar wore down, at which
point the hotel would replace it. Eventually however the continuing focus of customers
on cleanliness took hold and customers demanded small personal soaps, so thewholesaler made an offer to some soap manufacturers to have them produced; much to
the delight of hotel and resort proprietors. You can now see such small soaps
everywhere. However, even after such an innovation many customers considered theone person per soap model as a waste of resources, so the company made further
approaches to manufacturers to create a shampoo-like liquid soap which became a big
impetus for its push into higher end hotels.
This company is now entering its 60th year of operation, and to think that the liquidsoap that we all use in our homes today was created by this company racing ahead of
the industry to establish products, and that this has not only had such a great affect on
our daily lives but also played such a large part in increasing the Japanese sense ofhygiene is incredible.
If the company had not mentioned it there would be no way of knowing these things,
and think of how much pride would company employees gain from knowing this. These
things are, we believe, of fundamental importance in the education of employees.
Throughout the world there are many companies, however the number of companies
which have their history reproduced is not nearly as large. The companies which havetheir history put to paper are the regional or industry leaders in their field. There arealso times when such companies act as leaders in unrelated industries or in broader
society.
Company histories are not just published to furnish a company’s self-interests, butthere is need to consider it as a way to execute a plan for the company’s contribution toboth the industry and society. Moreover a company must understand its own positioning
and culture in order to understand what kind of contribution is possible, and which isnot.
==5. Latest trends in Company History==
1.

Company histories which are integrated into a company’s existing publishingsystem. Companies demanding a more external role for the history. (Publishingintegrated into management activities)

2.

Company histories have begun considering the reader

3.

The introduction of general publishing techniques into company history (wider
readership, multiple volumes, multiple plans and individualization, visualization,
larger volumes, colorization, reader-participation based volumes)

4.

The progression of outsourcing production

5.

The shifts in the valuation and evaluation of company publishing

6.

The waves of recent phenomenon (digitization and moves towards networks)

7.

The development of web-based company history

1.

Company histories which are integrated into a company
company’’s existing publishingsystem. Companies demanding a more external role for the history. (Publishingintegrated into management activities)

In recent years we have seen a shift towards many more motivations for publishing ahistory. In the past a company history has been produced by and for a single company,
however we are now seeing a large role for the company history external to the company.
This format collates company information and integrates a message, and is a positive
step by companies to put out a pro-active image of their company through the medium
of a published book.
In the former company histories of the Meiji era, very few if any of the company
histories were produced with the intention to be distributed to every employee. Back inthat era the idea that you could use a company history as an effective way to educate
employees was non-existent. The histories from this era were nicknamed “change of
pillows” because they were just the right size the be used as floor pillows during lunch
breaks in traditional Japanese Tatami-matted rooms, and this generation saw a great
number of those pillows produced.
By far the most common message held in these volumes was a simple record of the past
aimed at distributing company materials and data and scholars and researchers, as it
seems that most of these people already had knowledge of the companies’ contributions
to society or its changes to policy. Since that era the scope of company history graduallybegan to change.
The libraries with the most company histories are the Fukakusa libraries of the famous
Kyoto and Ryukoku Universities. And the universities’ permission we were allowed todelve into their collections and were able to determine what the reasons andmotivations for publishing the histories were by reading the foreword and afterword ofeach book. From that era onwards the slow trend towards more readable histories
begins, and we see the first diversification of types of company history that we will delve
into more thoroughly soon.
Corporate publishing is a sector of the business that cannot proceed without thego-ahead from top management which seems to be a sign that histories are being
considering as more management tools nowadays.
To put it more explicitly; for companies who are voicing concern on the information
aspect of the four factors of management (people, things, money, information), thecompany history provides a specific application for and platform for information both inand outside the company.
2.

Company histories have begun considering the reader

When a company history is applied in the organization as a management tool, theobjectives behind that tool must naturally be made very transparent. That objective
puts the reader first, and remains clear on the reader’s state of mind.
In histories up to this point you could say that convenience to the reader was not apriority.
There are many functions of company history that are currently in demand such as it
being a rational, economic, exhaustive, and readable comprehensive record, lately
however we have seen a much higher valuation placed on overall convenience to thereader. That is what it means to place to reader’s state of mind first, and have it statedclearly in the plan.
Our company also sells books in bookstores through our general publishing activities,
and nearly all of the books on sale in those stores have a clear target reader towards
which the writer strives to reach, and reaching this objective is a big deciding factor inwhether the potential readers open their wallets. For normal company histories which
are being sold commercially, staying in the mind of the target reader will have asignificant effect on the final product. Products which can take a reader by the hand or
make a reader exited will become more logical as a publishing product.
3.

The introduction of general publishing techniques into company history (wider
readership, larger production runs, multiple plans and individualization,
visualization, larger volumes, colorization, reader-participation based volumes)

In relation to this, the following changes are the most remarkable.
*Wider Readership
The readers of company history nowadays encompass broad groups such as employees,
customers, suppliers, shareholders, retired employees, other companies in the industry,future employees, universities and schools, local community residents, libraries andresearch institutes, and all kinds of potential readers who can access the company’s
proposed theses*Larger production runs
Once you have the target reader clearly set out, the number of readers to whom you will
be distributing your book will increase as a result. The effect of this has been a trend
towards larger production runs. If the number of trading partners to whom you
distribute the book increases, the number of related groups increases and as a result the
number of people to whom your book is distributed increases and more book must go
into the original print run. As a rule print runs were once calculated as about 20%
higher than the number of employees a company had, however now print runs are
generally about 2 to 4 times the number of employees of a company.
*Multiple Plans and Individualization
When delivering a large number of copies to all of the various readers, you can provide
them with the simplified descriptions of the company, or come up with individualizedplans, and in doing so focus the devices of content in the book and in doing so create
multiple and individualized plans.
*Visualization
Making this kind of devices easily understood at a glance – originally being
doorstop-like volumes of data, the movement to more readable designs seems only
natural – the movement towards more readable histories has led to the liberal use ofphotographs, illustrations and diagrams.
*Larger Volumes
When editors try and make progress towards a visually oriented history through theirpage layout, a demonstrable effect is that the trend towards demanding larger physicaldimensions for the book. Traditionally volumes were most often A5 in size (The same
size as the monthly Gakkan Bunkgei Shunjuu), however in the post-war period
publications were always made in B5 in size (The size of university notebook). Since thebeginning of the Heisei era (from 1988 onwards) we have seen the rise of A4 bindings, aswell as the even bigger B4 bindings
There seems to be something of a western influence driving this. American influence isespecially noticeable in that the development of cameras occurred early in America and,

being unscarred by the war on home soil, many photographs of companies remain. Of
course American adoption of color photography was early, and although we se history
being spelled out in words we see many American histories with a great number ofphotographs being interwoven. In the west, using the dimensions of A series paper isthe orthodox sizing for books and there is the perspective that it has a higher turnover,
but we can say that those photo album-style large histories have had an effect on thesizing choices of Japanese company history.
A home appliances manufacturer in Osaka produced their 75 year history in a B4 sized
120 page magazine format commemorative magazine. According to the manager of thatcompany’s production an American history was being used a reference to guide thepublication.
More than 50 years have passed since the end of the war, and within that timeframe thenumber of companies which have preserved photographs is increasing. By conveying
history as much as possible through living imagery rather than writing it, the company
history becomes a photo album and it seems such publications are fast becoming a pillarof the Japanese company history market.
*Colorization
When you have laid out your pages to be visually pleasing and have enlarged the size ofyour book, the next demand we often get in making the history more easily read is toincrease the number of colors going into the final book. Now color printers and color
copiers have become the norm, and to general readers even things that could be calledcolor seem monochromatic, which is why we are seeing a demand for more vibrant color.
To meet this challenge we are striving towards more and more color histories.
*Reader-participation based volumes
There has been a recent explosion in the number of volumes incorporating
reader-participation. Many companies now wish to employ the method of incorporating
the reader into the content of plans and so forth, and introducing employees throughout
the page structure of the book. Insofar as the objectives of the history, this is not justbeing left as a record, but is driven by the intention to make employees conscious of thecompany and its anniversary.
A focus on the mixture of men and women in the story is, to a history, something which
is widely called for. In this way the method of company history does not stop at the
managers who are putting it together, but must transform to align with thetransformations of company management.
4.

The progression of outsourcing production

Through our research we have found that the majority if company histories werecompleted in-house until about the 40th year of Showa (1965).
It seems to have been the case that most companies gave a publication the scale of asingle full time employee; however they would only produce the manuscript in-house,
after which they would rely on the expertise of the printing company for printing andbinding.
Today we see a vastly different methodology. The reason is that in order to bring about
the aforementioned changes such that high quality books can be produced and thatthese books can be of value both inside and outside the company, outsourcing ofprocesses must be undertaken. The ability to outsource such things as editing has reallybeen dropped into the lap of the industry.
5.

The shifts in the valuation and evaluation of company publishing

It seems to many observers that when a company creates a history they only insert thesections of history which make them look good. However, recently companies havebecome hesitant to hide potentially sensitive information.
For companies clearly positioned as a publicly accessible institution, and operating in asociety embracing the liberalization of information through the penetration of
information technology, companies can no longer keep hidden sensitive information, andif you try and hide information pertaining to sensitive issues that employees andtrading partners know about then trust in the company history will be lost andquestions will be asked of the company and its management..
Additionally the burgeoning field of “Company Document” publishing incorporates thepath of the company and the footsteps of management into a format which is naturally
designed to be sold, and many of these high quality content books have been produced.
There was the old tale by Kobako Hanato “Doterai yatsu”, and the NHK’s smash hit
television series “Oshin” which tells the story of half of the life of an old lady operating a
supermarket in the Hokuriku region
Recently our moves to commercial publishing formats such as for the “Sony
Autobiography” saw it being sold in bookshops, and which has been followed up with

new editions. Another history our company has published was from the burger chain
Mos Burger entitled “Yume Miru Zassoutachi” (The weeds of our dreams), which covers
the history of the Mos Burger chain of stores from before it was established to the place
it occupies in society today as the Tokyo Stock Exchange-Listed Mos Food Services Inc.,of which we sold 45,000 copies. Even now we are receiving constant orders foradjustments and must republish revised editions.
Another which our company has helped produce 14 years ago was Sony Life Insurance
Co. Ltd.’s “Nobiru Keiei no Kenkyuu” (Researching Extended Management), whichdocuments the managerial strategy and path the home electronics maker Sony took as
it moved into the insurance industry, which sold 40,000 copies. 4 Years ago we released
a revised and updated second edition, which has so far exceeded 25,000 copies and is
still selling.
These companies obviously have great brand recognition, and we can say with certainty
that a document of the company’s history would be trustable enough from the reader’s
perspective. At the same time, the right choice of writer can lend a unique perspectiveon the company and its functions, as well as giving some assurance to the potential
readership of the quality of the content.
In analyzing in details the appeal the history has to readers, how to achieve that appeal,and how to distinguish your company above and apart from the rest of the industry, thedirection your history takes will surely change. When you can display trends such asthese it will bring about change in the value delivered to the general readership, andthrough the company history will show that your company is in the ring throwing thepunches.
6.

The waves of recent phenomenon (digitization and moves towards networks)

We believe that these kinds of trends are shaking up the company history industry. This
period of great movement is intriguing and is leading us to come up with new plans withwhich we are reshaping publishing.
One of these plans is aimed at moving in on the burgeoning digital publishing industry.
It seems that it will be a strong undercurrent in the future of publishing.
These books differ from traditional published works, in that before they are sent for
printing they are converted to a digital data stream and stored on hard disk. In days
gone by, a company would finish the manuscript and send it to the printers, only to start
up rounds of communication on editing and spell-checking, as every time something isresolved the printer must recheck the block-print page. This process takes time andlabor costs can be high. Once the manuscript is completed then the layout must be
structured on a computer with adjustments made on-screen, which completes the core
editing process. Once proof reading is completed the data for the book is saved to an MO(Magneto Optical) disk, and this final copy is given over to the printer. In other words,
at this point in the process you have saved the data and are undertaking large amountsof communication.
After this, the printing functions of plate setting and film processing (blue print andcolor adjustment) are carried out, however at this point the digital publishing process
only engages the term printing as a medium, and without the production of “books” as
we know them many possible mediums can be considered.
When we launch a planning process for publishing we consider the “4 T’s”. They are“Theme”, “Timing”, “Title” and “Teacher” (Teacher being the term for the author of thehistory, this could also be read as Author), however in recent years we have been
considering another T to add to this list. The fifth T is “Technology”. This is theconsideration of what technological innovation your history engages.
It is a situation where, by using magnets we have magnetic tape, by using light we haveCDs, by using phone lines we can go online, by using printing functions we can createbooks. It is a question of what technology to use as an intermediary, and what the
products of such mediums will be.
For the most part, if you are clear on the digital data you can find many applications for
it. One example is that of a leading car manufacturer, who after publishing theircompany history in book form, rearranged their digital version and republished it on
their homepage. In the world of cars and motorbikes this company something of amaniacal following, and so the placement of something which can be easily recognized
as a company history on their website held great value in the support of that following.
There are also companies which engage DVD company histories for video or voice-over,separately to their book-medium histories.
It can be said that the introduction of digital mediums has been significant for theconvenience of authors. For DVDs, a function by which you can freely hone your searchby keyword, field, or era will bring your plans closer to one which is written from thereader’s perspective.
The high probability is that we will see the continuing simplification and digitization of

company history, as well as seeing more video and DVD publications not being madeinto books. There is no mistake that these will not simply be histories aimed at building
a company image but will incorporate manifold functionalities. Do you produce afunctional history? The trouble of creating it leads to call for it to be plain and simple toread and for it to be inviting for general readers, but at the same time it draws calls forthe content to have application and maintain convenience to the reader, given the great
pains the company has gone to producing it.
We often see that companies that are already leaders in their field are not simply
cataloguing the path their company has taken but are arranging and positioning theirrecords for practical applications, and are doing their best to release only excerpts of
their documentation and not the entire articles. We believe this methodology will have agreat influence on the direction of company history in the years ahead.
Though we can say definitively that we are in the age of digitization, it is certainly not
the case that we will publish all of our company histories in data format, leaving thebook format to extinction. The publishing of physical books and digital books each havetheir strong and weak points, so please understand that the appropriate format will
differ depending on the application of history.
7.

The development of web-based company history

In this section let us delve into the themes of book-based company history production.
Additionally we believe that the people who read books are investigating the histories
published as books, but here a gap opens and it is worth considering, even for non-bookcompany history mediums.
Many companies have their own histories placed on their webpage. Some good examples
are probably Honda and Sony. These companies are publishing their histories in finedetail on their websites
If you look into the Honda website, under the listing of spirit you will find readingmaterial called “Novel: Honda Research”. The content of this is described as a bookpublished in March 1994 called “Novel: Honda Research”. The entry for Honda on theinternet encyclopedia “Wikipedia” has a very detailed content on Honda’s history andpresent situation, and when you consider the level of detail and number of updates in
the content it is easy to see that it is indeed Honda which is maintaining and managing
its own article.
Moving on to the Sony Corporation, they have a detailed year by year listing entitled

“Company History”, and in addition to this they also have the book “SONY HISTORY”.
This book is a revised version of their 50 year history book, telling the story of thecompany from their foundation in 1945 to 1995. This was originally a book which wascompiled, edited and sold to the general market by Sony, but as the selling period for thebook had passed the company decided to place this information on their webpage.
These two companies are representative of Japanese companies and, given theirrelative celebrity and influence, have placed the information that many people wantknow on their webpage, but no matter what conventions are applied this isweb-publishing on their site. It seems that the company is not planning to update thiscontent in regular, set intervals
Our company has already obtained the trademark “WEB 社史” (Web company history)
and we are planning on producing company history on this second front alongside our
book-based company history . Web and book publishing each have their own advantages
and disadvantages, however given the environmental damages associated with paper
printing, and society’s unceasing advance towards digital formats, we believe that the
future will give way to an era of company history being published digitally.
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Web Histories

Printed medium
Strong Points

Weak Points

Printed on paper thenExpression is limited

bound. Mobile andand so editing is

Characteristics easily referenced.

difficult. Deletion and

Represents a tangible

editing incurs high

good.

costs

Books can be carried
with the reader and be
VersatilityWebread more than once.
Can be delivered witha sense of high quality.

Must be printed topaper. If you don't
have the physicalbook in your hand
you can't read it.
Books are heavy

Predominance
Data I presented via
computers (among others).
Data search capabilities are
excellent
Can be referenced
anywhere through a terminal(Computer, Mobile Phone,
PDA). Can search by
keyword, information source
etc. with freely determinablesearch criteria

Photographic

If you're not

Corrections andUpdates and corrections are

retouching andconcerned with theupdates are difficult.

easy. It is usually possible toupdating

quality then low price

Post-printing editing

have update and correction

editing is possible.

and updating iscosts limited to theextremely expensive

production costs

Limited to what can
Scale ofcontent

You can add

be expressed on aaffectuous

page. Cannot link toexpressions.

external information
sources etc.

Anything that be applied to acomputer monitor, such asvideo and sound, can be
engaged.

The cost is

Cost

The more volumes you proportionally highNo paper or print costs.

print the lower yourfor the number of

Number of copies is

per-copy costs

copies. Cost of paper irrelevant, and low cost data

becomeand printing inputs isconversion is possiblehigh
The transfer ofContent

information is one-way(This can also be adisadvantage)

Can be updated or added toOnce printed theat any time. Can create

information is set insingle year histories. Users

stone

can engage interactive
content
Various content can be

A wide range ofPresentation
methodgenerational groups
from children to theelderly can engage theformatCan only express
what can be placedon a two dimensional
piece of paper

generated in 2 dimensions, 3
dimensions, video and audio
content and etc. It's
possible to print only thesections you wish to print,
or set up data transfer.

Physical management
Confidentialityof data is possible(unless it isdistributed)

The completed books
are stand-alone
objects, and thereadership cannot beeffectively limited

You can restrict certain
pages to certain users. You
can restrict groups of users
to certain areas

A set period of timeis needed between
Production
timeline

No specific timeline(but slower than web
publishing)

the creation of thebooks will not be printed or

block copy and thebound, and so the timedelivery of the final

between completion andgoods (a number ofdelivery is very short.

days for printing andbinding)
Many people are
Results

accustomed to readingbooks

Once the books aredelivered you haveno way of knowing if
they were read.

You can collate data on
when, where, how much, andfor how long people haveread. You can analyze pages
which are well read.

Book manufacture

Effect on
Environment

You can use recycleduses a lot of paper

Does not use paper and ispaper and soy-based

and so there is a limit more thoughtful of theink out of

to how much

environment. Good forconsideration for theconsideration you

companies who take theenvironment.

can give to theenvironment seriously.

environment
As this is a company history which is placed on a website, it is not limited to yourexisting site but can be an exclusive and personalized expression, moreover a
specialized website. We often hear people say “Let’s not get too carried with theunnecessary,” however in a web-based company history readers can interact with thecompany and so copious functions completely separate from a physical book are possible.
It is worth thinking about web histories as something with a completely different value
proposition to a book history.
We have added a comparative table of the advantages and disadvantages of book format
vs. web format histories. Please go over them and consider the possibility of producing a
web-based company history for your organization.

=6. The differences between Personal History, Biography and Commemorative
Magazines=
Within the pages of a company history, why are personal histories interwoven? Thereare probably a few suspects to line up, but the truth is that this is a common problem.
When looking at the company’s history, scope, management and budget, a considerable
number of companies determine that a personal history of the managers is the more
appropriate vehicle for their history.
Even for companies already considering a “company history”, it is worth considering themany possible roles a personal history, a biography or commemorative magazine could
fulfill.
On that point let us go through the various differences between each.
1. The difference between Personal History and Biography
The primary difference between a personal history and a biography is the writing style.
In other words the biggest difference is whether it is written in the first or third person.
“I was born 15th of August in the 20th year of Showa” is a method of writing used inpersonal history (or autobiography) whilst “Ichiro Yamada was born on the 15th ofAugust in the 20th year of Showa” is the more objectively worded style of a biography,
and this is the general categorization we follow.
For a company which assists in the production of many other parties’ books such as ours,
we determine a personal history as one in which the author writes subjectively about
the things they wish to talk about, in contrast to biographies which are written from an
objective third person observer perspective. By focusing on that which you would likemost to talk about you have more freedom to determine the content, however theobjectivity of the content will be rated poorly, and when people see you as writing onlythat which suits you, the authenticity of your account will be heavily questioned.
Biography, on the other hand, allows you to respond through interviews and various
questions, hence your story is passed through others and so it is not possible to twist
events. In exchange for this your publication will be considered far more objective andhence more valuable.
Personal history uses the “Person” as the focal point and writes in the period they went
through, along with the group that formed around the central events. The central
character of the story need not be famous, nor had a primary role in determining the
success of the business model. However, when you set out to write the book you
encounter the problem of whether the reader knows the character.
Biographies focus especially on activities of the central character throughout a given
time period, and so if you do not write the characteristics of the time and place andfurthermore the sense of society that the person existed in then you cannot successfully
convey their greatness. Simply saying “This person was great” to someone will not be
sufficient to convey the amplitude of their achievements.
It is never necessary to make everything well known to the general reader, but if you do
not make special mention of the particulars of the industry and region then you will not
be able to effectively translate the achievements that defined the place and time. These
are the questions asked of biography by objectivity.
For biographies it is obviously ideal to interview the central figure whilst they are still
alive, but I believe there are very many situations in which this is not possible. If you
indeed wish to form the subject around the way that the central figure lived then you
have little option but to base your writing on older interviews and data, and then it will
still be objective. It follows that the character will therefore depend on the person
writing it, and this will determine the good and bad points of the production.
For personal histories, let us say that the quality of the content will be determined by
the evaluation of that person’s achievements. To use woodblock printing as an example,
a personal history carves the image of a person into the block and fills it with ink like anintaglio print; the biography carves the areas around the person, defining him or her by
their environment they existed in, such as in a relief print.
Typically, we find many cases of answers to third person interviews being incorporated
into the manuscripts of personal histories. We also see a move towards having
professional ghost writers pen manuscripts not only to save time access their skills, butalso to give the book wider appeal having been passed through the hands of a third
party professional. This kind of book exists somewhere in between the definitions wegave for the two earlier.
A book we own at present is a personal history of a somewhat chivalrous man dating to
the 20th year of Meiji (1887) in a place called Gose in Nara prefecture. It is a mere
80-something pages but with a layout which is aimed squarely at the reader andcontaining descriptions which were clearly not the work of amateur, it is, we believe,
highly likely the work of a ghost writer of the time, and as such is an object of intenseinterest to us.
As the biography of the venerable elder statesman Shibuzawa Eichi, it is a famous
example of the work gathered by the Kouta Rohan of the Eichi foundation. From years
gone by translating the path of a single person into words has meant incorporatingmany other people of the time into the story, and in this we see the impressions left bymany others as well.

2. The principle differences between a personal history of a manger and the history of
the company.
In the next section we lets discuss the circumstances under which a history centeredaround a single person will become a personal history, and the circumstance underwhich it will become a company history. Lets glance over the issue first. It’s anextremely rough method by which to separate it, but these are the assorted factors:

Plan Centered on Individual Plan Centered on Organization
Written with Bias

Personal History

Company History

Written without Bias

Biography

Company Documentation

To put it another way, the company history is a personal history of a company, and so is
written with the bias of the company. The question for the company personified as
author, is what kind of things you want to write about yourself when putting out apersonal history, so consider what you will and will not communicate. The managers of
the editing process must have the significance of their responsibilities thoroughly
conveyed to them, and we feel they must have an interchangeably equivalent sense of
the joy of editing.
Analyzing the question based on the experiences we have had, we believe that
determining whether to publish a company history or to publish the personal history or
biography of the managers of the company will be based heavily upon the three factors
listed below
1. The number of years of operation of the company
2. The scale of the company
3. The purpose of the publication
Firstly for factor number 1, where the number of years a company has been in operation
is 30 or more and the top echelons of the company are staffed by the first generation of
employees, we see a significant trend towards personal histories of the managers. For
point 2, we find that a good yardstick for the scale of the company is approximately 80
people. Above 80 people and company history becomes the high-demand option, below

80 people and we see personal history and biography become more popular. Finally to
speak of the 3rd factor, the purpose of the publication, the first thing to consider isexactly who you want to read the publication, and then to consider what result you
expect from them having read the publication.
For instance, in a company in which many individual ideas, inventions and personalsagacity have determined much of the company’s success, have led to turning points in
the history of the company, where the company has weathered the storm through theabilities of the managers, where there are people who are considered to have revived thecompany, then an objective of the publication would be to capture the character of suchpeople. A personal history is focused on the individual, and hence seeks to encapsulate
the influence these people had on the company’s management through their experiences
down to their speech and conduct. This methodology focuses as much as possible on theactual person being made the subject, with discussion of their effect on the company
through their experiences, language and conduct coming secondarily.
In the case of company history, arranging by year on the vertical axis, arrange the data
pertaining to people significant to the company, including the managers, as well as
significant events, on the horizontal axis. A company history seeks to focus on people asmediums for the big-picture evolution of the company, and the subject is made to be thecompany itself as much as possible.
For any given company there are many different ways to approach the production, andthere are many companies which align the production of both a company history andmanager’s personal history with a company anniversary. Be aware that in the plan theobjectives, intentions and role will differ, and so the lines between those factors mustclear clearly delineated and created separately.
When we meeting a senior manager of a company based in Hyogo, we immediately
understood his distress to be at the level of emotional breakdown.
The manager was “the life of the project”, and had shifted responsibility to a specialized
department, but was however hitting a wall with the question “Isn’t our company
history really a personal history of the company president?” and being neither able to
make progress or pull out, was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
At that point the founder was in his eighties, still coming to work every day and withmuch vigor still in his step, the managers thought of him as a man of wonderfulachievement. Due to this there was a strong predisposition to placing the events of thehistory in the president’s perspective, giving his input into all of the events which madeup the content, which was the crux of the difficulties of the managers difficulties. The
company was originally founded before the war as a personal business and this was thefirst history written since its incorporation after the war. No personal history of thefounder had then been made either.
However, the company’s history was considered along the lines of “Half of the founder’slife WAS the company”, and furthermore they thought that fulfilling their
responsibilities to society was impossible to achieve through company history. From theway that they came to this conclusion, it is apparent that there is probably a
generational gap between the senior managers who joined the founder of the company
and those who later joined after the company became a public company.
At the time the company president and those involved in the history were in close
communication, and after showing us a great deal of documentation they invited us tomake a proposal. The company president’s office was a great distance away, and so it
was necessary to paint the image of the company as a structured group. They also
wanted the company president to lay the grounds of the philosophy and soul of thecompany.
The result of this was the production of two books entitled “Company History” and“Foundation”. “Company History” presents the history of the president and upper
management as a structured group, whilst “Foundation” describes the thoughts of thepresident, the philosophy of the company and anecdotes based of these. When we first
explained the differences between the two proposed books to the manager his
expression brightened and he began to tackle the editing work with renewed
motivation.
The above example was handled well, but before an editor considers it as a possible
method they should give a once over consideration the interrelationship between the lifeof a given person and the company.
Having founded the Shuppan Bunka Sha Corporation in February 1984, and seeing
things from a founder’s perspective, I would like to agree with company founders,
however it will never be enough to continue saying “I am the company” forever. To
continue to say this is to say that if you were to die tomorrow then the company would
not exist. This is probably not something that could really be said of any single person in
the company.

The single most important role the founder can play is to develop management
strategies which ensure that, if he or she were to disappear, that the company would
still maintain its position and that it would continue to develop, and furthermore thedevelopment of management systems is testament to good management. On our
experience we have seen this unanimous opinion from all founding managers, whether
they be company founders who think seriously about the future, or one of the many
owner operators who think similarly.
When thinking about a single person’s life, even that of the founder is not just limited tothe dimension of the company. Nearly everyone has parents, aunties and uncles,
immediate family, distant relatives, friends, neighbors and acquaintances; surely it isinsufficient to write only of that person in the context of the company. It is easy to see
the company as nothing more than one of the many theatres sets in which ones life
performs.
Additionally for companies managing a history that are covering a 20 to 30 year timeframe with 80 or more employees, it will be highly unlikely that they will be able toinclude everything the company has achieved in their history. Certainly those in theupper echelons of the organization tend to be the ones who make the greater
contributions to the company, but the success of the top managers needs to made known
as part of establishing a succession plan for the sake of raising the bar on future
revenue streams.
In company history, if those at the top don’t select the person who has made the largest
contribution from within the group of key contributors to the organization, the company
history will not be a true representation of the company’s history. This is the difference
between company history and personal history. The difference lies at the core of thewriting, and this implies a difference in the relaying of the perspective on history.

3. The difference between Company History and Commemorative Magazines
Now we will move on to the differences between company history and commemorative
magazines. This is, in our interpretation, something which many people already havean understanding of, and if so please bear with us.
Company histories are books which collate the history of a company. Please refer to the
Appendix F “Year Ledger” on page 128. This divides the general events of the company
by year and then again along the lines of documentation type. With this you can easily

glance over and outline of the history of the company. By using these specified andarranged factors, you can quickly and effectively respond to the need for quick andaccurate historical facts as you write it into the manuscript.
On the other hand a commemorative magazine is publication that can be applied
whichever epoch your company is going through. For example, when a company wants
to commemorate the construction of a new office building, confining discussion of thepast to this topic makes it a commemorative magazine. There are many commemorative
magazines produced to coincide with a company’s anniversary of foundation, but theformat is not limited to just those anniversaries.
Other anniversaries to consider are the birthday of a given person, remembrance of thedeath of a given person, commemoration of incorporation or IPO, completion of thehome office, hitting the 10 billion yen capitalization mark, making a certain sales
number, wrapping up a major product, in addition to many more opportunities that
present themselves as dates to commemorate.
In a commemorative magazine a company has the opportunity to publish informationon themselves that doesn’t generally filter out, giving the format a greater sense of gift
value, whilst the mainstay of commemorative magazines is the thank you-gift format.
Therefore it is necessary to structure the layout of your pages to achieve this and planfor it accordingly. To this end we see many publications that employ the incorporation ofmany photographs while weaving the patterns of the publication around the events thathave led to its subject event. The simplest and quickest way to give a production abrilliant feel is to use a great many photographs, and if you wish to convey a sense ofgratitude then placing photographs of the people and companies you wish to thank is avery direct way to position your book. If you want to add to the sense of elegance, then
you can try planning for an interview with a famous person to add to the magazine. For
instance, inviting an interview discussion with a female newscaster and publishing thiswill be a great way to brighten up the pages.
A fiber wholesaler was making its commemorative magazine and decided to undergo
negotiations to have the company president’s favorite female newscaster appear in the
publication. Her response was that she would do it for one million yen, and this beingoutside the budget it was decided to have a writer who had won the Naoki prize forliterature; which serves a reminder that close consideration of the budget is necessary.
However these projects bare little resemblance to company history. As it is acommemorative magazine it is permissible to publish discussions with guests who have

no relation to the history of the company, but to place such things in a company history
book is to blur the focus of the book, and if you do so you will end up with a very odd
company history.
Because of such points of differentiation and the fact that a commemorative magazine isdesigned to publish information about only a discrete set of events, once you have hit
those targets it is undesirable to publish further exhaustive historical information. For
companies that have few people to give testimony or do not have a long trail of
documentation to follow, the editing of a commemorative magazine is a much simpler
undertaking.
In this may we can separate out the content of company history versus the content ofcommemorative magazines. I believe that even readers tend to be bothered by thequestion of which is the better direction for a project, but please remember that thesetwo different kinds of publications focus on differing kinds of objective and hence will
require two fundamentally different methods of planning. Hence it is a good idea toconsider your objectives thoroughly before embarking on any given project.
In addition to this, when an organization lacks a core management group such as in
for-profit enterprises, the planning and objectives for the project will once again be
difference. For example, for organizations such as unions and cooperatives the content
of their character could be found in friends of the members or in the work they do, which
is not so much corporate management as it is management by a parliament of its
members. Where the unproblematic progression of everyday business and theprevention of stagnation is a serious point of concern, and also when management has
not enjoyed huge success, you could say that the production of a commemorative
magazine for “Gifts and Thanks” as the main drive, as opposed to a complete history, isthe obvious editor’s choice.
Every editor must adequately consider the objectives for the organization, andfurthermore give a thorough examination of the content readers wish to see in thecompany history or commemorative magazine. Once you have covered these you will see
a much greater sense of direction appear for your planning and production stages.

==Section 2: When Planning your Company History==

=7. Planning conditions which your company needs to be aware of.=
After undertaking the examination and selection process for your company history, andthen determining whether you will commemorative magazine or company history
format, you must next consider the planning stage.
The basic planning points to consider are the 5 Ws and 3 Hs.
1. When (do you begin, when do you publish)
2. Where (do you plan, edit and print)
3. Who (is going to be responsible for which editing functions)4. What (are the themes, what kind of book)
5. Why (are you publishing)
6. How (are you publishing)
7. How many (pages, books)
8. How much (are you budgeting)
These points from 1 to 8 make up the foundation of the plan.
Let’s look at the points in order to see what they tell us about company history planning.
1. When (do you begin, when do you publish)
This determines your editing timeline.
Work backwards from the publication date, determining when you need to manuscript
to be completed and when you need the documentation to be collected and arranged by.
2. Where (do you plan, edit and print)
This determines where in the company you choose as a central location
This important factor hits you as soon as you begin your production, where you are
immediately hit with the question of where to put your gathered documentation. This is
the point at which you realize that the very real problem of where to store your records
has just been uncovered. We often hear that, as the head of general affairs is leading the
project, the desk of the head of general affairs becomes the dumping ground for thematerial. Even if it is not the head of general affairs and instead some other manager, it

is likely that the editing of the history is a responsibility concurrent with others andhence the desk will crowded out with other business affairs.
For starters, those being requested to compile a history will, in our opinion, require atleast 2 desks, one bookshelf and one dedicated telephone. This is the bare minimumthat you will need to ask for. If possible, try and have the area be in a place as far awayfrom your everyday work desk as humanly possible.
The most important thing to remember here is that most of the documentation you use
must generally be returned to its original owner, and hence you must be clear on what
you have borrowed, from whom you have borrowed it and when. You have to set yourself
up as being able to instantly respond if you receive an urgent request for material to be
returned. Even though this may seem like a small thing, it is a necessary fixture.
3. Who (is going to be responsible for which editing functions)
Who is going to gather the documentation, create the plan, pen the manuscript, and edit
the production?
The various job functions are expressly laid out in “Appendix G: The Production Processof Company History and Commemorative Magazines” (page 130 to 131). For example,
when looking over the processes and working out which roles can be shared or delegated,
you cannot just consider staff internal to your company but must also consider engaging
outsourcing.
To start with the collection of documentation, it is highly likely that this will have to becovered in-house. But once you have collected the documentation you can then send it toa contractor to be sorted. However it is probably not a good idea for external staff to be
wandering around rifling through your office files. As a specialist in this field we cangive you advice on what kind of documentation is needed and what kind of documents
are not, but that’s about the limit of what we can do.
An Osaka television station outsourced to us and drew a clear line that whatever theyplaced in a given room of five “tsubos” (about 16.55 meters square) was available for us
to review, and what was outside the room was not. That particular company wanted to
implement a database through which it could retrieve documents (called a “Skewer
System”), and we conducted our operations in that room with three of that company’s
employees as helper and handlers. Often we needed more documents, but the company
didn’t want people wandering around the station at random. It seems like an obvious
conclusion to us.

4. What (are the themes, what kind of book)
This factor asks the questions; what theme are you going to set for your book? Is it acompany history or a commemorative history? What sized binding are you looking for?
The preceding paragraph defines theme selection. Please refer to “Eighteen, Selecting aBook Binding” (page 158 to 165) when deciding on an outline for your binding.
5. Why (are you publishing)
What is the significance of your publication? That is the central proposition that you
must answer first in deliberating the aims of the book. The crux of the aims andobjectives discussion was handled previously in this book (Chapter four: The meaningand purpose of a published company history; pages 46 to 60).
6. How (are you publishing)This is a highly specified methodology.
For example, planning and researching internally, whilst outsourcing the writing andediting to an external party; or working on everything up to the manuscript in-house,and having the process from there handled by an external party. These aremethodologies which must be considered (please see section three of this book)
7. How many (pages, books)
This is a question of quantity.
After tackling the obvious questions of quantity such as how many pages to make it or
how many photographs to insert, you often find yourself looking at a plan and thinking,for example, that “this book could really use a few more photographs”. It is necessary to
determine provisional estimates for these things, but they should not be solid
limitations.
For example, once you have a clearly determined production number for distribution, it
is necessary to print approximately 30% more than you estimated or you will findyourself short of copies once the final copies are sent for delivery. Increasing a print
number midway through the run is very expensive, so please take note. The final print
numbers will need to be settled at about the point at which you have completed yourfinal manuscript editing, but over the course of the planning project it is necessary to
use a provisional number.

8. How much (are you budgeting)
When it comes to expenses there are internal costs from things run internally, and there
are external costs for things run by external outsourcing parties. When it comes to thebooks there are both software and hardware costs. These costs comprise of both fixedand variable values. Once you have grasped these points you can move forward on yourproduction without wasteful expenditure. To a certain extent it is most likely necessary
to consult external professionals on these calculations.
We recommend getting a detailed statement of budgetary projection in advance. We
hear many stories of companies who have moved forward with ideas such as “you shouldbe able to do it with 10 million yen” or “try and do it for around 10 thousand yen perbook”.
When you cannot obtain detailed estimates, it means that the estimator lacks the
specific knowledge to make them. Some recent clients of ours were somewhat surprisedat the detail of our own estimates on outsourcing prices.
By going over the above points in detail and well in advance of your project, your time,
your costs, and planning will all progress in a rational manner, and you can focus on
producing a quality publication.

= 8. Previous histories and writing from the second book onwards =There are companies which, having been established fifty years ago in the post-war era,
have previously compiled histories for their 30th and 40th anniversaries and for whom
their 50th anniversary represents their 3rd company history book. It depends on thestrategy of the individual company or managers, but the production strategy oftenchanges between the first and second history.
One meaningful example is the full overview type of book, no matter how many or few
histories have been published previously.
The overview is an effective way to increase awareness of history, however the value ofthat historical awareness has to be evaluated as a part of the historical backdrop, andhence it must be left to the individual managers to determine the accuracy of thehistorical content the book. No one can pass judgment on the authenticity of potential
content immediately, but given the passage of time a correct evaluation will develop.

In other words, even though you have defined the publication as being a company
history to this point, some being to consider whether a rewrite at that point would add
value to the publication. Regardless of the number of books you have published, you canlimit the detailed discourse to a portion of the publications
Your management may be preparing the project proactively but it is not uncommon for
the fruits of their labor to turn around in 3 to 5 years. Management may think thatthings will be the same as the previous history, but in reality it is not unheard of for theappreciation of the book to drop significantly.
In the example of an auto-manufacturer, after the retirement of a controversial but
highly rated financial manager, many of the policies and systems that he instituted
were gradually repealed via cultural change. Following this, the company began tosuffer downturns in performance and was considering allowing itself to be bought out in
1999. In this case the managers considered a previously compiled company history to bevery accurate, but if they were to publish a second history using the assumed accuratecontent of the first history as a base without the managers checking the facts, then I
don’t think that you could not call the second book an accurate history to be left for
future generations.
This is a difficult problem, but for the managers of company history it is an importantfactor in the management of historical knowledge. This is the first role of company
history, and hence the staff need to be trained using the “knowledge of the history of ourcompany” as a theme.
So when you’re not thinking of making an overview for your second history, what kind ofbooks can you plan for? Before making your decision, please consider the differences
between three kinds of company history - True History, Abridged History, and ShortHistory – which we will describe below.
*True History
This is a history of the company which begins its commentary from before the company
was founded and moves through an exhaustive account of events up to the present.
Hence it is the same as the full overview.
*Abridged History
This term is used to describe an abbreviation of a single era of the company’s history.
Because of this you can interpret it as meaning that the generations that are notabridged have full overview histories already written about them. This is not going to be
an exhaustive coverage of the history and hence it will be necessary to show readers thereasons why you omitted sections of history.
* Short History
This term does not refer to histories biased in their omissions or inclusions, but rather
means a compression of history. For instance, submitting an exhaustive history whichweighed in at 200 pages to higher scrutiny on the inclusion of content may compress themanuscript to 100 pages.

Now if you are going to be putting out your second history and you are thinking that you
want to produce a true history as outlined above but wish to abridge and truncate thesection in relation to the era covered in the previous history, then there is a special
method that can be used for the post-first history sections. As a full historical account it
is again pivotal to include the entire history, so by covering these sections as acompressed overview you are able to deliver a short history. These strategies have their
good and bad points.
Producing a “true history” comprises considerable time and cost commitments.
Additionally it is often unclear whether spending more time in any given area will leadto greater results.
Producing an abridged history will allow you to avoid doubling up on costs forresearching the previously handled section of history, but those who can only get theirhands on a copy of the second book will not receive a thorough overview of history, andas the history has only been checked once questions of accuracy will remain.
With a short history you can leave an outline of the history for future generations and ni
doing so skip a lot of costly exercises, but with only summarized content thefundamental proposition of company history, that it is a record of history, becomes a role
which is problematic to fulfill.
You must make a decision by going through each of these strengths and weaknesses
while staying mindful of your objectives. Occasionally a company may be tempted tothink “let’s gather up some documentation first”, “let’s write the manuscript first and
see what happens” or some other method of moving forward provisionally, however wemust say that this is a terrible way to go about company history production. The reason

for this is that the way in which you go about gathering documents and materials fortrue history is different to the way in which you go about gathering materials for an
abridged history and as such the gathering stage will be planned differently.
If you theorize about this question with the people involved from the start and spend
time going over the theory it may cause a little acrimony, however by going throughevery theory early on in the process you can save yourself a lot of headache later, so
please spend as much time as you can allow talking through the objectives and theplanning of the publication.

= 9. The role of your company
company’’s managers =1. The role of the manager of the history.
・ Is communication between internal staff and outsourcing partners being managed
well?
Company history comes about through the contributions and coordination of many
people and as such is not something that any one person can point to and say that they
have made. Because of this a company history represents an amalgam of the wisdom,
information and opinions of many people. This provides a great fantastic opportunity forleaders to show their ability in managing diversity. This alone is a cause for moving
cautiously, however the level of cooperation between the internal staff and the external
contractors will have large implications for the quality of the workmanship; in otherwords, it has to be said that there is a strong relationship between the condition of the
final company history and the ability of the people in your editing room to adjust.
・ That which is demanded of the internal/external communication responsible
You will need a manager that posses the aforementioned ability to adjust and the ability
to state forthright that which needs to be made clear. The production of a company
history book engages both planning and editing functions and hence it is extremely
important to determine a standard by which to judge ideas and information. The qualityof information is, to certain extent, proportional to its volume, and this requires adegree of flexibility in inserting a variety of information and documents as well as
taking onboard the opinions of others. However this flexibility leads to you changing
policies this way and that then it will generate distrust and anxiety, and the result will
surely be to invite a trend of increasing costs. Because the effect of changes will be large

and felt on many fronts, it is often necessary to give a polite refusal to the input of dataof ideas. We would really like your company to put in place manager who understands
this point. If not then the quality of content will be left half-done.
・ The corporate organization and history; those who know the industry
When selecting a manger who fulfills the above criterion, selecting a manager too young
often means that they will lack sufficient first-hand knowledge of many aspects of thecompany history and so it is better to go for an elder employee to run the project. Also,
dealing with outsourcers often means conducting business in a polite manner as the
majority of negotiations are not handled in an aggressive manner, so please selectsomeone who is competent to deal with problems without getting angry or pushy.
The result of thinking along these lines is that many companies end up appointing aretiring senior executive to the position, with many appointing an internal auditor as anadvisor. Appointing these kinds of people will provide a window through which youremployees can observe and learn which we believe makes for a superior team structure.
・ The manager sets the standard for competence
The willpower of the editor must be prepared to “absolutely produce a good history at
all costs
costs””
It is common for a company history to take many long years to produce and many eventsoccur in the interim. Even so we are sure that if your manager embraces his/her rolewith fervor and proceeds with a clear understanding of the objectives in mind then the
production will go well, however we have of heard cases in which a project has beenstalled halfway and discussion has become deadlocked.
It is a difficult proposition for middle managers and those with a lot of non-history workon their plate to begin with, and this is something that as an editor and creator, themanager must absolutely be aware of. To put it another way, the managing editor must
create and every scenario of company history production. To use an orchestra as an
example, the manager is the conductor directing the coordination of internal andexternal employees with his baton and deducing how to bring together the activity of
the whole, this is the very activity to be exercised.
For these reasons we believe that it is necessary to have the will and spirit to publish ahigh quality history. As an outsourcing professional of the industry we must add that, inall honesty, when a manager is putting everything he or she has into a production wefeel that we must also push extra hard to get better results. Our company runs on
passion, and our work is tangled in emotion, so when we see passion we respond bypushing ourselves harder.
A manager at one company spoke to us in plain terms once and said “We’re going to pay
you to do this for us only because we can’t do it in-house, so you guys just do it”. You
cannot call a project such as this a company history. Of course if they were to ask us todo the any or all of the production then it would be something that we deliver, however
it would remain a simple “book of company history”, whereas the essential purpose of acompany history should be thought of a being to activate the company’s core abilities
and strengthen the centripetal force holding the group together. If the production gets tosuch a point then the book will be useful as little more than an expensive luxury.
As our company was working on that clients project we often found ourselves reflecting
on how disappointing it was.
2. The role of the editing executive team and editing room
Now let’s switch from examining the role of the manager of the publication and look at
the editing executive team, and answer some questions on the practice and applicationof an editing room.
When you consider the functions that an executive team must serve, the two mostimportant roles are the twin roles of investigation and decision making. The things
which they deliberate and decide upon are the plans drawn up in the editing room, theediting procedures and policies, the content of the manuscript, as well as such crucial
inputs as the budget.
When it comes to the makeup and structure of this leadership group many companies
take a combined approach, but as the group is going to be made up of representatives ofeach main department who have spent a great deal of time in the company it should bemade of 7 or 8 at the smallest scale or 14 to 15 at the largest scale. As the head of theexecutive team will be a generally well-known senior executive who engages the entire
company, it will be easy to pick up the history and have the entire company engage theproduction as well. Executive teams should also include a few experienced staff from thecentral office, PR and the office of the company’s chief executive. However it is usual totake not one but two specialist staff in any one of those areas.
Data File B: Organization chart of editing group (pg 104)

-Set firm direction-Give instruction
and decision-Supply information-Give interviews-Profiling project inCompany andgenerating project
support-Management focus-Drafting-Collation-Supply information-Conduct interviews-Relationship tomanagement-Supply information-Give interviews-Cooperate withother groups

Company President

Editing Executive Team
Concurrent with executive roles

Editing Room Staff
Approximately 3-5 workers
from permanent staff

History Cooperative Group-Propose andprovide planningand production-Support progress-Outsource
functions

Production
Company
Strategic planning
manager
EditorWriterDesigner
Cameraman
Revisers
Printers

Representatives from each section

Business
Acquaintances
Etc.

All Employees

Senior Employees-Supply information-Be interviewed-Give input
The editing staff of the editing room put together a tentative plan and policy structure
which they present to the executive team, who then examines the proposal and makes adetermination on how to move forward. The editing room staff then acts on the
consolidated plan. There are companies which, without offering up documentation, ask
an outsourcer to develop their plan, however, given that the external staff cannot beshown the documentation and materials on which they are planning the plans that they
make will certainly be mono-dimensional regardless of the company involved. Therefore
it is necessary to appoint a knowledgeable manager who can gather the rightinformation and work together with an outsourcer to plan the project.
The second most important role of the editing room is the gathering of documents andmaterials. As mentioned earlier, an outsourcing party can give you much advice ingathering materials; however given the amount of obstacles to outsiders collecting data
within a company it is not possible to outsource this process in its entirety. You can havean outsourcing party set up a ledger (see page 128 for an “Annual Ledger”), or sort
through your collected materials, but you cannot have an outsourcing party do the workof actually collecting the materials within the company itself.
The third role of the editing room is to make discussion on the manuscript congruent.
This role is probably the most difficult part for the manager of the production. The
history is generally timed to align with an anniversary, and hence it is fundamentallythe creation of a present. Being basically a present, quarrels between internal andexternal staff are something that you will want to avoid at all costs.
However in reality, when Mr. A has a verbal disagreement with Mr. B the manager has
little choice but to step in and act. When there is a divergence of opinion on a line ofinterview questions then you can cancel the interview, however if you are at the final
editing stage of manuscript editing and have a divergence of opinion along the lines of“That is wrong” followed by “no it’s not”, it can lead to confrontation. Hence if you do nothave the manuscript checked early and regularly it can lead to significant problems
later on.
In the case of one company the then president kicked off a courageous company history
project, but having failed to interview the founder of the company for the production
saw the company founder condemn the book as not being a formalized history. The
editors were forced to include an interview with the founder at the last minute. The
manager spent many sleepless nights on the project, and having such bad memories
attached to the finished book dislikes the sight of it. The level of quality of the book is of
no relevance, but the manager simply dislikes memories of the project.
To avoid such cases a manager must first listen to many opinions, but then refuse to
publish the impossible or useless.
One manager borrowed a photograph of a deceased former executive of the company
from his widow, but not having used it in the final book was asked “but why did you
borrow it then?” by the distraught widow. When you borrow photographs and there is apossibility that you can’t place it in the book be sure to tell the person in advance, thatway things which are unusable can be quickly returned with a polite statement like“Thank you for letting me use this as a reference”.
This problem with the photography also extends to rewrites of the manuscript so pleaseproceed with necessary caution.
The fourth role is the interview process. The interviewees should be invited by your own
internal staff and not outsourcers, and whilst outsourcers can advise and support, theylack the trust of the interviewee and hence cannot conduct the interviews. It is also rude
to the interviewee to substitute the interviewer for a different writer for the article.
The materials for the interviews need to be arranged well in advance and the interview
needs to be scripted for time and content, attending to the subject on the day is, as amatter of polite conduct, something that you will want to put as much effort as possible
into doing. Accompanying the subject to and from the interview is especially important
for the company’s senior employees.

= 10. Outsourcing editing processes of your Company History=
1. The things that you can have outsourced
So what can you have outsourcers, that is to say production companies, do for you? Let’s
have a look at the main ways:
A. Advisory capacity
The core business of company history publisher is company history publishing, andhence they can essentially act at the level of adviser to a publication team.
B. Provision of core competencies as a knowledgeable professional organization
Planning and editing are obvious functions, but proof-reading and graphic-design are
areas in which the knowledge and skills to handle a publication are, we believe,necessary. Certainly an editor can proof-read a manuscript on their own, but thisfunction is quite often outsourced to professional revisers. Graphic design is a field witha high degree of specific knowledge and specialization and hence we see graphic design
being outsourced quite often. If you outsource graphic design you must impress theimportant points you wish to achieve on them, and they in turn must be able to breakthis down clearly. An important point to remember when outsourcing is that if theresults they give do not hit the aims you had made clear or has not been checkedthrough thoroughly, then you cannot call the outsourcers professional
C. Showing clear leadership in the shared role of manuscript checking andproof-reading
As we will define in more detail later (pages 165 to 167) manuscript checking andproof-reading is where managers show their real ability. For that alone we are sure it’s
an area in which managers will seek solid support from professionals. For this theimportant points are whether the outsourcing company shows leadership and whether
or not they give you good advice.
D. Proactive involvement in your scheduling
The management of the schedule is influenced quite heavily by your manager; however
it is necessary for the outsourcing company representative to fixate on schedules whichlook likely to run late, and to give notice and advice as they see fit and sometimes bestern with the manager when things look likely to unravel. You really want to get apartner who is proactive with your scheduling.
E. Someone who is running the costs through their head backwards whilst keeping thegoal in mind
I think this depends very much on the character abilities of the individual outsourcing
company, but when our company constructs an estimate we include a broad spectrum of
information on costs, and if the client wishes to change the proposal we invite them tolay out their own estimates.
This is of course obvious to a professional, but in the company history market up to thispoint it has been much as stated previously.
The way that the managers of a production company should be calculating theirestimates is by firstly having a good grasp of the relevant costs, and then subtracting
these costs from their budget forecast, hence they should always have a sense of
running the costs backwards. Whenever something changes in the plan, being able togive you a rough estimate of the impact this will have on cost is a matter of sincerity. If
it becomes apparent midway that a change in content or a change of binding will need tooccur and they do not inform you of the resulting change in price then be resolute inprotest when they come to discuss final prices.
2. How to divide out tasks between the internal staff and external staff

Unless you are yourself a printing company then it is quite difficult to print your bookwithout outsourcing. However the question of where to draw the line on outsourcing
differs for each company. Here we examine, for those who are considering the idea, thecircumstances under which you should outsource certain functions. Please refer to“Data File C: Advantages and Disadvantages of Outsourcing”, which examines theadvantages and disadvantages of outsourcing on a function by function basis.
This is especially important for the manuscript which has a large impact on the qualityof the final work so it is necessary to move carefully on this. If you think of the history
as the company’s own personal history book, finding someone inside your own company
who has the knowledge of the company’s position and the skills to write in clear andconcise wording is certainly a stroke of luck, but in reality such workers are rare.
If you’re are struck by the question “do I need to outsource the entire manuscript?” thenrest assured that this is never the case. One method is write a rough draft of themanuscript yourself and then have an external writer rework it and finalize it. Since itis the personal history of the company you can have it written in the subjective opinionof the company, but you would probably not want it in the direct wording of your writing
manager. In this case it would be necessary to solidify the manuscript in objective
terminology. This is a difficult thing to do and hence it is necessary to appoint an
external writer.
On the other hand if you appoint a writer to work the manuscript from the interviews
onwards, then the addition of the company’s self-image to the manuscript will require agreat deal of effort. It is certainly not an easy task but as the writer is writing in place ofthe company and because of this is it necessary to classify the writer as being aghostwriter, shadow-writer, associate writer or any of those such classifications.
As they are capable of good hard writing, hiring someone with journalistic credentials
will give your company history more concrete analysis, but the possibility that thecompleted manuscript will be incongruous with the company’s ideals will be impossible
to discount.
When considering the needs of the writer it is necessary that they be totally absorbed in
the piece. This is to say that writing is a psychological undertaking which varies widelyrelative to the writer’s personality between conducting the interviews and writing themanuscript, and that writing, being internal to the writer, means that you must get
used to them being psychologically affected employees, who are subject to bouts of stress.
The writers who can handle this stress with minimum disruption are the ones who youcan call professionals.
Therefore in the world of authors and freelance writers, sharp witted and famous
writers from a journalistic background are not the only ones at the top of the quality
scale, some of the highest quality writers are people you may never have heard of. Be
sure to understand this, and give your writer sufficient information and documents andinclude them in production process as much as possible.

= 11. Setting up competitive bidding =If you are electing to use the services of an outsourcing party, it is first necessary to
select which company you will outsource to. Next we will define how best to go about theprocess of selecting the company to which you will entrust much of the success of yourproject.
When selecting a partner it is necessary to examine the quality of its planning systems
and also its budget projections. If you can get the best quality for the best price then it isof course the best outcome, but if you select only on price without much consideration
for the strength of their planning then there is a danger that it will not produce actual
results. It is therefore necessary to achieve a balance between the cost and the content
of the plan in your final decision. I think that all industries have an equivalent to this,but in setting up “competitive bidding” the company sends the same basic outline ofwhat they want to many potential outsourcing companies at once, and given the same
number of days in which to develop their offer you can examine their bids on their
merits.
1. Comparing the content of the bids
Firstly it is necessary to include in your proposal general information relating to yourcompany which will not cause harm if leaked. Publicly traded companies have a great
deal of information on them in libraries or on the internet which can be easily obtained,
but information on private companies is not easily obtained without applying directly tothe company. At the very least give them information on the things you would like aplan to include and the direction you would like it to take, then inform them timeline
you are following and be clear on the final day on which you are accepting bids.
The bids you receive will be explained to you in detail, but the best process to undertakeis to not just talk to their representatives, but speak to as many people involved in theirbid as possible and make your decision only after detailed discussions.
Comparing the content of the plan the production companies propose will mean taking ameasurement of the current capabilities and production values of the company. The
most important aspect of this is determining how well they have researched yourcompany and how much they have tailored their bid to your company. That is to thatmeasuring this is measuring is measuring their production capabilities.
In practice having received proposals and decided on a company gives progress over andabove what the plan promises, but sometimes this is not the case.
There is an eminent need to confirm whether the production companies that havetailored their bids to you situation actually have the capacity to carry out their bids, andin addition to selecting the company with the greatest abilities you should select basedon the detail of their plan, hence you should give out more detailed information on yourcompany to the bidders and then discuss this with them.
However high price does not necessarily guarantee high quality, so next we will discuss
price.
2. Comparing the price estimates
There are two methods for comparing on the price number
1. Take the individual terms and conditions of the proposal and negotiate on price forthese items
2. Take the total budget for the project and negotiate on how much of the proposal canbe effectively implemented
The first method involves taking the terms and conditions of the project and calculatingwhere the price will go from there, hence it is a method of dropping the price for thevarious items. However those negotiating for your company needs to put a great deal of
consideration onto each of the terms, and hence if the managers do not study thecompany history to a certain degree and have a clear understanding of the history thecompany wishes to produce, then they wont be able to effectively negotiate these terms.
The terms to consider are written below.
-

The planned date of completion-

The way in which the manuscript will be produced (written by staff, written byproduction company, a mixture of both, how many interviews, where to useinterviews, etc.)-

How many manuscripts, how many pages-

The binding (the format, the binding style, the number of printed pages, the numberof colors employed in the body and the covers)-

The number of black and white and color photographs, final print numbers

Putting these points in writing and handing it to the production company will
conversely result in you being able to negotiate price directly by adjusting these terms.
3. Comparing price vs. content
Next we consider setting a price and then allowing the content to argue on its merits,
which as a company involved in the bidding process, we see as the wisest approach.
The reasons are:
1. You only need to have decided the total budget number and the completion date, so
preparation is easy
2. You start with setting the budget, so you can set a number you are comfortable with
3. Fixing the numbers and comparing on the plan means that the only time the pricewill change is when you make an alteration to the plan once it is underway
In reality the problem with the first method is that as you are not providing muchinformation with which a company can define their bid, and so the bids ofapproximately equally rated production companies will tend to appear very similar incontent. There are also cases in which a company puts forward a good bid but the lack ofdetail makes the production process unclear.
At the same time point 3 obviously gives a restriction to the cost and time a project cantake, which forces the competitors to focus on showing their knowledge base in thebidding process, making it easier to identify the professionals. Furthermore, using thismethod you can think clearly about turning the plan in the production process, andfocus on checking the important details of the content.
At this point of the process you only need to have budget and your final publishing datedecided as well as a list of your basic necessary requirements for the book. If you hand
this to the bidders in written format then you can focus on gathering materials until thefinal day to accept bids.
It is however most certainly not the case that, as you have already set the budget, you
do not need any cost estimates with the proposals. Ensure that the bidder attach theircosting to their proposal.
You will be able to run direct comparisons on each company’s plan by checking theindividual items you specified they hit and through this get a firm grip on the
differences between each company, and as each company places its own thoughtprocesses into their bid it makes it a highly effective method for ascertaining therealistically good and bad points of any given bid. If a company submits a very rough setof estimates or the estimate is laid out in an unclear manner then you will be able to get
an understanding for that company’s culture and approach.
It is also necessary to check how much alterations in the plan will cost once the projectgets underway. Be sure to check now what kind of scale the price would increase in
response to say an increase in the number of pages, and break this down into per unit
costs.

= 12. Tips on selecting outsourcing partners =In the last chapter we touched upon how to go about setting up a bidding process foryour history. Through this process you will select one company from the others to award
your contract, and the main points to stress in this process are: A. the good and bad
points of the individual plan, B. The total price, and C. the level of service provided by
the production company. We believe that you should get a firm understanding from a
simple comparison of the aforementioned points, but aside from these there some more
extremely important points. They are: D. the strengths and weaknesses of the writer,and E. the potential for compatibility problems between your employees and theemployees of the production company.
Firstly, if you are going to be outsourcing your manuscript then you are going to beengaging a writer for manuscript creation and to conduct interviews. The handling of
this writer is very important. There is also the simultaneous question of what level ofwriter the outsourcing company is hiring.
When our company started producing histories thirteen or fourteen years ago, it was avery difficult time to manage writers. At the time there were few writers who wrote

company history, and given this restricted supply companies went with who everseemed like they could write the piece. But as the pay steadily began to increase, andwriters became harder to find, we began a groundbreaking project “Manuscript
Distribution Service: Themenet”.
In the course of our normal work we were not attracting large numbers of writers and as
a manuscript writing service, we were able to use this to attract large numbers ofwriters. Our company at that time was based only in Osaka, however through thenumber of orders we received from Tokyo we were able to expand to a Tokyo office thefollowing year. In addition to attracting writers we were able to begin full company
history production services in Tokyo within two years of opening our office there.
Our company has at present over 1000 writers registered with us; however these people
have been selected from an applicant pool ten times that size through a written
application and interview system. Of course every year we have writers leave thesystem, but at the same time we have a larger number of fresh applicants selected.
In October 2006 we found many cases of copyright infringement and this caused trouble
for our clients. In this age of the internet, where content misappropriation, misuse andabuse has become so easy, we have ceased the use of external groups and in order toprevent such problems are proceeding with our own writers.
It’s true that this specific problem was exacerbated by our business of attracting writers,
however the number quality of writers a company has access to is a large determinantof the quality of company history, and so it is something I believe we must movecautiously on.
In our experience the quality of writers you can provide is proportional to the quantityof writers you have access to. That is to say that to select a high quality writer it isnecessary to select from a large pool. On the same point it is also necessary to confirm
the activity of your production company in regard to interviews and writing. It has to besaid that any production company which lacks detailed information on their own
writers represents high risk. It is also plausible that after selecting a production
company and interviewing the writer you find that you are not satisfied with the writer.
If you are not introduced to the new writer as soon as he/she is selected thencommunication will weaken.
On point E., talking about “compatibility” may seem like a strange term to use, however
we believe that compatibility of the client company and the production company is afactor. How much does the company understand your company culture? How well canthey adapt to your culture? The company you select will be working with you for thelong term and hence this is a point which we believe you should consider at length.

==Section 3: How to edit and produce your History===13. How to go about collecting and sorting data and material=
1. Sorting the documentation and creating a database
Once you have decided on the direction of your project and selected your outsourcing, it’stime to get on with the business of producing your history.
As a specialist in company history planning and production, one of the things we highly
recommend for managers publishing a history, and which solves many problems
simultaneously utilizing a range of technologies, is the material gathering andarrangement system.
Please see “Data File D: Material Gathering Checklist” and “Data File E: Publishable
Photograph Management Sheet”. The material gathering checklist is laid out with a listof materials on the vertical axis and the year on the horizontal axis, and hence is achronological ledger of all the materials you have on a year to year basis. By laying out achart of your material like this the materials you have for each era, and more
importantly which eras are missing, is apparent at a glance. The basic rules ofgathering materials is firstly to give pride of place to documents which relate to “Headmanagement’s direction”, and then by searching for documents which back up and flesh
out the history, such as “other internal documentation” and “external documentation”,
you can set up an efficient gathering and arrangement process that is without waste. If
you set out your photograph collection out in the same manner as data file E attributing
year taken, content of the photograph, source identity (name, division), date of planned
return to source, location stored and giving it a serial number will make it much easier
to find and use them when you write them into the book.
From here you can extract the arranged materials to make your timeline, but in ourcompany we apply a different methodology to that of a simple chronologicalarrangement of documents. We use a format laid out in “Data file F: Annual Ledger”.
The information obtained in the gathering phase is placed in an “annual” chart andseparated by the kind of information it contains, where it is arranged so that thecompany’s history can be reviewed. A point of particular importance is to stipulate thebusiness areas to which a given item relates, such as whether it relates to all
management or only top management for example. This arrangement by type isimmensely important, and moreover the number of items a company can collect ishighly variable, and so by arranging your data and documentation this way you will beable to examine what is available to you thoroughly. The success or failure of the annual
ledger will determine which categories of historical material are appropriate for you topursue. If you have too few categorizations then it is the same as not categorizing themat all, and if you have too many categorizations then the documents will be too
dispersed and the operation will lose efficiency. Also, changing the categories means
re-categorizing from the start and hence doing so results in a significant loss of time,and so it is best to set categories for the first two or three years as a kind of test, andthen proceed to arrange the rest carefully.
In addition to this, adding the number of employees on a year by year basis gives a good
indicator of the changes the company is going through, and so it makes for good figure
by which you can chart the effects of various historical factors, so please include thisnumber.
Because one of these pages represents a whole year in the company, a fifty year history
necessitates 50 of these pages, so for companies such as trading companies which havemanifold business interests, or large complex companies with broad scope, writing aseparate page for different industries or staff, and thereby having many pages per year.
Please refer to the company history production schedule as outlined in “Data File G:
The Process of Producing Company History and Commemorative Magazines”.
As specified there, we would like you to produce the annual ledger over the course of two
distinct periods. If you don’t bother with doing it a second time because you think you
don’t have time or that it’s troublesome then you will most certainly miss some or othervital pieces of information.
The reason that it is necessary is that the first time you set about gathering inputs you
set out to find out what you don’t have. Once you have determined what your researchlacks then you can determine that which you should set about searching for, and thatwhich is unnecessary, and from there develop a plan which aims to fill the specificinformation targets you wish to hit
Data File D: Material Gathering Checklist

Period

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

s.

s.

s.

s.

h.

h.

h.

h.

h.

h.

h.

h.

h.

h.

h.

h.

h.

h.

h.

h.

60

61

62

63

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

20

20

200

20

20

85

86

87

88

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

98

99

00

01

2

03

04

Japanese Calendar

Items

Western Calendar

Business reports
Management'

Mid-Long term managements then-reality

projects
Annual plans

Decicions

Director's meeting minutes

inputs to

Draft plans circulated for

management

ideas

Head
Management
Internal memos
Direction
Decisions ofContract papers (joint

management

operations, leases,
acquisition)

Presidential
Start of fiscal year, start ofannounceme
year, shareholders meetings
nts
Sharholder's meeting
records
Company outlines, newemployee guides
Internal memos
articles of association forsuccessive generationsorganizational structure
chartsproduct catalogues
PR documents such as
Other internal documentspress releases
related industry papers,
written published articles
Sales Promotion, campaign
plans
Newspaper advertisements
Posters, leaflets and printed
advertising
Stills from television
advertisements, scripts fromradio advertisements
Legal documents (including
External documentation

those pertaining to
antiquated laws)

Related industry
information, industry papers,
other writing

Data File E: Publishable Photograph Management Sheet
Legend: ☆ = Photograph owned by company, ○ =Photograph required, △ = Photograph to be requested
SerialAxis

Year

Published

Potographic content

Number

Date
Plan

Current

Supplier/Owner

taken

Remarks
taken

0

0

2

0

4

0

6

0
26th

49

1

New employees report

Horizontal○
Dec
Taken from49

2

Punchcard machine

Horizontal

pamphlet for

27thTokyo Heavy

Dec○
Equipment
Also inHead Office Insurance
49

3

Hitachi's X
Vertical△

HitachiNakanoshima

anniversary
hist.

49

4

Central office building

Vertical△

Hitachi50

5PCS computer

Horizontal△

Mr. John Doe

Horizontal△

Hitachi

Opening ceremony,50

6national online system
implementation

Data File F: Annual Ledger

19XX-YY-ZZ 19XX (Showa XX)

XX Years since foundation

XX Financial periods of operation
19AA-BB-CC

A. General Management Envrronment

B. Management plans,and Management Direction

slogans etc.

C. Organization, People, Education

D. Central office

G. Factory, internal and external

H. Sales branches

・ 00.00 Leave a single space between the date and thedescription of the event which follows

・ 00.00 Write dates and numbers in half-width characters,also start each point with a bullet point such as this ・Start a new line by holding alt and pressing enter・ 12.21 Management plan launched for year 13 of Heisei(2001)

・ 01.01 -eg; 1st of January. Write in point 9 MSP Ming-Cho

font・ 02.28 When opening a new line do not adjust the spacearound the date. Continue writing as above

F. New productE. Notable items related to customers
developments and productand managers
launches

I. Popular Attitude (Executives,

L. Notes, Published
K. The attitude of the wider

Retirement aged employees, External

J. Related companies

works, Printed
Industry

staff)

materials, other

Employees:
Sales Revenue:

Representatives(Male:) (Female:)

Operating Profit:

Executive: Managing Director XXXX, Executive Director YYYY,
Temp:

Income Before Taxes:

Directors: AAAA, BBBB
(Male:) (Female:)

Capital:Auditor: CCCC
Total:

Ord. Shares Issued:(Male:) (Female:)For example you may find that a in the first half of the 30’s of the Showa period the“Personnel Department” was a common sight, but how many of “Section Chiefs” or“Division Managers” of Personnel do find these days? Researching the former managers
of such a division will deliver an understanding of the people. If there is somedocumentation remaining from the era then referencing that will likely fill the voids inyour ledger.
Also, people’s memories are generally linked to other memories and can be reachedthrough them. The managers file the documents and fill their information in the ledger,
and using this as a reference guide seek out each manager asking them about theevents of their department and fill the box with documentation relating to this. You
don’t need to fill the boxes in one go; you can gradually fill them over the course of manyexchanges with each of the managers. Collect material once and collate the findings on
one the one page. Once this has been done redistribute it to managers where the newlyreferenced information can act as a stimulus and this often leads to new information. If
you patiently continue repeating this pattern with the external staff, senior employees,
business associates then you will gradually fill the white space on your annual ledger.
When using the information on the ledger, some details of the documentation will beskimmed off in order to make it a one-glance document. If you hit the 5 Ws and 1 H(When, Who –as in who was the project responsible etc-, Where, What, Why and How)
then you’ve got enough information. The reality is that when you go to write themanuscript the annual ledger will be used as an index by which you can search formaterials which you can then find and use in the writing. Where material hasn’t beenentered into the ledger, be sure to always write its name/title along with any necessary
comparisons and photocopies if possible.
One upon a time we used to write out the annual ledger by hand, but nowadays weinput the information into Microsoft Excel. Using excel you can stretch out each item toas much space as necessary and it’s even possible to change individual pages from B4 to
A3 etc. There is however a limit to the amount of data you can input, and hence you
must prioritize providing depth in the details on how to directly access the original
documentation in your shelving or locker system over and above simply adding thename of the document.
Data File G: The Process of Producing Company History and Commemorative
Magazines

Step A: Planning

Step B: Compiling and Sorting

1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)

1)

Decision to publish Company History
Appointment of managers
Setting up the Executive Team *Setting out the Basic Policies
Setting up the Editing staff **Deciding Editing policies ****Does research and decision making

2)
3)
4)
5)

At most 14-15 members, at least 5-6** Creates detailed outline and reports to
executive team

6)
7)

Does the actual work editing

8)
9)• This group is a standing committee• The group may have to be full-timedepending on the scale of the history

10)

Document sourcing policy andstrategy
Deciding the arranged ledger (annual
ledger)First round of material gathering(by the Editing Room staff)
First round of data skimming
Second round of material gathering(targeting senior employees, external
employees etc.)
Round two of data skimming
Round three of material gathering(to the whole company)
Round three of data skimming
Reinforcement of ledger sections
lacking depth
Preparation of ledger documents iscompleted*** This considers the content andcharacter of the manuscript, which charts,
photographs and documents to use, theway the material is sourced, and how thatmaterial is arranged to form the history
On to step C

On to step B

Step C: Interviews/Manuscript

Step D: Editing

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

1)
2)
3)
4)

9)
10)
11)
12)
13)
14)

Have the writer read the materials
Produce a layout for the content
Set interview policies
Run interviews
Complete Interviews
Produce tentative chapter list
Reexamine tentative chapter list
Check the opening section of themanuscript
Write draft manuscript
Check draft
Rewrite manuscript (final edition)
Check manuscript (for generalcontent etc.)
Final manuscript edits
Manuscript completed

On to step D

5)
6)
7)

Arrange Manuscript
Consolidation of format
Specifying layout
Sending to press (and designing thebindingFirst proof
Re-proof
Check blueprint and coloration

Step E: Printing and Binding
1)
2)
3)

Print
Bind
Complete

Step F: Distribution & Support
1)
2)
3)

Distribute
File materials used in production
Define search rules for remaining
arranged material

Data File H: Annual Ledger, FileMaker version

Name: ****

Basic

Executive

Number of

staff

Employees

Executives
Annual Ledger (no 35)
President

Male
staff:

FemaleM-F Ratio

Employees

Year: 1992 Heisei:

Temp Staff

4

GenderTotalsManagement
HR, General

Overview

Business, General

Policy,Total Sales:
Affairs, Training

Slogans*A* Year 27's
Management

03A07

Strategy

responsibile:

Slogan:Chief Clerk

Toward Global

Training

Company

This day and

Make Allthe 15th

02A22 27th Annual
Business Reporting
Meeting

Strong!
*A* Year 28's

03A08

Management

responsible:

Strategy

Chief Clerk

Slogan:Training

Lets act withThis day andthe spirit of

the 14th, highbuilding alevel employee

company

training

05S22 26th AGM

04A01 Company
Entrance
Ceremony, 78
06A15 New Information

Ordinary
new employees

SystemProfit:17 graduatinghigh school on
19th March
05A30

11A23 Central, Branch
Heirachicallyand Sales offices
Spereatedconnected online
Research

Enacted
06A07 Important
Policy Research
EnactedAlso on the
28th
06A28 Company
SoftballChampionship
Hosdted in

After Tax

Western Japan,

ProfitEastern Japanon the 9th ofAugustGeneral Management,

Marketing, PR,
Sales, Clients

Accounting

Main Products
Adevertising
08A01

02A29 157,880 new

Manufactured

shares issued to*A* Imports for 92 total

Meat Poductsupport swaps for

47,284 Tonnes"Motsu Hot

Convertible Bonds

Pot" goes onsale

04A17 1 for 1.2 share
split, 2,575,576 new

Units Sold

shares issued

Total Capital

Technology,

Branches, Retailers,

Subsidiary

Exhibitions,

Knowloedge, Patents

Factories, Stores

Activity

Events
03A10 Attended
the '92

08A03 Gifu Sales

Total SharesInternational

Established

IssuedFood andBeverage Expo

FOODEX
until the 14th,
hosted at the
Makuhari Messe
International
Convention
Complex
02A25 Attended
PORK FESTA
10A01 Design change in'92
factory uniform
until the 26th,
Godanda TOC
05A10
Participated in
11A02 Ibaraki Sales

the 1stEstablishedNaruohama
SoftballChampionshipIndustry
Related Associations

Social Environment

Other
Environment

02C13 The Police
Department and theTokyo Local

02C20 America

Preosecutor's officeBusiness trip

detain managers forquestioning at Sagawa
04C23 Raw
03C14 The Nozomi

Materials

bullet train line opens,

Manufacturingtransit time between

Office, SouthTokyo and Osaka is cut

America,to 2 and half hours

AmericaBusiness trip

until May 1st
06C15 Japanese

08C17 One year

Government begins

anniversary

assisting in global

sinceemergency peaceconstructing the

keeping operations

main temple
10C01 Received
Letter of thanks*C* The post-bubble

from Governer

economic recessionof Hyogoworsens

Orefecture
For volunteering
services

Recently we have also begun to introduce annual ledgers produced using FileMaker (seeData File H: Annual Ledger, FileMaker version). By using this you are free to place asmuch data in the ledger as you need, you can also digitize the documents in question
and link them directly to the page as well as adding a search function turning to turn it
into a mini-database. The good thing about a database is that it is not only easy tosearch quickly, but having created it once it is subsequently naturally suited to freely
adjusting the layout and storage of documents, and in your next history you can apply
this to cut back on the necessary number of staff for gathering and arrangement.
Additionally, it is always possible to engage the search system of the database to createa digital system through which a company can instantly reference and use its
documentation as a development aimed at knowledge management.
In overseas companies it is sometimes common to have individual companies outsource
their document gathering, sorting and filing done by a third party, however in ourcountry it is not yet a clear option to move forward with. The current process necessarily
involves individual companies using their own effort to gather, sort and file documents,
however in the case of large scale clients engaging libraries of information, the cost of adatabase is huge and difficult to customize. Implementing a practical database for suchcompanies at a low cost, whether for large companies or SME scale, often means first
implementing a small-scale FileMaker mini-database as a platform to guide such a
project.
2. Information Sources for Company History

When considering your plan for the history, if you’ve planned it around a previously
existing and fairly standard example of another company’s history book then this
discussion will be short, but if the kind of history which suits your objectives is rare
then it is often the case that you will not be able to find an appropriate example. There
are a few places in which you can access various company histories so we will list themhere for you to look through.
The Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry Library
3-2-2 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo City. Ph: 03-3283-7580
The Kanagawa Prefectural Kawasaki Library
2-1-4 Fujimi, Kawasaki-ku, Kawasaki City. Ph: 044-233-4537
If you are from a listed company then you can access the Tokyo Securities Exchange andreference the company histories of listed companies.
Tokyo Securities Library
3rd floor Tokyo Securities Assembly, 1-5-8 Kayaba-cho, Nihonbashi, Chuo-ku,
Tokyo. Ph: 03-3669-4004
Osaka Securities Library
5th Floor Osaka Securities Assembly (Annex), 2-1-5 Kitahama, Chuo-ku,
Osaka City. Ph: 06-6201-0062
Osaka Nakanoshima Government Library
1-2-10 Nakanoshima, Kita-ku, Osaka City. Ph: 06-6203-0474
Matsushita Memorial Library
1-1 Saganakadai, Sourakugunkidzu-cho, Kyoto-fu. Ph: 0664-72-7776
Lately many libraries have been making search functions available for their catalogues
online, so why not look the up on the internet and search first before making the trip?
=14. How to create a structured layout =1. Internal layout of the company history
Please refer to “Data File I: Internal Layout of the Company History”

Company history, from a publication perspective, can be divided into the six parts ofBinding, Preliminaries, the Frontispiece, the Main Text, the Appended Documentationand the Post-Script.
On the surface this seems to be a considerably orthodox company history. We will be
fixing a detailed outline of what each of these entail so please read through that, but
first we will run through a number of important explanations.
“Binding” is the foremost visible of the six, and the professional binding companies towhom we outsource give significant input into the paper and the materials choices andact more as graphic designers than printers.
We include the “frontispiece” as one of the 6 structural aspects of a company history, but
in truth it is not a total necessity for every company. Different companies in different
industries may want to display different skills and characteristics, and so I believe it isnecessary for each company to consider what kind of structure suits their objectives.
There are the main ways of going about creating the “Main Text”, but not all of theelements of these are necessary in the final product. The various ways of putting thetext together have their various strengths and weaknesses and so it depends on thecircumstances the individual company finds itself in as to which they should select.
The first method, named “Footsteps of the company, the entire path”, certainly traces
the path of the entire company, however understanding this in detail for each and every
department of a company is rather difficult. If you go through each detail in the tenureof each manager then the manuscript will be lengthy and the book will be troublingly
large, not to mention the high capital and time costs associated with such anundertaking.
The next method “Separate theme, tracing the footsteps”, is thematically closer to acommemorative magazine than a company history. For instance one runs over the
structure of a large manufacturing plant. The method involves following the start of theplant project, completion of the plant, and activity which followed from there;
essentially, using this method it is possible to compile many elements into a single book.
This book develops by distinguishing certain events as themes and collating it, hence
that which relates to the whole can be made to be next.
The third type is “Tracing the footsteps of the respective departments”, where theprogress made by each department may be clear, but the collective movement of thecompany may be difficult to ascertain. In other words it is difficult to understand howimportant any given event is relative to another. Being hard to understand, thisrelativity of importance is a big problem for companies given that most of them choose
to go with the first method of writing a history in its entirety rather than the second or
third methods.
I should add that even when large companies select the second or third methods theyoften do so in addition to compiling their entire history in a separate medium. It isespecially true that the first company history a company compiles is generally the first
via the first method. The reason for this is that it is necessary for the first history tocover the period since pre-foundation. If for instance one of the original directors passes
away then the vast array of historical knowledge goes with them and so you will belimited in the spectrum of history you can access
Data File I: Internal Layout of the Company History

Production
AspectBinding

Production Content

Front cover,Book title, Company name, Company badge, Anniversary (eg; 50th year of

Front case paper

operation)

EndpaperThis is often not printed. That which gives an impression of the company suchas maps of the area, illustrations and aerial photographs are the norm

Title page, Centre Book title, Company name, Company logo, Anniversary (eg; 50th year of
title
Introduction,
Prologue,
Acknowledgments

Preliminaries

Engage a representative from the company (such as the president) to write
theseContents

Frontispiece contents, Main text contents, Appendix contents

Thanks,Thank around 3 to 4 partners (supplier, dealers, etc), and about 3 to 4 people

statement on

from peak bodies or related groups. Make statement about the content being

editorial

checked by someone such as a professor you ar familiar with (be sure that thissupervision

actually happens).

LegendFrontispiece

operation)

Editing rules and terminology, Book production determinations, anything thatwould be useful to know when trying to understand the book

Imagery

Select a photograph which gives an image of the company which can be readily

Photographconveyed to readers

Seeing history in
the photo

Publish a photograph which shows the path of the company

Photograph of the Anything which gives a perspective oon the current company, its outline, ancurrent company

external perspective or conveys the scene the business operates in

Photographrelating the

Photographs which show how the company gave birth to the company's projects

company andor social undertakingssociety
Photographrelating thecompany's
products andproduction

Photographs which show how the company's products have impacted society,and what the company's contribution to society is through those products

environment tosociety
Thematic

Photographs which especially capture a theme such as remarkable results or a

Photography

significant project's conclusion

Capturing thepath taken by thecompany as awhole
Main Text

Capturing theevents of a single
theme

Capture the essence of what the company has achieved within the contexts of
its industry, society and the backdrop of the era in which it happened. Apply thisfor the history of the company, its leadership, its people, its management, its
technology, its culture, its industry, its production economies, society and theworld.
Instead of cataloguing the path taken by the entire company, publish only thatwhich relates to certain themes or projects

collating thepaths taken byInstead of cataloguing the path of the entire company at once, the history isrespective

divided out and collated by department

departments

Post Script
andAppendix

Internal

In managing documentation publish the documents which are important to show

Documentation

the next generation such as your yearly numbers

Industry

Industry documentation which is necessary over and above showing the path ofDocumentation

the company
Collate, itemize and publish the year on year progression of the company.

Annual ledger

Publishing that which makes the path of the company and the path of industry inthe socio-political context easy to understandEpilogue, Editor's

Many are written by the editing staff and chief editor. They generally comprise anote

discussion of the process that brought them to make the book etc.

Document

Documents that you have referenced or books you have borrowed from shouldreference list

be listed here.

Index
Imprint or labelingConstruct this so that odd or industry specific terms and names can besearched
Publishing date, Publisher's name and address, Rights owner, Producer, etc.
should be placed here
A list of persons who were engaged in the production of the history at some

Staff list

point (If you maintain a list of those who worked on the history both in andoutside of the company then it will be easier to avoid missing someone later)

In any case, when you are considering the corrections to make to the script it isnecessary to create a highly detailed annual ledger. Once that has reached a degree ofcompletion it is a perfectly valid consideration to reexamine the methods you employ inapplying corrections. We will explain how to create a corrections guide from your annual
ledger in the next section, “2. The tentative table of contents chart
There are many companies who insert direct messages from top management and thecompany as a whole by engaging seated discussions and interviews as well as suchdevices as staff questionnaires to employ outside of the main text of the body.
The “appendix” is the section in which you lay out management-related materials,
annual ledgers, company outlines, afterword and imprint, reference lists of those who
provided materials, staff lists etc. This methodology is of significant importance inpositioning for the editorial success of the materials gathering process. Having yourmaterials and annual ledger sorted in an easy to understand manner will provide
solidity to your content, and will strengthen a highly orthodox, documentation-oriented
history significantly.
The index will also be a place where you should add as many entries as possible. This isa tool that will be used from the first page onwards; however the specific application ofthis in company history has manifold variations, but ensure that it is a dictionary-likein structure and can be used to look up names, peculiar words, product names etc. anddesigned for ease of use by employees.
However the index itself is dependent upon determining the individual page layouts,
without which the manuscript cannot be completed, hence when creating a history withan index one must budget approximately one month more editing time than with ahistory sans index.
2. The Tentative Table of Contents Chart
Now we turn to the application of the content chart we have just created, but we willproceed on the premise that your annual ledger is complete. By looking at this content
chart in depth you can understand in no small way the particular defining moments inthe company’s history. The specific kinds of numbers you insert at these points will
differ based on the type of industry and business conditions, however good examples arecharts which show changes in sales volume peaks, large financial year contracts, profit
margins, operating margins, industry growth rates, GDP comparisons etc. which willshow the various crossroads of your company’s history. If your crossroads are not clearly
demonstrated it is generally the case that your annual ledger is incomplete or patchy,
which tends to mean your people have not looked over enough documentation, leading
to the selection of inappropriate graphs and statistics. Everything that your company
undertakes is reflected in the numbers and it is by comparison of these numbers overtime that you really get a feel for how the company has changed in the intervening
period.
Data File I Tentative Table of Contents Chart

No.
Chapter
Title
ChapterCompany:
Section Title

Tentative Title
Subheadings

Factor 1:

Number ..
1)
Centralcharacter
introduced
2)
Manuscript,

3)

proportion ofbook, draft

4)

pages, pages
total

5)

Pages
(book)

Date:
Pages

First

Second

draft

Draft

Manager

6)
Factor 2:

1)

CentralContent
Central2)character
introduced

3)
4)

From

Manuscript,

mm/yyyyproportion ofTo

book, draft

mm/yyyy

pages, pages

5)

6)

total

Manuscript
Factor 3:
Proportion
1)ofManuscript

Centralcharacter

Draft

introduced

Pages
Total

Manuscript,

Pages

proportion ofbook, draft

2)

3)

pages, pages
total

4)
5)
6)

Reference

Name of creatorIf, after looking over the numbers thoroughly you decide that there are seven distinct
historical periods then you will need seven tentative table of contents chart. As thedates are not set you can set the periods covered by each chapter to cover the number ofyears you think most appropriate. Divide the major things that happened in this period
into three groups, then divide this into approximately 6 subgroups aligning them frombiggest to smallest in specialization. Place the items for which you will need to conduct
interviews last on the list so that they can be handled by the writers, but as the
structure of the storyline must be handled by the editor it must be laid out so that thehistory can be analyzed and grasped by them.
Another important piece of information to insert is the number of pages per chapter, ormore specifically the number of pages it will become after being formatted to a
publishable state. Using this number the editor can tentatively determine where in thechapter it should go and how much it should take up.
For instance, in a book of 300 pages and 10 chapters each chapter should average 30
pages, but in reality it won’t be such a round number. Half of being a company is dealing
with the rises and falls, and this will be reflected in changes to the number of pages
attributed to a given chapter. The proportion of pages attributed must be theresponsibility of the manager of the history to determine, but it is of fundamental
importance that the input of the editing management team be considered.
There will also be times where it is difficult to understand what is going on by looking at
the headings, and so by adding explanations of what kind of central content you areadding you can make it easy to grasp exactly what is being introduced in the chapter.
Any explanations you give to the editing management team will be based on graphs andstatistics, and hence should ensure that these are sufficiently explained.

==15. Interesting plans which you can use in your Company History==
1. Commemorative discussion
This plan involves inviting an external group to discuss the future prospects of thecompany. Industry researchers, Journalists, and famous people from the industry all
possess specific knowledge to discuss and can be readily thrust into a detailed
discussion. When engaging a female newscaster for this role, it is often the case that shebacks up the opinions of the company president.

When conducting the discussion ensure that you select a room with a clean, clear wall
against which to shoot, and also that the room has enough space for you to capture awide angle when shooting. If such a room cannot be found then try getting the lobby of ahotel. Amateur photographers cannot hope to achieve the same standards required forprinting that we ask of professionals, so please be very firm in selecting a professional
photographer.
2. Employee Discussion Forum
This method involves selecting a group of promising young employees set to carry thecompany forward to have a relaxed discussion.
By allowing those who do not normally participate in the daily management of theenterprise to step forward and engage in free and frank discussions, you can give thecompany an open and transparent feel which will appeal to the normally negative
younger generation with a group of pages dedicated directly to them.
The general format is to have them discuss things with the company president, but themain purpose must be to get the young people speaking freely about the objectives anddirection of the company.
3. Employee Surveys
Introducing individual employees on the pages of the history is one of the bettermethods of generating interest and focus on the history in your employees; however you
would likely run out of pages if the book were this alone. In lieu of this it is possible toinsert the results of employee surveys. You can either publish individual responses or
you can use numerical results of charts and graphs, but depending on which path you
take the questions will vary widely in style.
Supposing you choose one of the above, let’s take a moment to consider the content of
the questions. Most company histories have a layout based on text and photographs sosome of the more charming layouts are difficult to pull off, however inserting pages ofreturned questionnaires is not and unconventional way to input some fun factor into
your history.
4. Senior Employees and Trading Partner Columns
Trading partners that have been with the company for years are an invaluable resource.
Many are ready to speak immediately, and having been close to the movements of thecompany for a number of years they can approach the history from a different angle andtheir accumulated years of interaction. So how do we put this in the book? They will
provide a degree of objectivity, and though it’s not uncommon to use a script written by
the contact themselves, the book itself is not only designed as the company’s “personal
history” (see chapter 6), but there will also likely be objection to publishing them in thesame manner as the employees. The same problem can be said of senior employees andretirees. In these cases, how about setting aside a text-box or column for them? Placing
their words directly on the page without edit or comment from your company. If theytalk especially about unique aspects of the company’s history then this will add a senseof depth to the main writing.
5. Separate Volumes
When making selection in during your editing process you sometimes see a trend
towards greedy editors who want “to write more of that” or “add more of this”, leading to
the bloating of the structure into something that can no longer be called a summation.
To avoid such a situation arising you can separate out your history into separate
volumes.
In one example a plant engineering company produced along the following template:
1- An orthodox history comprising an account of the experiences of management andan accurate record of their history
2- An internal newsletter-like commemorative magazine with a fun format aimed at
employees, including

many comments from current employees andtheirphotographs.
This system produced a volume which provided useful reading, and a volume which is
fun to read. By engaging the editing process the communication was invigorated
throughout the company.
6. Inserting comic characters
One company wished to prepare a company history primarily as a record ofmanagement but had the secondary objective of using it as an introduction to thecompany. Cultivating fresh young leaders in the industry was something of an issue inthe industry, and they felt that their explanations would be perfectly expressed using
manga/comics.
Out of the planned 120 pages of the book, 16 pages were separated and dedicated to the
comic which was themed upon the company’s role in society and the value of their work,and which got good reviews after development. Continuing in this vein it is common to
separate out the volumes and produce a pamphlet style, manga only, company history.
Company history has a reputation for being heavy reading, though you could say thatby producing manga in this way you are giving your publication a lighter image.
7. Soliciting Written Impressions
How about inputting some written perspectives into the company history book to ensurethat it’s read by as many employees as possible? By offering a small prize for a winningentry you can collect far more perspectives. When you’re worried that you’ll haveinsufficient applications, try making a response sheet. Prepare questions for such asheet along the lines of the following example questions.
Example questions:
1. Now that you’ve read the company history through, approximately how long did ittake
2. Was it on the whole easy to read?
3. What was the most interesting point of history set out in the book?
4. After reading the history did you gain an understanding of the factors whichbrought the company to where it is today?
5. Is there anything that you will reference and utilize going forward in your work?
6. After reading the company history, would you be able to give us some words on thecompany?
7. Was there anything you feel could have been added to the history?
When planning something that is readable to employees, hosting a discussion is often afairly representative method, but sometimes it is more appropriate to annotate a list of
employees and place their comments directly with their photograph. There is also achance that this will infringe upon personal information protection laws which comeinto effect on April 2005 so please check this as we outline next.
However at the same time the provisions on the protection of personal information are
aimed at preventing misuse of that information (such as its sale) and given the
difficulty of applying such basic information as in a company history (such as name,position, and photograph) it is realistically unlikely that this will pose a problem.

We would like you to be proactive in involving your employees in the history, but if you
are worried or have a particular concern then please consult a specialist.

==16. When penning a readable manuscript ==1. Functionalities of a manuscript which achieves the objectives“I’d like you to get a move on with the history” was a statement made by the company
president and founder of a construction company in Kagawa prefecture. To get a grasp
for the situation, the president had once taken the elevator from the top floor of his new
office building down to the first floor and after opening the door was confronted with“hey grandpa, could you pass me that bit of rubbish over there?” This was quite a shock,especially as his photograph was widely circulated in memos. With that he decided thatto commission a company history so that people had a greater understanding of who hewas, although his stated objective was to have “a history where all of our employees
come across throughout the volume”.
We thought that these two objectives were antithetical, but thought it potentiallypossible to produce a history where “all employees came across throughout”. We hadalready given a clear yes answer. But as we delved deeper into the company’s objective
setting for the history we realized that it was really that the president wanted his
employees to know who he was. When we considered mediums which would potentially
hit this objective, we presented the idea of having the history written as a dramatic
comic book. As the company was founded in the Shikoku region we enlisted the servicesof the artist Yusuke Aoyagi who resided in Kochi and who has previously worked on“Fishing in Tosa” for the 180 page, B5 dramatic comic, and at the same time we included
responses from 850 of the 1000 company employees.
We were able to fulfill the expectations and objectives of the client so thoroughly only
because we were able to gain a thorough understanding of the true objectives andthereby present a comprehensive strategy. However this is not a company history.
Histories are not quite as people focused, and given the absence of hard data or
appended documents, we can only really call this a dramatic comic.
If you are considering such a publication then one method is to first make yourmanuscript for the history easier to read. However it is worth noting that some histories
do not necessarily require especially readable manuscripts.

That is to say that many histories take the direction of being a company’s “dictionary” or“encyclopedia” Sections and headings are made to be as specific and detailed as possible,
with large indexes and lots of photographs and data, and through this it becomes
possible to use it as a kind of data storage device.
When taking such a perspective the effectiveness of the history is contingent upon thehistory being easily checked and referenced.
2. What is a History Manuscript which is made to be readable?
Let’s touch upon the methods by which you can create a company history manuscript
which is readable.
Three types of strategic devices you can utilize to achieve readability are structural
devices, writing devices, and design devices. They are listed below:
A: Structural Methods
1. Trace the life of a person
2. Employ headings which reflect interests of the reader, Use strange or strikingly
odd titles.
Use simple and interesting headings (i.e. avoid such titles as “Company X isFounded: 1935-1945”)
3. Ensure lettering sizes for headings (large/medium/small) is congruent
throughout
4. Put the number of years in the larger titles
5. Structure your chapters so that they logically lead into the next
B: Writing Methods
1.

Stop using long sentences2.

Be careful about how you use Chinese characters (only for Japanese where
writers should avoid writing in ways that a newspaper would. A potential
equivalent in English may be using terms or expressions that have fallen into
disuse)3.

Giving only about 2 pages per subheading

4.

Avoid enumerating statistics (use graphs and charts instead of writing theminto the script)

C: Design and Layout Methods
1. Use a great deal of photography
2. Allow some blank space
3. Larger type will add ease (A4 and B5 books tend to be around point size 14 to 15,
although business books sold in shops are point size 14 as a rule, with a few being
printed in 13)
4. Make the positioning of your headings clear
5. Vary the main text and headings, the notation, the photograph captions and thedivision of page layout
It is especially true of your employees who make up your number one readership thatwhen skimming over the table of contents, the degree to which it appears interesting
will be a very large factor in the rate of readership. This is because the headings listed
in the table of contents will form a large part of the reader’s awareness of the content.
3. Be wary of copyright
One thing you most certainly must be aware of when compiling your history is problems
arising from copyright. Recently this problem has seen a sudden jump in the number ofcases and is consequently experiencing heightened community awareness. Going
overboard when you’re trying to build interesting features is one thing, but avoid
anything that could be construed as infringing copyright. At the same time however, if
you’re aware of how far you can go then it can lead to the application of newer methods.
For example, if you wanted to use a line from the author Natsume Souseki then you do
not need permission from a publisher, you could copy and republish his entire works
freely. Japanese law stipulates that copyright expires 50 years after the originator of thework passes away, and so Souseki’s work is no longer under copyright.
Written below are some broad points to understand and proceed with caution on.
- In principle, all writing is subject to copyright
However,

1. That which is not written as the object of copyright (such as the constitution)
2. That which is distributed by public offices and distributed for general publicity(Various statistics etc.)
are treated as exceptions to this rule.
- Things to watch for when quoting data from other books in the main text of your own
1. Ensure that in places whereupon you are quoting, that you clearly separate them as
such
E.g.

Place the quote in quotation marks
Separate the quote out from the main body, placing it 2 or three lines
below the main text
Place the quotation marks in a different typeface

2. Ensure that your quotes are the lesser of the content
I.e.

Ensure that your quoted material is smaller in content than your own
in your chapters, plotline and other such things. If the quoted material
becomes the crux of your writing then you will infringe upon copyright

3. Be clear on references
E.g.

Placing “Published 2002 (Department of Health and Welfare)” andsuch directly succeeding the quotation, or demarking it withsomething such as a * symbol and referencing it outside the main body

If you follow the above then you shouldn’t fall foul of the law for any run of the millquotation.
However be certain to obtain permission from the holders of the copyright in advancewhen reproducing pictures and graphs. When you do this it does not usually bare any
extra fee or charges. (Check copyrights at the Agency for Cultural Affairs)

There are also some cases where you must pay heed to the copyright of even internal
company memos and writing.
Company history publishing as a production engages and applies historicaldocumentation, such as business reports, company outlines, catalogues, internal memosand etc., and when the production of those is outsourced the copyright does not belong to
the company, with the exception of everyday business reports.
When mediums such as these have been outsourced in your company it is necessary to
make sure that upon completion the originators of the material understand fully thatyou intend to use the documents show the activity of your company in your company
history.

==17. How do I handle things which are hard to put in writing? ==In the history of any company there are things which present a difficulty in getting put
to paper. However writing only that which conveniences you ensures that yourpublication loses its sense of authenticity.
In the case of the Tokyo-based general contracting industry leader, they had usedprisoners of war as slave labor both in Japan and overseas during world war two andthe managers were at a crossroads as to whether they should talk about this in thehistory. When they checked the details it seemed certain it was in fact their company,
but a wall had been put up around the issue and no one spoke of it with only theemployees who had joined shortly after the war having any knowledge of it.
At the time there was much discord in the media about Korean people pursuingcompensation from the Japanese government and Japanese companies, and so placingsuch an admission in their own company history would be a potential invitation for
activists to create further problems. As a specialist in company history it is my opinion
that it should always be as truthful as possible, however in this case of this history it
was determined that “the true documents related to this should be added without
commentary to the history, and we shall broach the subject more directly in a future
history publication”. It was a tough call to make, but to have made a history whichhurts people as its main focus would be a disservice to those who sincerely wish to leavea record of the company’s progress. This is not just a problem for construction
companies but a broad scope of small and medium sized enterprises are also faced withthe same proposition, and hence I do not think that this problem will not go away if justone company decides to pay compensation. The solution to this problem seems like itmust lie with broader resolution between Japan and the countries connected to theissue, with participation from both this generation of leaders and the next.

I don't think that this kind of advice is incorrect; however we have had cases with otherconstruction companies who have been involved in so-called “dirty dealings”, where thecompany president has had to resign and the politicians involved forced to face snap
elections, and where the response here was that “we should be honest and clear on this”.
There were many employees who had direct knowledge of the affair still employed and if
the events around this were not written into the history then the whole history would
lose the trust of the reader, and be discounted.
There was also the dissent and dismissal of various executives that was not released in
the mass-media, and when discussing how this should be handled the executive staff
admitted that in creating the environment invited the problem they bore responsibility,
so the emphasis was to write of what exactly had occurred, and to furthermore use thisas a lesson to the next generation of employees with discussion aiming to balance thetwo.
This is not the only example, but I believe it serves as a reminder that if you wish tohave a company history which can be used to educate employees or bring together a sumof knowledge, then you cannot only write about what your company has done well, butwrite also of what your company has not. What exactly constitutes success will change
within the socio-economic context of the era in which it occurs, and so you can position
your bad times as being what got you through a tough market etc.
Please bear in mind that any company now looking back on its past, the good factors intheir history must necessarily outweigh the bad factors for the company to still be inexistence and operating in any context today. Believe in this, and write honestly andfrom the heart about those difficult topics.

==18. Choosing the right book binding==
Lets take a close look at the specific physical shapes a company history book can take.
The things you must decide are listed below:
1. Format (Size: A4, B5, A5, B6, Non-standard)
2. Pages (How many color, how many monochrome)
3. Photographs (How many color, how many black and white)
4. Paper (Case, front cover, endpaper, frontispiece, body text pages, appendix)

5. Binding and Manufacturer specifications (Printing method, paperback, hardcover)

1. Format (Size: A4, B5, A5, B6, Non-standard)This question is of how big to make your book. Until recent years all histories were B5
in format, but recent trends have stressed the aesthetic element, and with that booksizing has gotten bigger, with A4 now having caught up to B5. There has also been an
increasing trend towards having tailored size bindings, taking a standard binding suchas A4 and cut down on the height and breadth of the book, making a non-standard A4
binding. There are also a number of paperback sized histories.
Also be aware that when we say A4 or B5 we are referring to the paper on which themain text is to be written and not the covering, binding or casing.
2. Pages (How many color, how many monochrome)
This is about how many pages you wish to put into you publication. When it comes tothe relationship between the number of pages and the printing, you must bear in mend
constantly that each manuscript A1 page will become 8 pages (or 16 pages for anything
A5 or smaller) in the book. The way it becomes 8 pages is by printing four pages per
side.
This means that one side of the page will contain pages 1, 4, 5 and 8, whilst the backwill comprise pages 2, 3, 6 and 7. Folding this one sheet into four pages means folding
the page twice to lay the pages in order where the front page is page 1 and the back is
page 8 with the back of those pages comprising pages 2 and 7 respectively. In the same
way the front side of the page must have pages 3 and 6, whilst the back must have 4 and5. One of these eight page folds makes one “piece” and all the pieces folded in together
makes one book.
Therefore in principle you can use this to change between monochrome pages and color
pages. You can use this to cut down on any wasteful color printing costs, however if you
try and use this to force another 2 or 4 pages of photographs in for little extra chargethen the entire eight page piece will be printed in color and will cause your binding,printing and other costs to suddenly increase. As professional editors we avoid suchcosts by arranging the pages structure of color and monochrome strategically at thepiece before it is folded, as a first step in production. Please ensure that you get enoughprofessional advice on this point so that you can cut wasted costs and arrange yourpages with poise.
3. Photographs (How many color, how many black and white)This point deals with how many photographs are ideal, to which I am afraid there is no
good answer. There are photographs that you’d like the print, but you don’t know if itwill reprint well, or if it will fit in with the book as a whole when printed.
You must first consider whether you’d like the production to be one full of photographs,
or one in which the text is the main focus. If you’d like a history with a great many
photographs but find yourself unable to gather them in sufficient number then consider
approaching a related group and republishing photographs from related books, andpaying the relevant fees. When it comes to the ratio of color to monochrome please referto the preceding paragraph on the topic. Once you have determined which kinds ofphotographs you wish to print and the way in which you wish to print them then you
will need to determine how many colors will go into the pages at the same time as you
determine specifically which photographs will be printed, as the number of colors willchange the appearance of many photographs significantly.
4. Paper (Case, front cover, endpaper, frontispiecerontispiece,, body text pages, appendix)
This point will examine how we will go about using the paper. There are literally
thousands of kinds of paper. There are also materials used in the binding other thanpaper such as cloth and plastic (such as hard and soft PVC), so you must consider thesemany raw materials also. Also, many past books have been printed with paper which is
no longer being manufactured, so please consider that you may not be able to obtain thepaper you want for your history. Even so, if you find a book already in production whichfits your printing wants then simply copying that binding is quite easy.
There are also two broad categories of paper, cream book paper and white coated paper.
In general if you’d like the writing to be more readable then choose the former, if you’d
like to see clearer photographs then choose the latter.
For book paper, the definitive name is the brand “Nenshiyoushi”. In order to stop ink
running the paper oxidizes it, and after forty years the oxidation can spoil the book
paper. Recently many manufacturers have begun to use deoxidization to render thepaper neutral, and of these the high grade Nenshiyoushi is said to last 400 years.
Understandably though, no one has yet proved this point. Although you cannot denythat the numbers are high, the poor choice of paper thickness has meant that the paper
is not held in high regard by binders and editors alike.

In recent years we have also seen a surge in the demand for recycled paper. There has
been a wave of managers selecting this medium out of consideration for theenvironment. In past years comparisons between the newest papers of the same brands
meant a huge price difference, however recently the quality differences have been lessvisible and with the drop in prices this means that all papers are of comparable use, andthat there will almost certainly not be a loss of image from using a cheaper paper.
Please do not forget, however, that the range of papers available is still quite narrow.
Also on the topic of the environment, there has been a move recently towards using inks
based on soy beans. There is also a rising trend towards using CTP film as opposed toregular publishing film. If you have concerns over the environmental impact of yourbook then please apply these kinds of materials and manufacturing techniques in yourprinting plan. However as there is a difference in the cost factors and methods of editing,
we advise that you check these points thoroughly before making your selection.
5. Binding and Manufacturer specifications (Printing method, paperback, hardcover)This refers to the cover binding method. Physically hard covered book are called hardcovers, whilst physically soft covered books are called soft covers. Books bound by wirein the spine are called “centre woven”, and is a cheap method often employed by weekly
magazines, but whilst it is good for magazine style histories it is rather inappropriate
for general histories.
Histories have always had the image of being a hardcover volume, but recently we haveseen many companies opt for soft cover out of concern for costs, readability and theoverall feel of the book. By the way, this book is soft cover.
The covering of the book employed has a strong correlation with the overall binding
costs, and hard cover books with their solid heavy covers strongly bound together are asignificant time and cost burden when compared to soft covers. Of course we wish todrop costs but even today many clients consider it poor form to hand anything but ahard cover history to a trading partner, and so our company’s somewhat underhanded
strategy is to produce a hard cover for those external to the company and a soft cover for
those internal to the company. If you are considering this then please discuss it withyour printer from the start of your talks.
There are also different methods of weaving the binding, with the 2 kinds being woven
string (basket weave) or glue only (Ajiro). For books generally sold at bookstores Ajiro is
the norm, whilst basket weave seems to be limited to dictionaries or encyclopedias. The

difference between the two is that basket weave is more costly, though far better able towithstand the ages. For this reason we always recommend basket weave binding to ourclients.
There are all kinds of shapes and sizes in books and so it is easy to be confused whentrying to find out what the standard is, but when it comes to history the sizing will be
determined by your objectives for the piece.
Recently the most common aspects have been an A4 size, encased, weave-boundhardcover, at between 200 to 250 pages in length.
If you would like a history with more photographs that is easier on the eye then you
should consider A4 as the minimum size. If, however, your objective is for a record of
past events then you would want to reduce costs and hence an A5 or B5 size is the mostappropriate. If the page sizes are increased without dropping the number of pages thenthe costs are obviously increased. When you are considering the value of a company
history from a preservation and permanence perspective then it is worth considering acase for the book, as well as considering whether you will have to scale back the size out
in order to not appear to be overdoing it. So you must consider all forms of problems andthen make your decision.
This is the reason that your objectives for the production and the expected reader resultmust be clearly stated from the outset, and if you fall down here then you will mostcertainly come unstuck when it comes to the sizing and the number of pages of the
production.
We also have to take a look at the price here. When the number of copies is held
constant and only the dimensions of said number of books are changed, then the priceshifts dramatically. You should ensure you are fully aware of such price changes.
The cost factors of a book are outlined in “Data File K: Movements in Cost”.
Looking at this chart, as you move from left to right costs will increase with the change
made.

==19. The horrors of proof-reading ==When proof reading it is pretty much impossible to produce perfect writing, but this is
the reason you must make doubly sure that there are none.

That is to say that you should seriously consider having the draft proof read by bothyour own staff and the company to which you are outsourcing. You should go as far as todivide up individual tasks, over and above mere discussions. In other words divide up
tasks so that the most appropriate eyes are in the most appropriate places (for example
external readers will probably miss the spelling of company employees) and ensuringthat these tasks are distributed effectively is the role of the company’s internal staff.
In addition, there are instances where a professional proof-reader or editor will need togo over sections (such as details over which year a currency shock occurred in). These
need points need to be talked over by both organizations, and roles need to be madeclear so that there is no wasteful doubling up of roles.
If occasionally there are mistakes such as spelling “taxi” as “atxi”, then it’s not the endof the world. External proof-readers know which sections of a text they must absolutely
get right and it is their responsibility to prioritize them, so occasionally mistakes suchas “atxi” happen.

Data File K: Movements in Cost

Cost

Small

Dimensions

B6

>>>>

>>>>

B5

Large
A4

Increases with number of photographs

Photographs

Paper

>>>>

Increases with number of pages

Number of

printed colours

>>>>>

A5

Number of pages

Number of

>>>>

1

2

Medium3

Book

grade & high grade

4

4 & special

CoatedAnnualRecycled

Art

paper

paper

paper

paper

Covering

No cover or case

2 color case

4 color cover

Binding

Centreweave (hotchkiss stop) Ordinary non-lined

Sewn hard cover

Number of copes

2 color cover

Increases with the number of copies(per unit costs will drop as print run increases)

Just yesterday in fact I found a spelling error in the English to Japanese dictionary (The
Learners English Dictionary, published by Shougakukan) I occasionally reference. The
manuscripts for dictionaries are written by specialists in the field and proof-read manytimes, but they still contain errors. Be aware that despite being looked over from start
to finish by outsourced professionals, there are of course going to be letters misplaced or
missing altogether in your manuscript. The crux of the point is that you must make surethere are no errors in the areas that count most.

==20. The horrors of proof-reading ==To say that scheduling your publication is an important point is to state the obvious.
However if you believe that the way forward on this is obvious then your are sadly
mistaken.
To take a very early example, there was a company who wished to give thanks to thefounder of their company for his hard work and success by planning, editing andpublishing their history. They went straight ahead and passionately interviewed themany people of relation to the event, but along the way they started encountering
discussions of many other strange events. In the hopes that it would make theircompany president happy they included even more interviews so that they could cover
all of this information in the history as well, which not only made the book significantly
thicker, but also dragged out the editing process by another two years. In that
timeframe there was a major turnaround in the industry and the company’s outlook was
unclear, and furthermore it was no longer the anniversary of the company. All their
hard work had gone up in smoke. This publication’s timing issues could be related to asimple miscalculation in planning, but it is important that the scheduling of yourproduction be actively managed throughout the production process. If for example yousee some processes of production begin to slow down then the processes that follow will
not run on time despite your having to contend with the approaching deadline. In orderto achieve the stated deadline you will have to compress the remaining functions into
the allotted time by running revisions at all hours of the night and working weekends,
which will put you at greater risk of missing editing mistakes. “Errors are only natural”,“Use white-out tape to correct it” and “Reprint the whole thing” are some of the morehumorous examples of approaches to the problem.
The schedules for company history process management that our company uses are
made to be extremely detailed.
We start at the beginning of production by stipulating a clear schedule in our contracts
and furthermore promise to hold ourselves and our clients accountable to this schedule.

We also divide our fee paying system into three periods comprising “Contract period”,“Mid-Production”, and “Completion Period”, and we stipulate in principle dates on
which we ask for transfer.
However, when production is not proceeding particularly well then the second payment
becomes incredibly difficult to ask for, as we cannot ask for payment for work which wehave not done. Because of this we determine to stick to the schedule. Furthermore we
ask that we receive confirmation notes from the client to notify us that they havecompleted parts of the schedule such as completion of the manuscript and finalizing
draft-checking.
As specified previously, in the twenty years of our company’s operation we have only
been late on a production twice, and even then the reason was mostly that the clientcompany had sent us too much data, so even for us scheduling presents difficulties.
There are many different methods by which you can maintain appropriate scheduling;,
so upon contracting with an outsourcing partner it is necessary to discuss any and allparticulars in regard to this.

==21. Preparing for distribution and methods of shipping ==There are three methods by which you can have your books delivered. They are by hand,by post or by home delivery service. It is of particular importance that you consider who
physically hands to book to the reader. It depends on the relationship to the reader,
however presidents, executives, senior and middle managers should be consideredthoughtfully. It is best if you place book inside an envelope before sending it, but when
you would hold the receiver in high esteem it is best to send it in an envelop
personalized by the author. If you aren’t able to do this, or better to hand it overpersonally to those who have made written contributions or sat interviews for the bookthen it would be a matter of politeness.
Recent years have seen a decline in the cost home delivery services, so much so that ourcompany has been using less general postage services. Home delivery services are also
general companies so you can get lower costs for a high number of packages as well as
generally being able to negotiate lower prices.
When sending please remember that you must also send a greeting card along with thebook. When wrapping please consider that there are packages designed specifically forthe purpose of sending books which you can obtain by asking your outsourcing company,

packaging companies or your printing company. When you are sending out large
numbers of books it is not a considerable cost or effort to have your company nameprinted on the back of the envelope.
Delivery systems can generally be left undetermined until after you have completed
your final revisions for the company history. Once you have reached that phase then theprocesses are handed to outsourcing partners, who then edit the blueprint, adjust coverand binding colorization, adjust main text and frontispiece colorization, print, bind, andcheck the product, which in all takes at least one month.
During this time you it is best to prepare so that distribution can take place as soon as
the books are printed and the goods are checked
We heard an example of one problem encountered by a company, we’ll call it Company A,
that sent its company history out to companies one after the other. At a meeting
between the representatives of companies A, B and C, discussion turned to Company A’s
history which had been delivered to Company B but not yet to Company C. The
representative of Company C assumed he had not been sent one and this was a source ofshame for the representative of Company A, who made considered it a serious grievance.
The manager of the history heard of this and immediately sent books to Company C, but
Company C thought they had only been sent them because it seemed like they were
demanding them and after reading them through once they sent them back to company
A.
This is a matter of grievances between companies and hence it’s not really somethingthat would get out into the open often. It is also not the case that Company A wassetting a priority on the people it was sending out the histories to, but no matter how
good a history you write, having taking the wrong path like this its relation would mostcertainly be soured.

=== Section 4: Know the Costs=====22. What the costs are and how to manage them ==In addition to taking a planned approach to dropping wasteful costs from company
history production, it is exceedingly important to know the costs in full detail.
Firstly, in order to properly acquaint you personally with the costs we will explain to
you one single point. That is that the production and publication of company history isnot a completely specialized field, and that skilled workers from other industries canstill produce good estimates given the right inputs. Within this you find some people saythat when you still haven’t researched or written the manuscript then you couldn’t
possibly run cost estimates, which may well be true of generally sold publications inbookstores, but if you do not have detailed estimates for your company history when you
go to outsource then the process will from there will most certainly not obtain thedesired result.
The cost planning is constructed from planning the production process and the timeline
together, and it must hijack the production as the process moves forward. Of course, if
you start research and find that there’s not a great deal of material to work with thenyou may decide to reduce the number of photographs or decrease the number of pages.
However such contingencies should already be factored into a detailed plan, and sowhen a change is made to a factor of the budget you should know clearly how the bottom
line is affected.
When the content of the project is changed in some way there are times when the costchanges and there are times when the cost doesn’t. In preparation for cases like this,writing the estimate such that changes to the inputs can be quickly and clearly factored
in is an essential feature that the manager must write into the budget. Please look overany and all examples of such budgets you find in detail.
Next we will look over what the main budget points that we look at are, and explain justwhat they mean briefly. This estimate comprises only the basic draft plan from writer,
to interviews, manuscript writing, and printing and binding functions. Also, please
understand this is merely our method, and different companies may use different
content and terminology.

Item EstimatedQuantity

Unit Cost

1 Planning2

3

4 Manuscript writing - main text

5

6

7 Manuscript writing - Appendix

8

9

10 Editing

11

12

13 Layout - Main text

14

15

16 Layout - Frontispiece

17

18

19 Layout - Appendix

20

21

22 Photo editing - Monochrome

23

24

25 Photo editing - Color

26

27

28 Binding design2930

31 Data entry

32

33

34 Proof-reading - main text

35

36

37 Proof-reading - Appendix

38

39

40 Photography

41

42

43 Block copy data production

44

45

46 Printing and Binding

47

48

49 Management fees

50

51

52 Transport

53

54

1. Planning: These are costs born from the planning process. You do not know whatkind of plan you will come up with until you start planning, and so costs born fromyour lack of ability to place orders are classed as planning costs. As production
related costs they can include reading up on materials on related companies,
researching the industry, scheduling internal company meetings, production of theplan and etc.
2. Quantity: This is based on the number of pages to be written
3.

Unit Cost: If the size of the binding changes then the size of the plan will change,and hence unit prices for an A5, B5, A4 etc, will only increase to the value of the next
binding size when moving up to the next size.

4. Manuscript Writing – Main Text: These are expenses derived from getting themanuscript for the main text written. Writer interviews, script writing fees, daily
allowance for transit to and from regional interview locations are all included in this.
However business trips which require overnight lodgings are calculated elsewhere.
5. Quantity: Quantity is calculated on the number of 400 character pages (about 500
words in English) of writing needed.
6. Unit cost: A given unit cost is multiplied by the number of 400 character pages ofwriting needed. The number of pages required will change the unit cost per block.
7. Manuscript Writing – Appendix: This is for fees related to producing Company
Timelines, Company Profiles and other such documents which are based on
available data and published at the end of the history.
8. Quantity: Where possible the quantity is determined by the number of 400
character pages required. Where this is not appropriate an equivalent number iscalculated.
9. Unit Price: The unit price for a 400 character page of a manuscript applies. The
number of pages will change the unit price.
10. Editing: Costs attributed to staff managing the editing and production functions.
11. Quantity: Where possible the quantity is determined by the number of 400
character pages required. Where this is not appropriate an equivalent number iscalculated.
12. Unit Price: The unit price for a 400 character page of a manuscript applies. The
number of pages will change the unit price.
13. Layout – Main text: These are costs attributed to the design and layout of the main
text of the book. The pages of the main text, the frontispiece, and the appendix
comprise different forms of editing and are hence separated
14. Quantity: The number of pages
15. Unit cost: The main text is generally the largest of the three, and hence by following
conventional patterns it should be cheapest per page
16. Layout – Frontispiece: As the frontispiece uses a great many photographs, the costs
related to selecting and designing the photography used go here.
17. Quantity: This is the number of pages of the Frontispiece
18. Unit Price: Frontispiece design is the most diversified and costs are the highest of
the three layout functions.
19. Layout – Appendix: This comprises the various support documents which are
published in the back of the book, and are the costs related to the laying out the
timelines and etc.
20. Quantity: This is the number of pages of the Appendix
21. Unit Price: If the book is being produced as per the standard production patternthen this will be approximately as costly as the main text layout, however
appendices which are based on more complex designs will become more expensive.
22. Photo editing – Monochrome: This is a specified entry for photograph editing costs.
This includes planning for an inclusion/exclusion standards framework. This is theentry for single color photographs.
23. Quantity: Calculated as the number of monochromatic photographs
24. Unit Price: Comparatively lower per photograph than a color print.
25. Photo editing – Color: This is the budget entry for costs arising from
26. Quantity: Calculated as the number of color photographs.
27. Unit Price: The cost of printing per photograph.
28. Binding Design: Binding costs include costs arising from the design of the book’scase, the cover, the endpaper and even the spine.
29. Quantity: A history with differentiated sizing, or histories with short print runs will
be more unified in quantity
30. Unit Price: This will vary according to the individual binding
31. Data Entry: Nowadays we generally receive manuscripts from writers in digitalformat so this cost has largely disappeared. This cost is only really a factor when we
receive manuscripts in or data in hardcopy from the publishing company and insuch cases costs are incurred.
32. Quantity: Counted in the number of characters.
33. Unit Cost: Calculated per-character
34. Proof Reading – Main Text: This items relates to the costs of proof-reading themanuscript
35. Quantity: Counted in the number of characters.
36. Unit Cost: Calculated per-character.
37. Proof Reading – Appendix: This is the cost related to proof reading the appendix
38. Quantity: Counted in the number of characters, however graphs and charts whichcannot be counted in characters are counted in pages.
39. Unit Cost: Calculated per-character or cost per page/chart as applicable
40. Photography: Using a cameraman to take photographs of items which are necessary.
Daily allowance for transit to and from regional photography locations are included

in this, however business trips which require overnight lodgings are calculated
elsewhere
41. Quantity: The three methods of calculating are counting the number of raw
photographs, counting the number of final photographs or counting the number ofdays required to take the photographs
42. Unit Cost: The calculation takes into account the number photographs mentioned
above and comes up with a per-photograph price.
43. Block Copy Data Production: This item relates to the cost of designing the printing
block so that the original data can be printed. In many cases this data is input via a
Macintosh computer.
44. Quantity: This is the total number of pages
45. Unit Cost: This is calculated per page
46. Printing and Binding: Unless you are a publishing company this function will beconsigned to an external party
47. Quantity: The number of books to be printed
48. Unit Cost: This will be based on a an estimate which primarily considers thenumber of books printed
49. Management Fees: You could refer to this as the cost of management. Our company
takes the relatively small fee of 10%
50. Quantity: Not Applicable
51. Unit Cost: Not Applicable
52. Transport: This covers the specific costs of daily commutes for interviews,
photography and etc. Long distance business trips and overnights stays arecalculated separately.
53. Quantity: Not Applicable
54. Unit Cost: It is not possible to place a per unit price on this item==23. The types of costs and knowing their specifics==

Within the cost framework there are both fixed and variable costs, but lets look at the
specifics of these costs. By knowing these you can avoid wasteful expenditure and link
together a plan to apply your production expenses most efficiently.
In the aforementioned costs there are two kind of expenses, Hardware and Software.
Additionally, these two have their own fixed and variable costs. We have set this out ona chart below. However, it seems that the variable which is the biggest factor in costchanges for the history is a change in the number of pages in the manuscript.

Change inBudget Factor

Hardware of
Softwarethe numberof pages oftheChanges to anything other than the
manuscript

manuscipt
1 Planning

SoftwareNo

Number of Pages and Sizing

SoftwareYes

No

SoftwareYes

No

10 Editing

SoftwareYes

No

13 Layout - Main text

SoftwareNo

Number of Pages and Sizing

SoftwareNo

Number of Pages and Sizing

SoftwareNo

Number of Pages and Sizing

SoftwareNo

Number of Photographs

SoftwareNo

Number of Photographs

28 Binding design

SoftwareNo

No

31 Data entry

SoftwareYes

No

Software

Yes

Increases to the number of Revisions

Software

Yes

Increases to the number of Revisions

SoftwareNo

SoftwareNo

4 Manuscript writing main text
7 Manuscript writing Appendix

16 Layout Frontispiece
19 Layout - Appendix
22 Photo editing Monochrome
25 Photo editing Color

34 Proof-reading main text
37 Proof-reading Appendix
40 Photography
43 Block copy data
production

Number of items photographed, Numberof photographs
Number of Pages and Sizing46 Printing andHardwareBinding

No

Number of Pages, Sizing, and Print Run(Items 49 and 52 not included)
The above costs are each interconnected. Their interconnectedness is charted in “DataFile L: The Relation between Appearance and Content, and Shifts in Costs”. Whenlooking at this it is apparent that the variables with the biggest effects on costs are thevariables which shift the books specifications for the printer.
Printing and binding costs stand to affect a large proportion of the costs; however thiscomprises both fixed and variable fees. The factor which affects the production run islisted left on the chart.
Paper Costs are Variable; Film Plate Costs are Fixed; Sealing is Fixed
Printing Costs are Variable; Binding Costs are Variable.
In addition to checking each of these items thoroughly, considering specifically how tocontrol your variable costs through effective management is a significant learning point.

==24. How to capitalize on your expenses==
When it comes to managing the everyday expenses of the company history, it is often
treated as a PR or HR budget item.
Costs affected by the changeInterview
andPlanning

Data
Manu

Costs

Photo

Photo

LayoutEditing
Entry

editinggraphy

costs

Cover

Printing

andand

DesignBinding��Postage

Proof

Total
DeliveryandReading

scriptChangeFreight

writing
Increase in
the book's
Factordimensions

affecting

Increase in

the cost

manuscript

�

�

�

�

�

�

�

�

5

4.5

�

pages
Increase in

�

�

�

�

�

3.5

photographs
Increase inphotograph

�

�

�

�

4

�

colorsIncrease in
�

�

�

�

�

4

final pages
Increase in
number of

�

�

1.5

�

�

4

proof-reads
Increase inprinted��colorsIncrease in
�

�

�

3

�

3.5

print runChange in���binding
Total
2

1

1

2

2

1

4.5

4.5

2

7

2

4

ChangeBoxed denoted with � are factors with a large effect. A � represents a smaller effect
In the totals a � represents 1 point, whereas a � represents 0.5 points* The totals in the direction indicated here have a greater effect on the total and are ofmore importance to the plan
It is surely most often characterized as PR due to the nature of it being distributed
information, much as other forms of PR. As the history is often distributed to employees
in much the same way as memos and hence treated as an HR expense, however, acertain methodology is to calculate the externally distributed and internally distributed
versions separately.
Also, contracting for history services are usually paid through in the same way as
construction contracts, which is to pay one third up front, one third mid-contract, andone third upon completion. In our experience a company history takes approximately 2
years on average from start to finish, with between one or two budget reappraisals inthat time. After paying the first and second payments it is quite normal to reassess thesums and renegotiate. If everything is proceeding normally then that’s fine, but some of*�the companies which come to us for discussions to drop or renegotiate costs or fees every
time they come to us.
Company histories involve a general management fee which if dropped once will drop
costs across the board, so if this can be reduced a bit every year then there will be a
noticeable effect. Having said that, when it comes to the costs of company history there
is also the rather troublesome taxation office, to whose standards non-adherence means
rather problematic results.
At this point it is best to think of the contract as three separate but interrelated
contracts. Those three comprise the initial planning and research contract, followed by
the second manuscript creation contract, and finally the book production contract, as
three connected agreements for the singular production.
If the agreements are clearly in agreement with each other, and are accompanied by an
invoice then there shouldn’t be a problem. At least in our experience of history
production we haven’t heard any reports of clients dissatisfied with this system.
The thought process in approaching budgets and expenses varies from company tocompany, and so before you sign with a company, ensure that you are firmly on the same
page with the outsourcing group. Negotiating terms once an agreement has beenreached often leads to non-negotiable problems arising, so please subject the agreement
to earnest caution.

==In Summation==“What kind of Company History is the ideal Company History”
For me, the manager of a specialist production company on the subject, this is a rather
large proposition, and at the same time is an imposing question confronting themanagers of many companies. From our perspective we believe that ideal means ahistory which fulfills the demands for historicity, whilst simultaneously delivering thesense of identity that the company puts forward.
Comparing a 5 million yen history with a 30 million yen history to see which is thericher is a meaningless exercise. As books, their comparison should be made much as acomparison of books is made. As the more expensive of the two, I am certain that the 30
million yen book will comprise higher quality furnishings, giving it a higher value froma “hardware” mindset. However a company history is a book that revives that company’shistory and culture, their ethics, and their vision for the future, and so aside fromcomparing the quality of the binding, there is no way to measure their worth.
To put it another way, is it not whether a company is able to produce a history whichreflects themselves to the point that they can look to the book and say “this is what weare like” that defines the value of the history? I dare say that the biggest critical successfactor for your company history is to have your employees or partners look upon it for
the first time and say “this really is our company”, or “this really reflects yourorganization”. A book that is handed to you and upon opening wafts over you with thesweet distinctive scent of your company is a good history.
So what is a “history which reflects my company”? It is a history which reflects thedistinctive qualities of your company. There is an expression about fashion designers
focusing their upcoming shows on the seasons which follow them which can be usefuloutside the fashion industry. There are some fashions however which, however you lookat them, are simply too embarrassing to be worn in the street. However these aredesigned to emphasize a point, which makes them fantastic clothes that will never see
the market.
I’ve used fashion shows as a metaphor for how they are used by designers to emphasize
a point with their clothes, whilst the expression of the distinctions, characteristics, andfeatures of a company, is the secret to a history which “reflects my company”.
Think with this mindset, and consider your company as a living, breathing person.
There are times when it exhibits traits such as tastes, habits, likes and dislikes, andother specific character traits. Think for a moment about what they are and I am surethat by using your own experience and the exchange of other people’s ideas and opinions,that you can grasp the true meaning of your company. This is what is to be expressed inyour history.
There is one aspect of history I would like you to be adequately cautious of, which is tohave management attempt to use your anniversary to mark a change in the company
direction and image. When this happens the character and image of your company
becomes an obstacle. In such cases you must first consider what you want to change,
and what you want to become, and then you must express thoroughly the “persona” ofthe history you wish to produce.
In any case, the manager must at the very least speak to the related employees, andhave the editing team talk over a basic theory of the history with related parties.

Finally I feel I should define the central problems of company history publishing.
The main constituent of company history is of course the company. It is not thepresident, nor the chairman. To say nothing of the writer who pens to manuscript, nor
the company which produces it.
External production companies are professionals who sell their expertise, andprincipally are there to carry out production according to the client’s order. Furthermore,
publishing is a spiritual exercise, and whether it is written in house or by writer it is asomething that your heart must be in. You must be constantly striving to create the bestin order to be successful. At the same time you must realize that this is not a
manufactured product, whose quality comes from a kind of spiritual work which cannot
be replicated by machine, and so managers who wish to use this must apply outside
expertise where it can be most effective.
But whichever way you look at it the publishing base is still the company, so the crux orleading role of the publication is played by the company itself. Even when a company
begins to encounter problems with the history post publication, the party which deals
with this is the company itself. If there is a case of copyright infringement or someone
begins defamation or libel proceedings then simply saying “the contract writer did it” is
not going to be an easy way out. The copyright for the history belongs to the company
whose history is being written, and hence representatives of that company would be theones finding themselves in court. When publishing a product there are certain
responsibilities to the community which are implied, and that is something that you
should be keenly aware of as a manager.
In addition, the act of publishing a history demands that your external staff are firmly
on the same page as you in thinking and the allocation of ultimate responsibility, so thatyou can work together to and resolve and all fundamental problems which arise.

==資料編==
英訳しておりません。
Appendix not translated.

==Shuppan Bunka Sha Ltd. – Company Profile ==�

Locations:�Osaka Head Office
8th Floor, Senba Grand Building
3-4-30. Kyutaromachi, Chuo-ku
Osaka, Japan, 541-0056
T: +81-6-4704-4700
F: +81-6-4704-4707

�Tokyo Main Branch
2nd Floor, Wakayagi Building
2-20-2 Kandajimbo-cho, Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo, Japan, 101-0051
T: +81-3-3264-8811
F: +81-3-3264-8832

�Web Addresses�

http://www.shuppanbunka.com/

�

http://www.shuppanbunka.jp/

�

http://www.shashi.jp/

�

http://www.shashi.co.jp/

�

http://www.archive-service.jp/

�

http://www.shuppan-kyoudo.com

�Executive President: Mr. Atsushi Asada�Capitalization: 50 Million Yen�Founded: 6th of February in the 59th year of Showa (1984)

�Incorporation date: 2nd August in the 61st year of Showa (1986)

�

Shareholders

��

Mr. Atsushi Asada (Executive President)�

Mr. Taiichi Sakaiya (Author)

�

The Kanjuku Company Ltd.

Core Business�Planning and Production of Company History�Planning, Editing and Publishing books and magazines for the commercial
market��Researching, Sorting, Editing and Analyzing Company Data

Periodicals:�Monthly Audio book series “The Twelve People Who Made Japan, with Taiichi
Sakaiya” and “Understanding the Era from the Perspective of Taiichi Sakaiya”

�Tape and CD series “Management Lectures from Kazuo Inamori”

�“Tamisuke Matsufuji’s FEB REVIEW”

�

The monthly business magazine “Relieve”

�Publishing Company Registration Number: 88338

�Commission Code: 3665

�History Production Business Partners:

��

SMBC Consulting (Tokyo, Osaka)�Asahi Culture Centre (Osaka)�Daimaru Osaka (Shinsaibashi, Kyoto, Kobe)

Major Clients:�Tohan Co., Ltd.

�Nippan Co., Ltd.

��Osakaya Co., Ltd.

�The Taiyo Corporation

�

Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.

�

Toppan Printing Co., Ltd.

�Nissha Printing Co., Ltd.

�The Kyocera Corporation

�

The Asahi Broadcasting Corporation

�Keihan Electric Railway Co., Ltd.

�

Mos Food Services Inc.

�The Hieizan Enrakuji Temple

�

Other

Registered Tredemarks
�Book Planning and Editing Service “Soubon Koubou” ( 創 本 工 房 , Registered
Services Trademark)�The next generation of histories “WEB Shashi” (WEB 社史, Registered Product
Trademark)�

Arrangement and Editing of Corporate Materials and Data “Skewer System”(スキュワ・システム, Registered Services Trademark)�Registered Writers: Approximately 1000 (in the Kantou and Kansai regions)