Why Does Japan Have So Many Old Companies? What Kongo Gumi's 1,400 Years Really Show

Short answer (as of 2026-10-26): Japan has 46,708 companies that have been in business for more than 100 years, about 3.11% of all firms, according to the credit research company Teikoku Databank (TDB), counting to December 2025. The oldest, the Osaka temple builder Kongo Gumi, dates its founding to 578 and still builds and repairs temples. But it ran out of road in 2006 and was rescued by another construction group, so the family line did not survive. The reasons Japan has so many old firms are partly cultural and partly circumstantial. Being old does not protect a business either: a record 145 century-old companies went bankrupt in 2024.

This is a full rewrite of an article we published in April 2026. We have removed claims we could not trace to a source, such as "1,447 consecutive years of operation" and "Kongo Gumi's presidents never appear in the media", and dated every figure.

It is tempting to tell the story of Japan's shinise (long-established businesses) as a simple moral tale about patience. The records are more interesting than that. They show temples burning down, a government cutting off a builder's income, a master builder taking his own life, wartime work making crates, and debt. Each time, someone made a decision that kept the work going. Below we look at what the numbers and records say, and end with practical steps for anyone who wants their shop, firm or craft to outlive them.

How many old companies does Japan have?

TDB counted 46,708 companies more than 100 years old in December 2025, 3.11% of all firms in its database and the first time the share has passed 3%.

Most of them are not ancient. About 22,000 were founded in the Meiji era (1868-1912) and about 21,000 in the Taisho era (1912-1926); 3,480 date from the Edo period and 178 from before 1603. TDB expects about 2,000 more companies to pass the 100-year mark in 2026.

Kyoto has the highest share of century-old firms, 5.45%, followed by Yamagata and Niigata. In Kyoto's Higashiyama ward the figure is 19.2%, nearly one company in five. TDB links Kyoto's lead to its long history as the capital and to the relatively light damage it suffered in the Second World War. For more on everyday life in the old capital, see Kyoto as a living museum of Japanese philosophy.

Different researchers count differently. Tokyo Shoko Research put the number of firms reaching 100 years by the end of 2023 at 42,966. Neither figure is wrong; they use different databases and ways of confirming founding dates.

Is it true that Japan has 40% of the world's century-old companies?

A private tally by Nikkei BP Consulting put Japan's share of the world's century-old firms at 41.3% in 2020 and 50.1% in 2022. Treat it as indicative: countries keep company records in very different depth.

Our previous version presented this as a "shock". The tally's original page is no longer online, so we checked it through two press reports. The 2020 edition also said Japan had 1,340 firms older than 200 years, about 65% of the world total. We dropped the claim that "39 of the world's 60 firms over 500 years old are Japanese", because we could not find its source.

Japan's corporate registries and credit-research databases are unusually detailed and go back a long way, which makes old firms easy to count. The fair conclusion is that Japan is one of the countries with the most long-lived companies, and stands out in the statistics that exist.

What is Kongo Gumi, and has it really lasted 1,400 years?

Kongo Gumi is a temple and shrine construction company that dates its founding to 578, and TDB lists it as Japan's oldest company. Family control ended in 2006, when it restarted with investment from Takamatsu Construction. Its craftsmen and techniques carried on.

According to the company's own history, in 578 Prince Shotoku invited three craftsmen from the Korean kingdom of Baekje to build Shitennoji, regarded as Japan's first state-sponsored temple. One of them, Kongo Shigemitsu, stayed on to look after the temple and became the company's first head. 2026 is the 1,448th year counted from 578.

The company's timeline is not a story of uninterrupted calm:

• 1576: the whole Shitennoji complex burns down during the siege of Ishiyama.
• 1597: the two-storey pagoda at Shomanin (Aizendo) is rebuilt. Its copper plate names the "master builder Kongo", and it is now an Important Cultural Property, the oldest wooden pagoda of its kind in Osaka city.
• Around 1801: lightning burns down Shitennoji's pagoda. The 32nd head, Yoshisada, leads the rebuilding and writes down a set of family precepts for craftsmen.
• 1868: the Meiji government's separation of Shinto and Buddhism strips Shitennoji of its lands and stipend. Kongo Gumi enters hard times and starts working for other temples and shrines.
• 1932: the 37th head, Haruichi, takes his own life at his ancestors' grave over the lack of work. His wife, Yoshie, becomes the 38th head, the first woman master builder in the family's history.
• 1934: the company rebuilds Shitennoji's pagoda after the Muroto typhoon.
• Second World War: temple work stops; the company survives by making wooden crates for the military.
• 1955: Kongo Gumi becomes a joint-stock company, takes on general construction and develops reinforced-concrete methods for temple buildings.
• 2006: it restarts with investment from Takamatsu Construction, keeping its techniques, staff and temple carpenters. In 2008 it joins the Takamatsu Construction Group holding company.

Takamatsu's securities filings record that in January 2006 a new Kongo Gumi took over the old company's entire temple-building business. Bloomberg Businessweek reported in 2007 that the old company had been unable to service its debts. In other words, the world's oldest family business did not survive Japan's post-bubble years as a family business. Our old version claimed the opposite.

What survived was the name and the craft. Kongo Gumi's temple carpenters work in seven teams led by master builders, and belong to a guild-like group, the Takumi-kai, where they teach one another and train apprentices, partly by taking apart and repairing old halls to learn how earlier carpenters worked. What lasted 1,400 years was less a bloodline than a body of skill and a way of passing it on.

Why does Japan have so many old firms?

The records point to four things: places that escaped war and fire, a habit of handing on the "house" rather than the person, a willingness to change how money is made, and industries that work on long time scales.

1. Some places were spared. TDB ties Kyoto's lead to relatively light war damage. A firm whose premises, suppliers and customers all burn down rarely continues, however determined its owners.
2. The house, not the heir. In Japan's merchant tradition a business belonged to the ie, the household, and each head held it in trust for the next. If there was no suitable son, families adopted a son-in-law, promoted a head clerk, or let a trusted employee open a branch under the shop's name (noren-wake). The habit persists: in TDB's 2025 survey, internal promotion of non-family executives (36.1%) overtook family succession (32.3%) for the first time among firms that changed leader that year (preliminary figures).
3. Keeping the sign, changing the income. The single largest sub-industry among Japan's century-old firms is office leasing, with 1,552 firms: old businesses that built offices on land they had held for generations.
4. Industries that run on time. Sake brewing has the highest share of century-old firms of any industry, 91.9%, with soy sauce and miso makers close behind. For more on fermentation culture, see Koji, umami and the soul of Japanese food.

Are old companies safe?

No. Bankruptcies of century-old firms reached a record 145 in 2024, more than in 2008 after the Lehman shock (120), and stayed high at 142 in 2025.

TDB counts legal bankruptcies with debts of at least ¥10 million. In 2024, retail (43 cases) and manufacturing (42) made up about 60% of the total: supermarkets, department stores, kimono shops, traditional restaurants, sake breweries and confectioners. Weak sales were the main cause in 124 cases. Looking at 2025, TDB pointed to firms that could not pass rising costs on to customers and to failures of governance, and said survival depends on continually updating products, technology and sales channels.

Succession is the other pressure. TDB found that 50.1% of Japanese companies had no named successor in 2025, an improvement for the seventh year running but still half of all firms, and 57.3% among the smallest.

Is sanpo yoshi an old merchant saying?

The idea of "good for the seller, good for the buyer, good for society" is associated with the merchants of Omi (today's Shiga Prefecture), but the phrase sanpo yoshi itself was first used by Shiga University's Eiichiro Ogura in a 1988 book.

Itochu, a trading house founded by an Omi merchant, explained this in its 2016 in-house magazine, citing the Omi merchant historian Hideki Usami; a Shiga University journal also calls it Ogura's coinage. The thinking behind it is older: Ogura wrote that such ideas were widely heard among merchants east of Lake Biwa, and Itochu's founder taught that "trade is the work of a bodhisattva". Quote it, by all means, but as a modern summary of an old ethic, not a 400-year-old proverb.

What can a business learn from them? Seven steps

Write down what must not change, cap your borrowing, don't delay price rises, start succession planning around age 60, pass skills on through systems rather than single people, put your principles on one page, and ask for outside help early.

1. List what you will not change, and let the rest change. Kongo Gumi kept its joinery and its relationship with temples, but adopted reinforced concrete in the 1950s and opened a pre-cutting factory in 1980.
2. Set limits on debt and on investments outside your core business while times are good. Even the oldest firm in Japan lost its independence to debt.
3. Review prices against costs at least once a year. TDB names failure to pass on costs as a leading cause of old-firm bankruptcies.
4. Start succession planning around 60. Japan's Small and Medium Enterprise Agency guideline (3rd edition, 2022) says that handovers take more than three years in over half of cases, and often more than ten, and recommends owners start preparing at about 60. Its five steps: recognise the need; make the firm's finances and problems visible; strengthen the business; draw up a succession plan (or an M&A process for an outside buyer); then carry it out.
5. Make skill transfer a system. Kongo Gumi's carpenters' guild means no single master is a point of failure. Record procedures on video, and let juniors teach seniors too.
6. Put your principles on one page. Kongo Gumi's 32nd head wrote his precepts down after rebuilding a temple. Yours can be short: who you serve and what you will not do.
7. Ask for help early. Japan has public business succession support centres in all 47 prefectures, which also help match firms with buyers.

Common mistakes: waiting "while I'm still healthy"; trying to rescue a weak core business with unrelated investments; confusing tradition with never changing prices or channels; relying on "watch and learn" alone; and using "founded centuries ago" or sanpo yoshi in marketing without checking the facts.

How should a visitor approach an old shop?

No special etiquette is needed, but behind the shop curtain is someone's workplace. Ask before taking photos, say something before handling goods, and if you are unsure what to buy, ask what to look for.

Kyoto Prefecture has honoured firms that have run the same trade in the prefecture for at least 100 years as "Kyoto shinise" since fiscal 1968, 2,062 firms up to fiscal 2024, with 20 more added in January 2026. Its published lists are a good way to choose where to go. Check opening hours and closing days before you visit: many shops close one day a week. Ask about origins, uses and care; most owners are glad to explain. Weekday afternoons are quieter than lunchtimes and weekends, when local regulars shop.

For choosing ceramics and lacquerware, see Kutani, Bizen and Mashiko pottery and Wakasa-nuri lacquered chopsticks. On the temples that craftsmen like Kongo Gumi serve, see Temples are not quiet escapes and Shinto vs Buddhism in Japan.

A Japanese view: shinise as a record of people who kept going

The Digital Daijisen dictionary derives shinise from an old verb, shinisu, roughly "to do as one's predecessors did". Imitating a predecessor does not mean repeating them; it means adjusting the method so that the same trust reaches a new generation. Read Kongo Gumi's timeline and what stands out is not national character but individual decisions: rebuild the pagoda, make crates when there is no temple work, let the widow lead. Learning from shinise means respecting those decisions and asking the same question of your own work: can I hand this on? For a related angle on work and time, see Japan's lifetime employment.

Frequently asked questions

Is Kongo Gumi the oldest company in the world? TDB lists it as Japan's oldest company (founded 578). Since 2006 it has operated as a new company that took over the old one's business, so whether it is "the same company" depends on your definition.

Is the world's oldest hotel also in Japan? Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan in Yamanashi traces its hot spring to 705 and is recognised by Guinness World Records as the oldest hotel, according to Yamanashi Prefecture's official tourism site.

Why are old firms increasing while their bankruptcies hit records? About 2,000 firms founded in the Meiji and Taisho eras pass the 100-year mark each year, so the total keeps rising even as more of them fail.

Can I still use the phrase sanpo yoshi? Yes, as long as you present it as a 1988 summary of Omi merchant thinking rather than an Edo-period saying.

Where can a Japanese business owner get help with succession? The business succession support centre in each prefecture, local chambers of commerce, and the firm's bank. The government guideline is free to read online.

Sources and dates checked (all checked on 2026-10-26)

• Teikoku Databank, nationwide shinise analysis (2025), released 27 March 2026: counts, age bands, founding eras, prefectures, industries, 142 bankruptcies in 2025 — tdb.co.jp/report/economic/20260327_sh… ; full text via PR Times prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000001298.00… (primary)
• Zaikei Shimbun, republication of the same release — zaikei.co.jp/releases/3365307
• Teikoku Databank, shinise bankruptcies in 2024, 16 January 2025 (145 cases, 96 in 2023, 120 in 2008, by industry, 124 from weak sales) — tdb.co.jp/report/economic/20250116-sh… (primary)
• Zaikei Shimbun, republication of the same TDB release ("record 145 cases, above the Lehman shock") — zaikei.co.jp/releases/2770444
• Teikoku Databank, successor survey 2025, 21 November 2025 (50.1%, by size, by type of succession) — prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000001192.00… (primary); ITmedia report, 7 January 2026 — itmedia.co.jp/business/spv/2601/07/news04…
• Nikkei BP Consulting tally as reported: 2020 edition (41.3%; 1,340 firms over 200 years, about 65%) — itmedia.co.jp/business/spv/2103/29/news01… , groovyjapan.com/en/japan-boasts-worlds-long… ; 2022 edition (37,085 firms, 50.1%) and Tokyo Shoko Research's 42,966 — coki.jp/article/column/30175
• Kongo Gumi, official history, temple carpenters and media pages — kongogumi.co.jp/about_history.html , kongogumi.co.jp/takumi_miyadaiku.html , kongogumi.co.jp/media.html (primary)
• Takamatsu Construction Group, corporate history from its securities reports — edinetdb.jp/company/E00285/history
• Wikipedia, "Kongō Gumi" (cross-check; cites Bloomberg Businessweek, "The End of a 1,400-Year-Old Business", 2007) — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kongō_Gumi
• Itochu, ITOCHU Monthly, December 2016, on the origin of sanpo yoshi — itochu.co.jp/ja/csr/pdf/09_im2016_12.pdf (primary)
• Shiga University, Hikone Ronso record describing sanpo yoshi as Professor Ogura's coinage — shiga-u.repo.nii.ac.jp/records/8113
• Small and Medium Enterprise Agency, Business Succession Guidelines, 3rd edition, March 2022 — pref.miyazaki.lg.jp/documents/71235/71235_20220… (primary; agency document hosted by Miyazaki Prefecture)
• Kyoto Prefecture, "Kyoto shinise" awards, January 2026 and January 2025 (cumulative 2,062 firms) — pref.kyoto.jp/senshoku/news/press/2026/1/… , pref.kyoto.jp/senshoku/news/press/2025/1/… (primary)
• Yamanashi Prefecture official tourism site, Keiunkan — yamanashi-kankou.jp/special/keiunkan2019.html (primary); Toyo Keizai Online — toyokeizai.net/articles/-/541870
• Etymology of shinise (Digital Daijisen as quoted) — oggi.jp/6733006 ; kaikki.org/dictionary/Japanese/meaning…
• Images: Wikimedia Commons file pages (licences checked) — commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shitennoji-pagoda… , commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aizendo_Shoman-in… , commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sugidama_-_Kiku_n… , commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ippodō_Kyoto_-202…

By J-Times Editorial (information as of 2026-10-26)