YATARO IWASAKI and EIICHI SHIBUSAWA by Peter F. Drucker

“Everyone in the nineteenth century took economic development for granted. An exception is Japan. In Japan there was a famous debate, lasting two decades, over the conditions of economic development and the forces making for it.

But the debate was not between economists. It was between practical entrepreneurs who founded and built businesses rather than textbook models of a development economy.

The very names of Yataro Iwasaki (1834-1885) and Eiichi Shibusawa (1840-1931) are known outside of Japan only to a few specialists.

Yet their achievements were a good deal more spectacular than those of Rothschild, Morgan, Krupp, or Rockefeller. Iwasaki founded and built the Mitsubishi group of industries—to this day the largest manufacturing complex in Japan and one of the world’s largest and most successful business groups.

Shibusawa founded and built more than 600 industrial companies during his ninety years of life, which extended well into the twentieth century. These two men engaged in a public and often acrimonious debate:

‘Maximize profits,’ said Iwasaki, ‘Maximize talents,’ said Shibusawa and between them, the pair founded something like two-thirds of Japan’s enterprises in manufacturing and transportation.

No other two men in any economy have had a similar impact.”