Curated playlist
Companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange
- McDonald'sMcDonald's opened its first location at 1398 North E Street in San Bernardino, California, on the 15th of May 1940 - not as a global empire, but as a hamburger stand run by two brothers who simply wanted to make $1 million before they…
- FujifilmFujifilm began life in 1934 as a subsidiary of a Japanese chemical company called Daicel, making photographic film. Few corporate origin stories seem less dramatic. Yet the company that started by coating light-sensitive chemicals onto…
- TV AsahiTV Asahi broadcasts from a sleek building in Roppongi, Tokyo, designed by architect Fumihiko Maki, a structure that would have seemed impossible to the founders who launched the channel with at least 6.5 hours of programming per day back…
- Koei TecmoKoei Tecmo is one of Japan's most storied video game holding companies, born from a merger that almost did not happen. In August 2008, a rival corporation made a bold move to absorb a struggling Tokyo developer. That bid would be rejected…
- NintendoNintendo was founded on the 23rd of September 1889, not as a game company, but as a playing card business. Craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi set up shop in Shimogyō-ku, Kyoto, producing handmade hanafuda cards by hand. The name Nintendo is…
- Japan AirlinesJapan Airlines, known by its initials JAL, was born from the wreckage of World War II, its first planes leased from a Philippine carrier, its first crews borrowed from a subsidiary of an American rival. On the 25th of October 1951, Japan's…
- Nihon FalcomNihon Falcom takes its name from a science fiction film. The founders wanted to evoke the Millennium Falcon, but changed the final "n" to an "m" to match the naming conventions of the early 1980s Japanese tech industry. Then they prepended…
- Square EnixSquare Enix was born from the union of two companies that had long watched each other across Japan's video game landscape. In April 2003, Square and Enix merged, with Enix as the surviving legal entity. Each Square share was exchanged for…
- SonySony began in the rubble of postwar Tokyo with a capital of 190,000 yen and eight employees. Masaru Ibuka opened an electronics shop inside a department store called Shirokiya in the Nihonbashi district in 1946, and within weeks his former…
- MandarakeMandarake began as a seven-square meter storefront in a Tokyo shopping complex, selling used manga to a niche audience. Today it is the largest secondhand comics retailer in the world, processing roughly ten thousand items per day through…
- DentsuDentsu, Japan's largest advertising agency, holds a grip on its home market so complete that it handles roughly 28 percent of the entire national advertising budget. That number alone raises a question worth sitting with. How does any…
- KonamiJapanese entertainment and video game company
- CapcomCapcom sits behind some of the most recognizable titles in video game history. Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Monster Hunter, Mega Man, Devil May Cry, and half a dozen others all trace back to a single Japanese company that started not…
- SoftBank GroupSoftBank Group began not as a tech empire but as a software distributor founded in September 1981 by then-24-year-old Masayoshi Son. In 2000, Son wired $20 million to a fledgling Chinese internet startup called Alibaba. Fourteen years…
- Kadokawa CorporationKadokawa Corporation began not as a media empire but as a small postwar publishing house with a mission: to revitalize Japanese culture through books. That was 1945, the year the original Kadokawa Shoten was founded, and Japan was still…
- Toei AnimationToei Animation traces its origin to the 23rd of January 1948, when animators Kenzō Masaoka and Sanae Yamamoto founded a company called Japan Animated Films. Toei Company purchased that studio in 1956 and renamed it. In 1998, the Japanese…
- WowowWowow is a satellite broadcasting and premium television station based in Tokyo, and it holds a distinction most Japanese viewers take for granted today: it was the first broadcaster in the country to offer round-the-clock, three-channel,…