Abstract
While cultural entrepreneurship research has highlighted how entrepreneurs craft stories to legitimize their ventures, we know much less about how entrepreneurs gain legitimacy for a novel organizational form. Drawing upon a detailed, historical examination of Japanese family mottos from the Edo period (1603–1868), we show how stories embedded in family mottos enabled legitimation by symbolically leveraging two core socio-cultural institutions of Edo Japan (religion and family), advancing our understanding of how broader cultural resources can be leveraged to legitimate a new organizational form. We discuss implications for scholarship on family business and cultural entrepreneurship.
Keywords
Introduction
Family business has always been a contested organizational form, betwixt and between logics of the family, corporation, and market (Gómez-Mejia et al., 2011; Miller et al., 2017). While family businesses can be an engine for economic growth, some have more critically argued that many family businesses embrace nepotism, which can undermine sound business decision-making and performance, and that powerful family business can underpin “crony capitalism” that can inhibit societal-level innovation and economic growth (Mehrotra et al., 2013; Morck et al., 2000). Because of such contested legitimacy, we see quite dramatic variation in the prevalence of family business around the world, with higher concentrations in continental Europe, South America, and Japan than in the United States or the United Kingdom and other regions, such as Africa (Amore & Miller, 2024).
Scholars have explained variations in the diffusion, legitimacy, and performance of family firms in terms of institutional embeddedness (Amore & Miller, 2024; Berrone et al., 2022; Miller et al., 2017). There is a broad consensus that both formal and informal institutions drive the relative prevalence of family ownership and management as well as the economic performance of family firms. They do so by serving as the basis for social order and compliance and providing rationales for legitimacy (Amore & Miller, 2024). Formal institutions include legal and regulatory frameworks, while informal institutions refer to normative cultural drivers, including familial traditions and values, group norms such as trust and collectivism, and societal institutions such as religion (Scott, 2001). The latter can also be conceptualized in terms of institutional logics, that is, the socially constructed set of cultural symbols and material practices, assumptions, values, and beliefs by which entrepreneurs “provide meaning to their daily activity, organize time and space, and reproduce their lives and experiences” (Thornton et al., 2012, p. 2; see also Lounsbury et al., 2021).
While there is robust evidence that socio-cultural institutions serve as important mechanisms influencing the prevalence of family firms, we have a much more limited understanding of how and why certain institutions and broad cultural values become instantiated within organizations. This is particularly relevant when family entrepreneurs lack dispositional legitimacy, that is, a form of legitimacy that stems from the perception that a social actor or organization possesses desirable characteristics—such as trustworthiness, sincerity, or benevolence—and acts with good intentions (Suchman, 1995). This form of legitimacy is critical in the early stages of organizational emergence (e.g., new ventures) because founders aim to appear trustworthy and competent to those who must judge intent and character in the absence of track records (Überbacher, 2014; Zott & Huy, 2007). Understanding the emergence of family businesses as an organizational form, therefore, requires an examination of how family entrepreneurs deploy elements of the founding context to legitimize their business practices and embed them in idiosyncratic forms of organizing.
To tackle this challenge, we develop a cultural entrepreneurship perspective on family business (Lounsbury & Glynn, 2019). This perspective argues that any form of entrepreneurship, including the creation of family businesses, is fundamentally entrenched in socio-cultural dynamics that provide logics of action and shape the meaning of entrepreneurial activities (George & Zahra, 2002; Lounsbury et al., 2019; Valdez & Richardson, 2013). Many studies have documented how entrepreneurs use the material and symbolic resources available in their institutional environments to craft entrepreneurial stories that facilitate both the pursuit of new market opportunities and the acquisition and maintenance of socio-political legitimacy (Dalpiaz et al., 2016; Garud et al., 2014; Lockwood et al., 2023; Rindova et al., 2011; Soublière & Gehman, 2020). However, as Lounsbury and Glynn (2019) argue, our understanding of these processes remains incomplete, and we need more detailed studies of how different kinds of organizations are legitimated across time and space. Recent work further underscores that, despite developing along different lines, cultural entrepreneurship traditions converge around a common concern with the cultural mechanisms through which new possibilities take shape—how novel ideas, practices, and organizational forms come into being and gain recognition (Lockwood et al., 2026).
In this article, following a micro-historical approach (Hargadon & Wadhwani, 2023; see also Lubinski, 2018; Wadhwani & Lubinski, 2017), we investigate the emergence and legitimation of family businesses through an archival study of Japanese family firms during the Edo period (1603–1868). The Edo period was the time when the Japanese merchant class was emerging and the economic and philosophical bases of Japanese capitalism were being formed (Bellah, 1957; Borovoy, 2016; Goto, 2006; Ramseyer, 1979). The merchant class was heavily stigmatized, and active efforts were made by the Tokugawa shogunate to suppress merchants’ activities in order to maintain social order and control. To understand how the merchant class was able to enhance its status via the legitimation of the family business form, our empirical focus is on family mottos—long-standing principles, rules, and instructions left by founders and former leaders to their successors, which inform day-to-day family business operations (Sasaki et al., 2020). As enduring cultural artifacts, mottos offer a unique window into how institutional values were embedded into entrepreneurial practice and transmitted intergenerationally (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990). Seen in this light, mottos can be understood as a particular narrative genre whose brevity, moral tone, and prescriptive character afford distinctive possibilities for entrepreneurial storytelling (Turner, 2025).
Our analysis shows that family mottos symbolically leveraged two core societal logics of Edo Japan, namely those of religion and family (the ie), to legitimate the family business form, and by doing so, enhanced the status of the stigmatized merchant class. By encapsulating institutional values into organizational scripts (Barley & Tolbert, 1997), mottos were cultivated as cultural resources (Lockwood & Soublière, 2018; Lounsbury & Glynn, 2019) that served two purposes—to legitimate the novel family business form to external stakeholders (including the shogunate) and to legitimate particular ways of doing business within and across variegated family businesses that normalized appropriate roles and practices. These dual forms of legitimation—internal and external—were virtuously intertwined, enabling the family business form to spread and provide the foundation for the ultimate development of Japanese capitalism (Ashida, 1974; Miyamoto, 1941; Yoshida, 2010).
Our study provides three major contributions to knowledge. First, we advance the family business literature by unpacking the processes by which family business as an organizational form becomes legitimate in hostile contexts. Second, we contribute to the cultural entrepreneurship research by explaining the socio-cultural process of organization form creation and legitimation. In so doing, we theorize “where” cultural resources come from and how they become reproduced in organizations. Third, we articulate how cultural entrepreneurship, by incorporating core social institutions into business practices, not only delineates appropriate ways of being a family business but also informs particular brands of capitalism and is more generally relevant to understanding how entrepreneurial processes are influenced by wider belief systems, including ideologies and logics (Eberhart et al., 2022a, 2022b).
Family Business Legitimacy and Socio-Cultural Institutions
Socio-cultural institutions such as institutional logics play a pivotal role in shaping values, beliefs, and expectations, significantly impacting the legitimacy of businesses (Lounsbury et al., 2021; Patriotta et al., 2011; Thornton et al., 2012). A country’s social order system, social relationships, and values influence how family businesses are appreciated to different degrees, which in turn affects their degree of prevalence (Berrone et al., 2022). Dominant logics within a regional community will therefore influence the form and practices adopted by family firms, including their governance and performance outcomes (Amore & Miller, 2024; Chung & Luo, 2008).
Scholars have explored the influence of institutions on family business structures across various countries, highlighting that a strong family logic often legitimizes the prevalence of family firms. Socio-cultural institutions, especially family and religion, are powerful forces in shaping the legitimacy of family firms. For example, Berrone et al. (2022) argue that family business legitimacy—the extent to which societal systems, relationships, and values recognize family firms as primary economic units governed by kinship—varies across contexts and influences the prevalence, strategic behavior, and performance advantages of family firms (Berrone et al., 2022, p. 1154). Similarly, Miller et al. (2017) posit that in regions where family logic is dominant, family firms tend to adopt governance models emphasizing family involvement. Their findings suggest that these models are shaped by the ecosystem of logics within a firm’s environment, particularly by the interplay between family and market logics. These logics exert their influence both internally and externally as they find their way into an organization via its actors and also help constitute its external competitive landscape.
Additionally, religion is identified as a key social institution influencing the legitimacy of entrepreneurial activity, including family entrepreneurship. Weber’s (2011) classic study The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was a landmark text in the sociology of entrepreneurship and cast light on the connection between religious and economic logics. More recently, Smith and colleagues have proposed a “theological turn” in the field of entrepreneurship aimed at developing new insights on how religious institutional contexts give rise to entrepreneurial opportunities and outcomes and how religious logic may promote or constrain entrepreneurial activity (Smith et al., 2019, 2021). Within the literature on family business, Miller et al. (2017) note that Confucian regions, with their emphasis on family tradition and patriarchal structures, are more inclined to foster family firms compared to areas with liberal religious traditions and free-market orientations. Likewise, research by Colli (2003) and Colli et al. (2003) attributes the divergent development of family businesses in Britain, Spain, and Italy to variations in company and inheritance laws and the role of religion and community in shaping governance, succession, and ownership. Eze et al. (2021) further illustrate how religion impacts family structure (e.g., marriage customs), functioning (e.g., spousal roles), and mindset (e.g., primogeniture), thereby influencing entrepreneurial efforts across generations. Finally, Brunner-Kirchmair et al. (2024) argue that in contexts where religion is paramount, the religious logic may override the family logic.
In summary, these findings underscore the profound impact of socio-cultural institutions, particularly family and religion, on the legitimacy and organizational form of family businesses. However, we have a much more limited understanding of how family entrepreneurs engage in legitimacy-seeking efforts aimed at incorporating dominant socio-cultural institutions into organizational forms. More specifically, while a substantial body of work exists on the entrepreneurial nature of family business (Ge et al., 2022; Zahra et al., 2004; Zellweger et al., 2012), there is still much to uncover about how leaders of family firms act as cultural entrepreneurs and how cultural processes enable family firms to construct and maintain their entrepreneurial journeys. To deepen our understanding of the socio-cultural processes through which family firms construct their legitimacy, we propose that the literature on cultural entrepreneurship (Lounsbury & Glynn, 2019) offers a useful theoretical framework for explaining how cultural resources are leveraged to enable organizational form legitimation.
Cultural Entrepreneurship in Family Business
Lounsbury and Glynn (2001, 2019) developed a general theory of entrepreneurial legitimation that focuses on how cultural resources can be leveraged to construct business ventures that resonate with and are perceived as appropriate by various audiences (see also Giorgi et al., 2015). At the core of the theory of cultural entrepreneurship is entrepreneurial storytelling, which involves the mindful construction of stories and related forms of symbolic communication that, if resonant with key stakeholders, has been shown to enable resource acquisition and growth (Soublière & Lockwood, 2022). From this standpoint, extant institutional logics, such as those related to family and religion, are cultural resources within an entrepreneur’s cultural toolkit (Swidler, 1986). Entrepreneurs can draw on these logics to create repertoires of stories that make their ventures intelligible and appropriate to both internal and external audiences (Lounsbury et al., 2019; Patriotta & Siegel, 2019).
Scholars have built on the idea that entrepreneurs leverage the cultural context in which they are situated to make sense of their activity and to give sense to their audiences through storytelling practices (Martens et al., 2007; Rindova et al., 2011; Überbacher, 2014; Voronov et al., 2023). For example, a study by Dalpiaz et al. (2016) examines how an Italian manufacturer of household products combined competing logics of industrial manufacturing and cultural production to identify new market opportunities and achieve legitimacy. In a similar vein, Garud et al. (2014) adopt a processual perspective to explain how projective entrepreneurial stories can disappoint stakeholders and how entrepreneurs need to revise their stories in order to maintain long-term legitimacy.
Other studies theorize cultural entrepreneurship at a collective level. They show how the agency of entrepreneurs in their use of culture is distributed across multiple entities and actors whose interaction and collective storytelling shape the emergence of new market categories (Gehman & Soublière, 2017; Lounsbury et al., 2019). Navis and Glynn’s (2010) study, for example, explains how a nascent market category becomes legitimized. It reveals how, in the early stage of category’s emergence, the producers jointly constructed stories that explained “what they do” (p. 451) to spread a basic understanding of who they are and to mitigate unfamiliarity with the category. Similarly, Wry et al. (2011) have proposed that the legitimacy of nascent entrepreneurial groups can be formed when the members of the group can articulate a clear collective identity story and coordinate their storytelling practices. Finally, scholars who have adopted an institutional logics perspective have emphasized how entrepreneurs and their interconnected ecosystems are embedded in and influenced by broader cultural beliefs and rules. For example, Lounsbury (2007) has shown that the spread of the practice of contracting with independent professional money management firms among U.S. mutual funds differed between two cities—Boston and New York—due to cultural differences in the local industries.
Taken together, current studies in the field of cultural entrepreneurship have explained the symbolic management processes by which entrepreneurs purposefully use socio-cultural institutions to develop entrepreneurial possibilities. Developing entrepreneurial possibilities depends on entrepreneurs’ capacity to gain legitimacy in relation to the relevant institutionalized values of a society. In turn, legitimacy is achieved through storytelling that leverages the socio-cultural institutions in which entrepreneurial activities are carried out. In these studies, socio-cultural institutions are understood not just as determinants, enablers, or constrainers of entrepreneurial possibilities, but as “enacted through symbolic action and communication” (Patriotta & Siegel, 2019, p. 2). While this research has been extremely valuable in promoting an understanding of how entrepreneurs deploy available cultural resources to enhance entrepreneurial legitimation, which in turn influences the prevalence of family firms (Amore & Miller, 2024; Berrone et al., 2022), we know much less about how and why certain institutions and broad cultural values become instantiated within organizations when family firms lack dispositional legitimacy in their founding context. Hence, there is a need to understand how family business entrepreneurs utilize relevant socio-cultural resources in response to the constraints of the institutional environment in which they operate and how such resources shape their organizations. In the remainder of the article, we build on the insights of cultural entrepreneurship theory to deepen our understanding of how family business as an organizational form becomes legitimate by using the available cultural resources at hand. We do this by means of an empirical investigation of the dynamics that led to the rise of the merchant class and the emergence of family entrepreneurship in Edo Japan.
Methods
Research Setting and Design
We conducted a historical analysis of early Japanese family businesses to examine the socio-cultural processes through which they emerged and gained legitimacy. Our focus was on the Edo period (1603–1867), which was a time of economic growth fueled by the rise of the merchant class. Many long-standing Japanese family businesses were established during this period, some of which still exist. Scholars have therefore suggested that it was specifically during the Edo period that the economic and philosophical basis for Japan’s distinctive form of modern capitalism was created (Bellah, 1957; Goto, 2006; Kawaguchi, 1990).
We employed a micro-historical approach, which involves reducing the scale of historical observation to “reveal previously unnoticed aspects—the causes and consequences—of larger historical relationships and processes” (Hargadon & Wadhwani, 2023, p. 6). Specifically, we collected and analyzed family mottos of Japanese family businesses founded during the Edo period, which were conceived as material embodiments of a broader socio-cultural system (Douglas, 1986). Family mottos are cultural artifacts in the sense that they denote “a historically transmitted pattern of meanings …, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life” (Geertz, 1973, p. 89). The aim of mottos was to provide family businesses with unchanging rules, norms, and values that guided their day-to-day family business operations. They came in various forms, including store regulations, wills, stories, and legends that either the founder or the subsequent heads of the families set up.
Even if the forms varied, mottos possessed an “eternal nature” (Yoshida, 2010, p. 36), meaning that they were faithfully inherited from one generation to the next and were used as a storytelling mechanism to communicate codes of conduct governing the daily lives of the entrepreneurs (Sasaki et al., 2020). In this regard, mottos are reproductive cultural artifacts, precisely because their function is to transmit rules and values across generations. Here, reproduction refers to the cultural process of replicating something to maintain its existence; hence, mottos enable the cross-generational maintenance of core institutional values by conferring legitimacy on entrepreneurial practices.
According to research by Teikoku Data Bank (2008), approximately 80% of long-living companies with more than 100 years of history in Japan have family mottos that are used to guide daily business operations. Sasaki et al. (2020) have shown how these statements are still formally or informally valued and continue to be used in today’s organizations despite the internal and external changes that have occurred over the course of their histories. However, unlike their study, which looked at the various ways in which these family mottos are maintained and still guide the daily operations of companies today, ours focuses on the historical conditions under which these mottos were written so that we can understand the socio-cultural processes through which they emerged and conferred legitimacy to the family business form.
Data Collection
Our main source of data was family mottos written during the Edo period. In order to build a comprehensive database, we identified publicly available mottos, as compiled in the work of Japanese historians. We assembled 17 books and 11 journal articles to identify as many of the publicly available family mottos written during the Edo period as possible. We also consulted three experts in Japanese family mottos to ensure that we covered those that were publicly available.
We constructed a database of 77 mottos from 65 family businesses written during the Edo period. Most of these texts were written in traditional Japanese, while others were listed in early Modern Japanese. Although the first author is fluent in contemporary Japanese, it was necessary to hire an expert in early Modern Japanese to translate all mottos into contemporary Japanese and English. The first author worked closely with the translator to clarify meanings as accurately as possible while maintaining the original nuance, especially for historical practices unfamiliar today, such as early Modern bookkeeping methods and exchanges of money. Mottos varied in length (1–46 pages), resulting in 602 double-spaced pages of transcribed material.
Table B1 in Appendix B summarizes the characteristics of the family businesses examined and their mottos. Some firms had multiple mottos, reflecting revisions by later generations. Some cells are marked as “unclear” because no further contextual information was available on some of the companies, a typical problem when engaging in historical research (Decker, 2013). Thirty-nine of these family businesses, which developed into contemporary companies, still exist today, while 26 do not. However, we decided to include all the family mottos in our analysis, first, because they increased our understanding of the socio-cultural spirit of the time when the imprinting of the long-living Japanese firms was established (Stinchcombe, 1965). Second, by comparing the year of their establishment with the year in which the mottos were prepared, we could notice that at the time they were written, many of these family businesses already had a long history, even if they no longer exist today.
Finally, the main data source was complemented by additional secondary material in both Japanese and English to increase our understanding of the sociocultural and economic landscape in the Edo period. Contextualization is critical when doing historical research to complement and triangulate information from multiple angles (Hargadon & Waldhwani, 2023; Vaara & Lamberg, 2016). In total, the first author examined 13 books and four journal articles that discussed the characteristics and histories of long-standing Japanese companies. These were useful as a means of deepening the overall understanding of the nature of the long-standing firms in Japan. She also examined 7 books and 29 journal articles focusing on the religious and family ie systems in Edo Japan. This literature was critical for the purpose of deepening an understanding of the socio-cultural institutional context in Edo Japan and investigating how the mottos related to the context. Table A1 in Appendix A summarizes the data sources.
Data Analysis
Following micro-historical principles, we connected “microtemporal” details in mottos to the “macrotemporal” institutional environment (Hargadon & Wadhwani, 2023). By combining these two frames, theory development is enhanced through contextualization (Shirokova et al., 2023). Accordingly, we aimed to offer novel insights to existing entrepreneurship theories by studying an incipient phenomenon within a historically situated empirical context that was distant from the conventional and more familiar Western advanced market economies. We followed this approach in analyzing the family mottos and engaged in constant comparisons with the existing historical understandings of socio-cultural institutions in Edo Japan. Here, we relied on the primary data sources, our own analysis of them, and the historical interpretation we derived from the secondary data sources in order to combine our insights and make sense of the data.
We started our data analysis by carefully reading the family mottos. We read and open-coded the mottos separately. Whenever the second and third authors did not understand certain points, the first author explained what they meant. We then discussed the emerging insights. The mottos generally seemed to espouse the principles by which the family should live and expressed the ideal pattern of what a merchant’s life should be. Most of them depicted the social hierarchy of the family business, including the role of the head of the family, the responsibilities of other family members and relatives, and the codes of conduct for servants. Moreover, all of the mottos contained some mention of faith, including making points about the afterlife, respecting God and Buddha, and worshipping ancestors.
Based on the initial understanding of the ideals and values contained in the mottos, we then turned our attention to our secondary archives. The purpose of this stage of analysis was to unpack the link between family mottos and the broader socio-cultural institutions in which they were embedded. We compared the content of the mottos with what we found in the existing literature (Ooms, 1986; Sorte Junior, 2016). We noticed how references to family in the mottos resonated with the concept of the ie family system that had been established during the Edo period (and still prevails in today’s Japanese society, to some degree). We also noted connections to religion and religious movements in the Edo period, including Neo-Confucianism, Zen Buddhism, and Shintoism. After multiple iterations, we identified three core ie principles that were reflected in family mottos: seeking eternal survival and prosperity, respecting social positions and duties, and advocating moral values. We therefore related the content of the mottos to these three concepts. We then coded the religious principles into the core concepts of karma, social virtues, and cardinal relations, and more generally, how a person should live their life (“the way of a person”).
In the final stage of analysis, we focused on how the reproductive legacy mechanism of the family mottos was encapsulated into the family business as an organizational form. Following Douglas (1986), we did this through analogical reasoning. According to Douglas, organizations and institutions are only formed when individuals entrench in their minds, and hence reproduce, a model of the social order. To acquire legitimacy, every firm needs a formula that founds its rightness in reason and in nature (Douglas, 1986, p. 45). In the case observed, this formula was based on an analogy between the family as a kinship structure and the family business as an economically productive household, both of which existed within an idiosyncratic socio-cultural context. Accordingly, we examined how the institutional values of the founding context, as reproduced in the family mottos, informed particular organizational scripts, defined as behavioral patterns that guide members’ activities and interactions in recurrent organizational situations (Barley & Tolbert, 1997). These scripts operate as culturally shaped templates that define what is appropriate to do in specific contexts. They embed and reproduce the broader institutional values of the society in which the organization is situated. We identified three core domains in the family business system where such scripts were particularly salient: the firm’s raison d’être, its social structure, and its business ethics.
Overall, the analysis enabled us to see the phenomenon of cultural entrepreneurship within a multi-layered nested framework that included entrepreneurial practices, as codified in mottos, the institutional values reproduced in those practices, and the organizational scripts that encapsulate the reproduced institutions. Table 1 provides an illustrative summary of our coding scheme.
Coding Scheme.
Findings
Our findings show how religion and family systems shaped the founding of Japanese family businesses. We explain how religious and family logics became integrated into family mottos that provided ethical guidelines for business activities and dictated a code of conduct for family members. These mottos generated scripts that defined the raison d’être, social structure, and ethical principles of the family business, ultimately establishing it as a distinct organizational form.
Founding Context and Dispositional Legitimacy of the Merchant Class
The Japanese business system has its roots in the Edo period (1603–1867) when the merchant class and business activities gradually acquired legitimacy (Sorte Junior, 2016). The political and military unification of Japan by the Tokugawa Shogunate in the early 17th century brought long-term economic, political, and social stability to the country (Sangawa, 2017, p. 154). This provided fertile ground for the emergence of the merchant class from a marginalized social position in the early Edo period into a wealthy, powerful group toward the middle and end of the Edo period (Sorte Junior, 2016). Traditionally, merchants occupied the lowest level of the four-tiered class system enforced by the Tokugawa Shogunate: “Samurai [… were] the highest class, followed by farmers ([…] high on the social scale because they produced rice), artisans […] and merchants […], officially the lowest class because handling money was ideologically despicable […]” (Sangawa, 2017, p. 154). The merchant class was regarded as “parasitical, not being producers and only seeking their own profit” (Sorte Junior, 2016, p. 327). The Tokugawa shogunate even sanctioned prominent merchant families, such as Yodoya, to curb their influence (Kumagai, 1986; Yoshida, 2010). In this context, early entrepreneurs faced profound dispositional illegitimacy: they were stigmatized as driven purely by greed and excluded from the social respect accorded to other classes.
This perception of the merchant class began to shift following the emergence of a new religious movement called “Shingaku Movement (‘Learning of the mind/heart’)” in the 18th century, led by Ishida Baigan (1685–1744), a thinker and ethicist from the Edo period. He was born into a family that ran a kimono [traditional Japanese clothing] shop. At that time, the Tokugawa shogunate prohibited the use of extravagant clothing and set standardized prices. […] Ishida Baigan, as a young man, questioned such government control and started to ponder the rightful way of merchant and the true human nature. (Shibata, 1962, p. 32–33.)
Drawing on Confucian and Buddhist teachings, Baigan redefined commerce as a moral activity. He compared merchants’ business activities to the samurai’s service to the Shogunate: “The profit that merchants gain through buying and selling is an appropriate reward and it is comparable [emphasis added] to the salary that the samurai class gain by serving the Shogunate” (Shibata, 1962, p. 101–102). On that basis, he argued that the merchants’ business activities were as valuable as the activities of the samurai class from a moral point of view. This led him to conclude that merchants’ activities were legitimate because they contributed to social stability, beyond the goal of profit seeking: “The purpose of the merchant’s activities should not be just to make a profit but to contribute to the stability of the society [emphasis added]” (Yoshida, 2010, p. 26) and that “[…] all four social classes should collectively serve the Heaven and help the Shogunate govern the country” (Miyamoto, 1941, p. 162).
Baigan’s ideas provided an ethical foundation for merchants’ business activities. According to Ashida (1974, p. 57), the integration of religious values into business activities “shifted the merchants from engaging in an adventurous, speculative, and clan-based[emphasis added] way of doing business to business that placed importance on public duty, honor, and social standing.” The new religious movement “enabled the lower merchants to awaken the purpose of their profession and to provide righteous reasoning to their profit-making activities” (Miyamoto, 1941, p. 161). In this way, the merchant class began to acquire legitimacy as a socially valuable group, laying the groundwork for the emergence of the family business as a recognized organizational form.
The Integration of Religious and Family Logics into Family Mottos
The rapid diffusion of the new religious movements prompted merchants to incorporate religious teaching into their business activities in the form of family mottos. According to Yoshida (2010, p. 38), “The family mottos were established more so during the times of turbulence. […] The merchants began to set up the family mottos to protect themselves [emphasis added] from the Shogunate’s persecution and the economic depression to make the family business stronger and more resilient [emphasis added].”Sone (2016, p. 45) emphasizes that: “Those family businesses that established family mottos based on the moral principles of the merchants’ ethics could overcome the economic downturns through trustworthy and honest business practices. Such families set up family mottos and sought to maintain and prosper the family business.”
Together with the diffusion of the new religious movements, another social phenomenon that became a platform for the development of family businesses as the basic social unit for economic activity in the Edo period was the emergence of the Japanese ie system. Originally designed to regulate samurai households, it was later extended to other social groups regardless of their social status, including merchant families (Bhappu, 2000). Indeed, according to Sone (2016, p. 40), “The merchant’s family mottos were created following the examples from the Samurai families’ family mottos. […] The merchants aimed to build wealth and transmit this to the next generation.”“The ie in the Japanese context meant more than just a dwelling together of parents, children and any other persons closely related to them” (Horie, 1966, p. 4). The concept can be understood as “a group that, on the basis of indivisible family property, works as a hereditary family business, has a socially constructed family name, and is tied together mainly by a biological family relationship” (Sakane, 2017, p. 47). It can be seen as both tangible (that is, representing the assets and possessions of a group of people) and intangible (representing the prestige, ranking, and organization of the family) (Bhappu, 2000; Horie, 1966). Some scholars have drawn parallels with the word “house,” which can be used, for example, to refer to the House of Windsor (Johnson, 1964).
Our analysis of the family mottos and secondary archives indicates that mottos drew on two mutually reinforcing socio-cultural institutions: the religious system and the ie family system. The ie defined the family as a perpetual entity encompassing past, present, and future generations. Its practices, such as ancestor worship, primogeniture, and risk-averse management, reinforced continuity, hierarchy, and ethical profit-making. Religious doctrines provided complementary principles, emphasizing the cosmic order of karma, social virtues, and collective well-being. Together, these institutions prescribed how families should live, govern themselves, and pursue business. In this regard, Miyamoto (1941, p. 164–165) states that: “The reason why the family mottos are similar to one another is because they are connected to the social values of the Edo society. […] This is also where the concept of family business emerged [emphasis added].”
Based on the above analysis of the founding context, in the following sections, we show that the family mottos have a double edge: first, they are aimed at gaining external legitimacy by incorporating principles and values of core institutions, thereby mitigating the dispositional illegitimacy of the merchant class. Second, by reproducing the values of the core institutions, they provide internal integrity to the organization, contributing to the emergence of the family business as a distinct organizational form. In this regard, family mottos act as internal codes of conduct and instruments of organizational imprinting. Our analysis suggests that mottos shaped the family business form in three core domains: raison d’être, social structure, and family business ethics, as discussed below.
Raison D’être of the Family Business: Seeking Eternal Survival and Prosperity
Merchants in the Edo period drew on religious doctrines and the ie system to frame the family business as a perpetual entity whose primary goal was survival across generations. Family mottos translated this view into concrete codes of conduct. Influenced by religious values, one of the core practices that ie upholds is ancestor worship, which implies treating ancestors and descendants as integral members of the household, embedding responsibility to preserve family survival and prosperity as a moral obligation. Ashida (1974, p. 109) states that “gratitude towards the ancestors was considered of primary importance to ensure the family business’ eternal continuation.” Ancestor worship was typically linked to estate grounds, and special consideration was given to the founder of the ie (Sakane, 2017, p. 48–49). For example, Articles 1 and 2 of the Mitsui family’s motto, one of the largest and most influential family firms in Japan, state:
As a revision of the family rules based on the will of Mr. Soujyu, the late head of the family, descendants of the coming generation shall obey the purpose forever and never go against the rules. (Mitsui family, 1722)
[…] The Mitsui family transmits the family business inherited from Mr. Soujyu. We must thrive in the family business more and more. We owe the prosperity of this business to the grandfather. Therefore, the descendants should appreciate him. (Mitsui family, 1722)
The ultimate goal of eternal survival and prosperity is supported by the Zen Buddhist principle of karma, which asserts that all members of society are interlocked in a multiple interdependency across all coordinates (Sorte Junior, 2016). Based on this philosophy, the actions of individual family members come to have a collective effect. Good deeds by family members therefore promote the fortunes of the family, while bad deeds diminish them, which affects the survival and prosperity of the ie. For example, the Ito family motto encourages family members to embrace a frugal lifestyle so that they will pass their fortune down from one generation to the next. It refers to a person who embodies this ideal as a “true human,” someone who “works hard and saves money or renders a great service to humanity and society.” Like the role of ancestors, it stresses intergenerational continuity—of both family name and family deeds, as a path to achieving eternal survival.
A man asked, how long do you think you are living with such a frugal lifestyle, or can you bring fortune to the next world? However, people have their family name handed down from their parents and to posterity. They cannot help thinking that a family continues forever. A true human is one who works hard and saves money or renders a great service to humanity and society. You should be careful and not behave improperly. (Ito family, 1789–1837)
In a similar vein, the motto below from the Moroto family condemns individuals with low moral values and those who live only for the present because their behavior jeopardizes the family’s long-term prosperity.
A person who loses a fortune is mostly thoughtless and makes an empty promise or has no sense of morals. Such a person is not able to foresee the future and lives just for the moment. Therefore, never be involved with a person like this. (Moroto family, 1846–1906)
Another illustration of the ethical significance of mottos is the frequent reference to codes of conduct prohibiting gambling, drinking alcohol (Souguya, 1829) and having relations with prostitutes (Fuwa family, 1931). The following example from the Shimai family offers a detailed explanation of the rules relating to gambling.
Playing sugoroku or any other kind of gambling is useless. It is unnecessary to play the game of Go or Japanese chess, practice military arts, chant a Noh text, or sing a song from traditional Japanese dance until the age of forty. However, there is no objection to practicing any performing arts after the age of fifty. Until then, it is unnecessary to have social interactions in Matsubara, go boating on the river, attend moon-viewing parties or flower viewings, or go sightseeing. […] (Shimai family, 1615)
Other mottos encouraged family entrepreneurs to cultivate virtues and orient their actions toward the benefit of the community. For example, a motto from the Ito family expressed the importance of seeing profit as a public good:
A profit made by a business must not be made one’s own and should be spent for the public. It is necessary to cultivate such a virtue. (Ito family, 1736)
Similarly, a motto from the Hinoya family underscored the fact that a family fortune is built across multiple generations and encouraged family members to engage in charitable acts in secret, as these good deeds were believed to be connected with a better and more fortunate future:
The fortune to become a wealthy person in a nation is not built over one generation.
It is necessary for good people to constantly appear across two or three generations. If you want to become such a person, you must do secret charitable acts or virtuous deeds and pray to God and Buddha. All the merchants of Oumi from the Nakai family devote themselves solemnly to accumulating good deeds before God and Buddha. This is because they have the sense that there is something beyond human knowledge. Nakai Gonzaemon mentioned the importance of dedicating one’s attention to longevity, putting frugality first, and being devoted to one’s business. That is all, and there is nothing else. (Hinoya family, 1805)
Taken together, these mottos not only reproduced the core institutions of the founding context but also defined the family business as an enduring social entity that went beyond profit-making. By embedding religious and family values into daily practice, mottos provided a legitimating rationale for business activities and positioned family prosperity and eternal survival at the core of entrepreneurial endeavors.
Social Structure of the Family Business: Hierarchy and Strict Sense of Duty
The social order in the feudal Edo society was founded on the master-servant relationship among the samurai class. This master-servant relationship was internalized by the merchant class. According to Miyamoto (1941, p. 74), “personal talent was no longer enough to be successful as a merchant; rather, it was necessary to manage the master-servant relationship on a growing family business.” Moreover, Ashida (1974) notes that “the family mottos embody the master-servant relationship” (p. 58), and this is because “the absolutely necessary condition for family firms to continue forever and prosper was to gain trust. The external trust was established over the long run by honest business practices. Internally, trust was established by controlling self and humility and by the harmonious unity of the members in the family business [emphasis added]” (p. 286). Miyamoto (1941) further contends that for the family business to function effectively, “the master-servant relationship had to be moralized [emphasis added]. This meant that the master had to show benevolence to the servant, and the servant had to show loyalty to serve the family” (p. 74).
The codes of conduct conveyed through the mottos reproduced the social hierarchy prescribed by a wider religious system that advocated patriarchal Confucian social relationships. Confucianism established the patriarchal household of the ie as the basic unit in which the four virtues and the five cardinal relations of Confucian social relationships were practiced (Ooms, 1986). Similarly, Zen Buddhism promoted an ideal social hierarchy based on a flow of generosity (on) flowing from superiors to subordinates: “Life is thus structured by the obligations one contracts for being a recipient of on, generosity, which flows from multiple sources: Heaven and Earth, one’s teachers, the lord of the land (who provides peace) and one’s parents” (Ooms, 1986, p. 250). An example of this is a clause advocating Confucian filial piety, a virtue that emphasizes respect for one’s parents, elders, and ancestors:
Nothing is more important than filial piety. Conduct filial piety with high respect. It is not filial piety if you conduct it out of a sense of duty. (Ito family, 1789–1837)
Some mottos linked codes of conduct to age, implying a clear hierarchy between older and younger members of the family. For example, the following passage positions youth as a period for personal sacrifice and humility, while maturity is seen as the time for reward:
Safety and happiness are useless for people’s lives until the age of forty. Go through struggles when you are young and be happy when you grow old. This is a model life. Buddhist priests and samurai are considered to be influential figures because of their hardships. Think about the future and be patient about everything when you are young. (Ito family, 1789–1837)
Finally, other mottos reveal the importance of maintaining these hierarchical relationships. For example, a Tonomura family motto instructs family members and employees to understand and respect their social positions:
Understand the differences in relationships based on social positions. As I always instruct you, respect your superiors, interact kindly with your junior, be polite and do not act rudely […] toward an apprentice of the store. […] (Tonomura family, 1682–1765)
The social virtue and cardinal relations advocated by the core religions were reflected in the functional hierarchy of the ie system (Hall, 1985). Leadership was typically inherited by the eldest son, whose wife became a yome and was subordinate to the mother-in-law, or shuutome (Kumagai, 1986). Under the ie system, seniority commanded respect. Parents gave children unconditional orders, and, on many occasions, family members were expected to sacrifice their personal benefits for the sake of the ie. “Loyalty and subordination to the ie was the first commandment for all of its members” (Horie, 1966, p. 4). This emphasis on duty extended to the very top of the hierarchy. For example, a Dokura family motto explicitly defines the moral obligation of the family head.
The head of a family is a model for family members The head of a family shall work harder than anyone else because he is a model for family members. (Dokura family, 1840–1917)
The principles of hierarchical family relations also extended to other members of the household, including servants. Hiring, educating, and retaining faithful servants were among the most important aspects of maintaining the ie system. Mottos frequently included sentences that reaffirmed the importance of servants showing loyalty to their family, such as “Do not neglect to be a faithful servant to one’s master for oneself” (Tonomura family, 1682–1765). As the following article shows, mottos also admonished servants to be humble and to abide by the senior-junior hierarchical social relationship.
Devote yourself to your master, be dutiful to your parents, respect your superior or senior, love your subordinates, have a good belief in or understanding of human feelings and be polite to others. Never talk proudly about yourself, even you have talent. When you use property for the wrong purposes, it has a harmful influence on you. You should be careful not to behave improperly. (Tonomura family, 1682–1765)
Furthermore, the ie relied on a system of primogeniture in which only one married child—typically the eldest son—could live with the family, while the other children had to leave the household. This practice differed from Western primogeniture in that it allowed the flexibility of adopting an heir, typically as the husband of the eldest daughter. In some cases, the order of birth, or even the lineage, was disregarded if the successor was deemed to be incompetent. Male siblings, adopted sons, sons-in-law, and apprentices were all considered as potential heirs to guarantee the family’s survival. (Horie, 1966.) The ie means represented a perpetual entity defined by positions rather than individuals (Horie, 1966; Kitaoji, 1971). This meant that the continuity of family and its business was prioritized over individual needs and aspirations of its members, who were expected to fulfill their family duty (Bhappu, 2000; Horie, 1966).
This prioritization of duty is clearly illustrated in the Ito family’s motto, which provides a strict guideline for choosing a wife. The motto instructs a family member to choose a wife based on her virtue rather than appearance. The reason given for this is rooted in the long-term impact on the family’s lineage, with the belief that a wife’s temperament could influence future generations:
It is said that a beautiful woman is the ruin of a country. Avoid having a beautiful wife because your attention goes to the wife, and you cannot concentrate on your work. A good-tempered and kind-hearted woman is better than a beautiful one. Also, generally speaking, a wife resembles the mother-in-law. If you have a bad-tempered wife, the future generations will also take a bad-tempered wife. For that reason, do not choose a beautiful woman when you choose a marriage partner. (Ito family, 1789–1837)
The absolute obedience and duty to the ie system was even extended to the head of the household. The family symbolized the ie itself, the accomplishments of his ancestors and future generations. His primary mission was to pass the baton on to the next generation in as good a condition as possible. This meant that the source of authority did not lie with the individual leader but with the ie itself. This allowed the perpetual prosperity of the ie rather than of certain individuals (Horie, 1966, p. 4). The following example from the Shimomura family prescribes conditions under which a family head should be removed. While the role was typically inherited by the eldest son, this motto specifies that he could be replaced because of bad personality, loss of morality, or irresponsible behavior:
The head of a family shall be the first son of a family as a general rule. However, if by any chance he has a bad personality or loses his morality, or if everyone considers him to be wrong, read this family motto to him and remove him from his position as a successor if he does not mend his ways after many admonitions. (Shimomura family, 1688–1748)
Taken together, the above evidence suggests that family mottos did not merely prescribe practical rules for conduct; they encoded a strict social order necessary for the family firm to function. Within this social order, each member had clearly defined responsibilities based on their age, gender, and kinship role. The mottos’ emphasis on hierarchy and sense of duty reflected the religious and family principles of Edo Japan, thereby serving as an everyday storytelling mechanism that regulated the conduct of family members. The mottos defined specific roles, the hierarchical relationships that the family business members had to maintain, and the attitudes that the organizational members needed to have. These prescriptions shaped the basic structure of the early family business in Edo Japan. More generally, these mottos suggest an analogy between the family as a kinship structure and the family business as an economically productive household. The strong obligations of kinship, such as Confucian filial piety and the master-servant relationship, codified a hierarchy of roles and a corresponding division of labor that became the social foundation of the family business.
Family Business Ethics: Conservative Moral Values and Risk Avoidance
Confucianism worshipped by the Edo-period Shogunate and samurai class advocated the harmonious governance of a country by a supreme power and prioritized the collective over the individual. This doctrine’s values, however, seemed to clash with the inherently individualistic pursuit of profit in commerce. It emphasized that: “Merchants should not make double profit [emphasis added] […] not only that, they should fulfil their social responsibility” (Shibata, 1962, p. 106). Such “religious element had significant weight in the family mottos” (Miyamoto, 1941, p. 83).
Religious values were reflected in the ie system. According to Horie (1966), each ie had its own philosophies aimed at fostering a cohesive team. He points out that for the ie to endure, its members had to lead diligent, frugal, and simple lifestyles. While the pursuit of profit was not dismissed, it was by no means the primary objective of the ie. Instead, the focus was on higher-order values like relationship-building and conservatism, which were believed to contribute to a family’s longevity. Family mottos were key artifacts for passing down these non-economic values across generations, ensuring the integrity of family members and the longevity of the family business. We identified four ways in which moral values were reproduced in the mottos: the formation of ethical business relationships, honoring customers first, avoiding risky ventures, and leading a thrifty lifestyle.
The Formation of Ethical Business Relationships
Many family mottos established basic principles of trade and prescribed a code of conduct for profit-making. The mottos of the Souan and Yamanaka families defined profit in terms of morality and emphasized the primacy of “mutual benefit” with business customers over the pursuit of personal gain.
After all, trade is for the benefit of oneself and others by supporting each other. It is not for making a profit for oneself and making others suffer a loss. Mutual benefit brings us more profit, even if it is a small amount. On the contrary, if we do not share the benefit, we will not gain much, even if it is a large amount. Profit is defined here as being one with morality.
Therefore, it is said that a greedy merchant seeks five and an honest merchant seeks three.
Think deeply about the item mentioned above. (Souan, 1571–1632) 1. Select all merchandise in stock carefully and only sell certain high-quality articles. Do not deal with illegal or crude goods. Never expect large profits. […] 1. Give more favorable treatment to small business customers. 1. Never conduct a flashy business for the sake of showing off. Be steady in your business. 1. Do not settle an account without a settlement of the actual object, foreseeing fluctuations in stock prices such as the operation of the market quotation for rice. […] (Yamanaka family, 1803)
These quotes reveal that making a profit was discouraged if it meant engaging in unethical business conduct. The Yamanaka family motto is particularly interesting, as it shows how ethical business practices were extended not just to customers and suppliers, but also to servants who worked for the family: 1. Give kind treatment to the servants and give full attention to an honest worker. (Yamanaka family, 1803)
Many other mottos prohibited the making of unjust profits. Overall, demonstrates how family businesses were encouraged to build long-term relationships based on shared benefit rather than pursue short-term profit. Having a long-term orientation, in turn, supported enduring business stability.
Honoring Customers First
Related to the concept of building ethical relationships was the customer-first principle. The mottos strictly prescribed sincerity and kindness toward customers, even when faced with unreasonable behaviors.
Regardless of a price increase or decrease, stock good commodities and receive visitors with sincerity and kindness, and do not be covetous of gain. (Ito family, 1736)
Do not quarrel or raise your voice in anger impatiently, whatever others may say about your business. Convey your opinion in detail repeatedly and with presence of mind. (Sumitomo family, 1891)
The Ogawa family mottos provide surprisingly detailed codes of conduct on how to treat customers with the utmost respect. These rules were tailored to different ranks of servants (employees known as “houkounin”) in large family businesses, ranging from managerial positions to child servants. The first section below offers a general guideline for servants in charge of customer service at a store, while the second focuses on the expected behavior of child servants.
1. When a customer visits the store, give a polite greeting and hold out a cup of tea and a tray of tobacco at once. Avoid acting disrespectfully. When they are leaving, express the deepest gratitude, regardless of the amount of the customer’s purchase. Express greetings courteously. Never talk to a customer while leaning back […]. If by any chance someone falls asleep, a person sitting next to him should wake him up. 1. Child servants shall be polite when dealing with a customer. They should bow and place both hands on the ground to express respect to the customers when serving a cup of tea or a tray of tobacco. Avoid acting disrespectfully. When a counter servant calls them, they shall answer immediately and take the order, even if they have a small errand. (Ogawa family, 1824)
Avoiding Risky Ventures
Mottos also prescribed that family members should prioritize the survival of their business by focusing on their core business and avoiding the risks of diversification. The Mitsui family article below emphasizes that family members should cooperate and conduct their business activities in harmony by concentrating on their particular specialization. Maintaining stable and harmonious relationships with the family, relatives, and employees, while focusing on the existing business, was seen as the key to long-term stability and prosperity.
A merchant shall always think seriously about business, or he will be robbed of the business by another person. This is the same as the theory of a battle. If there is no laziness or carelessness, and if one devotes oneself to the business, supports one’s relatives, promotes a harmonious family and does family business exclusively, it is absolutely certain that the family will become prosperous. When a carpenter builds a house, it cannot be done only by a master carpenter. There is no house without a carpenter who divides up the work, even though a master carpenter is to be admired. A good house will not be built without everyone’s cooperation and a master carpenter who can handle the carpenters. (Mitsui family, 1722)
The Kounoike family prohibited any sort of diversification “forever,” even if it was believed to be profitable. The underlying concern was that a failed business venture would be scrutinized by the public, leading to delegitimization of the family business.
Never conduct any business except your own profession. Occasionally if Zenzaemon, the present head of a family, or the executives of a corporation think of a business, it must all be related to the property of Zenzaemon’s family. Therefore, never start a new business even if it is profitable, and only practice your profession. If it happens by any chance, we will fall in the public estimation. For this reason, it should be prohibited forever. (Kounoike family, 1732)
Similar quotes were found in many other family mottos, which encouraged family members to dedicate themselves to a conservative business line and avoid any lucrative opportunities to expand it. This demonstrates that short-term profit-making was condemned as an unethical activity that might undermine the stability of the family business.
These tenets are closely aligned with the typical values advocated by Confucianism and Buddhism as “the way of a person.” Confucianism promoted virtues like benevolence, righteousness, integrity, honesty, kindness, bravery, respect, and modesty (Ooms, 1986; Sorte Junior, 2016). Buddhism emphasized the elimination of ego and of “the discriminating, calculating, evaluating, ratiocinating mind” (Ooms, 1986, p. 251–252; Sorte Junior, 2016). In a similar vein, the religious moral values found in the mottos included being “honest and polite no matter what happens throughout life” (Shimai family, 1615), not being greedy (Shimai family, 1615), winning “over drinking or sexual desire” (Souan, 1571–1632), “admonish[ing …] selfishness” (Tonomura family, 1682–1765), “[n]ever speak[ing] ill of others, making a false accusation or complicating human relations” (Tonomura family, 1682–1765) and not deceiving others (Shimomura family, 1688–1748). The following quotes on “leading a thrifty life” illustrate reproduction of these core religious values (see Table 2 for more examples).
Additional Illustrative Evidence.
Leading a Thrifty Life
One of the most common business values advocated by family firms was living a thrifty life by “not wasting money at any time” (Taniguchi family, 1822). This principle was rooted in the belief that frugality was essential for the family’s long-term stability and prosperity. For example, these mottos from the Moroto family encourage hard work while explicitly prohibiting spending money on luxuries.
Even if it is a single yen, the money earned from sweat is valuable. However, as easy money is not earned by hardship, people are likely to waste it on silly things. It runs out quickly. Do not make money in an easy way.
It is better not to purchase curious objects of art that are unnecessary for life. You will come to want to show off such things, and it is a waste of time, and will be an obstacle to your business. Stop doing it. (Moroto family, 1846–1906)
The following quote from the Tonomura family clarifies the crucial distinction between thrift and being stingy. According to the quote, true thrift is a virtue, but it becomes stinginess when “selfishness is combined.” In this ethical framework, thrift is meant to serve the collective, while stinginess is an individual failing that isolates a person and harms the family’s unity.
It is important to distinguish between the meaning of thrift and stinginess. You can be a stingy person depending on the way you exercise thrift. When selfishness is combined, it becomes stinginess. Losing a merciful heart makes it difficult to unite the whole family members’ hearts together. Be well informed of the items mentioned above. (Tonomura family, 1682–1765)
Taken together, these principles defined a moral economy in which profit was subordinated to virtue, continuity, and communal benefit. By embedding restraint and long-term orientation into everyday practice, mottos enabled merchants to align their activities with the ethical foundations of Edo society, thereby ensuring survival. Yoshida (2010), for instance, offers evidence suggesting that the moral principles codified in the mottos not only conveyed a script for ethical business conduct, but also provided a stabilizing principle that stopped the premature demise of incipient family firms: “The reason why Kounoike family and other merchant families such as Mitsui family could avoid the Shogunate’s persecution, despite the practice of lending money, is because the family united, conducted sound business, avoided diversification, and engaged in an honest business. [emphasis added]” (Yoshida, 2010, p. 202–203). Furthermore, by prescribing an internal code of conduct, mottos also defined the raison d’être, social structure, and ethical principles of the family business, which ultimately formed the basis of the family business as a novel organizational form.
Discussion
The purpose of this article has been to expand our understanding of family business legitimation and cultural entrepreneurship processes by considering how family businesses construct, access, and use cultural resources when faced with extreme legitimacy struggles. By examining the emergence of Japanese family businesses during the Edo period, our study explains how and why certain elements from the founding context were integrated into the organization of the family business. Our findings suggest that Japanese proto-entrepreneurs responded to the legitimacy challenges stemming from their low social standing as a class (Kumagai, 1986; Sangawa, 2017; Sorte Junior, 2016) by developing family mottos that symbolically reproduced the religious and family systems of Edo Japan, conceived as core socio-cultural institutions of feudal Japanese society. These mottos served as powerful storytelling devices for both external and internal legitimation. Externally, they enabled early Japanese family entrepreneurs to embed religious and familial logics into their business practices, thereby signaling conformity with the dominant institutions of the founding context and positioning the family business as ethically legitimate and socially valuable. This allowed family entrepreneurs to counteract the dispositional illegitimacy associated with the merchant class during the Edo period. Internally, the mottos codified organizational scripts that regulated daily business conduct. These scripts structured three key domains of the family business: its raison d’être, its hierarchical social order, and its moral orientation. By shaping the organizational form, mottos significantly influenced the imprinting of the family business.
Our study advances the understanding of family business and cultural entrepreneurship in three areas: the socio-cultural dynamics by which the family business form becomes legitimated in hostile contexts, how cultural resources enable organizational form creation, and the influence of social institutions on the development of particular forms of capitalism. Below, we elaborate on these contributions in the context of the family business and cultural entrepreneurship literatures and conclude with the broader implications for our understanding of the construction of Japanese capitalism.
Contribution to Family Business Literature
We offer theoretical contributions to the family business literature by illustrating the process through which family business, as an organizational form, achieves legitimacy when faced with extreme legitimacy challenges. Previous studies have emphasized how socio-cultural institutions, such as family and religion, influence family firm prevalence and practices (Amore & Miller, 2024; Berrone et al., 2022). Although past studies have long acknowledged the problematic legitimacy of family firms and have highlighted the context specificity of this issue (Amore & Miller, 2024), we still have a limited understanding of the role of the founding context in shaping family business as an organizational form (Erdogan et al., 2020). This is important because it offers insights into how family businesses in hostile contexts can leverage cultural resources to legitimate and shape their organizational form, which has long-lasting consequences.
Our study extends current understandings of family business legitimacy by showing how family entrepreneurs actively engage in cultural entrepreneurship to not only gain legitimacy but also structure their organizations and ensure long-term survival (Stamm & Lubinski, 2011). Our findings demonstrate that mottos acted as storytelling devices that embedded religious and familial values into family businesses, transforming external constraints into internal organizing principles. From this perspective, the socio-cultural institutions of the Edo period were not simply imported but actively reinforced through cultural artifacts and reproduced into the family business form. This is a crucial theoretical insight because it unpacks the link between socio-cultural institutions and the formation of organizational scripts. Instead of treating socio-cultural institutions as external determinants, our study suggests that family business entrepreneurs strategically reproduce them into formalized organizational scripts to gain legitimacy and ensure continuity. This reproduction of institutions into organizational scripts has implications for how family business missions, social structures, and ethical business conduct are developed and maintained.
We also challenge the dominant view in family business literature that frames family and business logics as inherently contradictory, paradoxical, or in tension (Miller et al., 2017). We specifically show that under conditions of low dispositional legitimacy, entrepreneurs may purposefully combine religious, familial, and economic logics into a unified value system. In the case observed, merchants embedded religious and familial values into their economic activities through codified mottos, producing a legitimating narrative that was morally and institutionally resonant. In this regard, mottos served as the storytelling device for articulating duties, virtues, and moral codes that aligned business conduct with spiritual and kinship obligations.
Finally, prior studies on imprinting have examined the transmission of values, beliefs, and norms across generations (Kammerlander et al., 2015). These studies emphasize the role of internal family mechanisms, such as storytelling, in imprinting but do not extensively explore how broader societal institutions influence the content of these imprints. Our study extends these insights by showing how imprinted values are derived from the founding context to provide legitimizing mechanisms for family firms. From this perspective, imprinting is not just a family-driven process but also a strategic response to broader institutional and cultural contexts. In the case observed, Edo-period family firms actively incorporated dominant religious and family logics into their business practices to gain legitimacy, demonstrating that imprinting is shaped by external socio-cultural forces as much as internal family dynamics.
Contribution to Cultural Entrepreneurship Literature
Our study sheds light on what prompts reliance on socio-cultural resources in cultural entrepreneurship. Prior studies have demonstrated how entrepreneurs leverage cultural resources through storytelling to legitimize their activities (Lockwood & Soubliere, 2022; Lounsbury and Glynn, 2001, 2019). Our findings extend these insights by problematizing the legitimacy of entrepreneurs as a social group and show how cultural resources, through storytelling, can be used as a core mechanism for the creation and maintenance of a new form of entrepreneurship—in our case, a new class of entrepreneurial family firms. These observations are theoretically important because they explain the entrepreneurial efforts to align closely with certain socio-cultural values and beliefs, and for what purposes. Entrepreneurs may enjoy varying degrees of legitimacy depending on the context in which they are situated. When entrepreneurs operate with limited legitimacy, they may need to appropriate socio-cultural resources in response to other types of resource constraints.
Secondly, leveraging the theory of cultural entrepreneurship (Lounsbury & Glynn, 2019), we show how storytelling lies at the core of legitimating the new family business organizational form in Japan. While the cultural entrepreneurship literature has documented the role of storytelling in new venture legitimation, there has been much less attention to the legitimation of new organizational forms. We argue that such legitimation processes are more complicated as the stories told not only have to convince key external stakeholders but also secure the commitment of internal stakeholders, such as employees and family members, thereby enabling the external legitimation project to gain traction. This demonstrates that internal and external legitimation are fundamentally intertwined. By leveraging available societal logics of religion and family, the mottos provided a kind of organizational mythmaking (Meyer & Rowan, 1977) that endured and eventually provided a distinctive form of capitalism. These findings expose how stories (as mottos) enable both externally oriented legitimating claims that enable institutional reproduction and internally-oriented practices that help to overcome related institutional constraints.
Thirdly, we extend the theory of cultural entrepreneurship by emphasizing the role of reproduction as a source of legitimacy. Our findings suggest that the legitimacy of specific entrepreneurial practices stems from processes of cultural reproduction in which collective values are transmitted across generations through the socializing influence of local institutions (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990). Previous studies have focused on how entrepreneurs use existing cultural resources to craft stories that are sufficiently distinctive to enable them to seek new market opportunities and gain legitimacy in an industry (Dalpiaz et al., 2016; Garud et al., 2014; Ge et al., 2022; Weber et al., 2008). These studies emphasize the entrepreneurial agency to modify the status quo and bring about change in the cultural system at the level of the organizational category (rather than at the organizational level, which literature has discussed the need for conformity with existing frameworks). While prior research has primarily focused on entrepreneurs as promulgators of organizational and institutional change, our study illustrates a strikingly different case, in which low status entrepreneurs gained legitimacy as a collective class by leveraging and reproducing societal institutions that had previously marginalized them. This is theoretically important because it shows the value of institutional maintenance and business continuity as opposed to a view of cultural entrepreneurship that emphasizes the legitimation of new ventures and other forms of change to the status quo. Furthermore, while the reproduction of cultural systems has been traditionally seen as a strategy aimed at perpetuating the privileges of dominant classes (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990), our study suggests that lower-status groups may also use it to increase their own social standing and legitimacy, highlighting the importance of legitimacy to at least some forms of emancipatory entrepreneurship (Lounsbury & Nazar, forthcoming).
A further contribution relates to the effects of cultural entrepreneurship that draw from socio-cultural beliefs and values. In particular, by conforming to the values of key socio-cultural institutions, entrepreneurs also shape fundamental and durable organizational attributes that may become central to their market. Our study highlights how the reproduction of institutional values generates organizational scripts that inform entrepreneurial practices, for example, in the form of business purpose, social structure, and moral values. This articulation is important because it contributes to deepening our understanding of the link between institutional, organizational, and practice levels of cultural entrepreneurship. Specifically, we extend the theory of cultural entrepreneurship by showing how storytelling mechanisms translate abstract institutional principles into organizational scripts that regulate internal conduct and serve as templates for business practice. This nested interplay between logics, stories, and scripts illustrates how high-level cultural values become proximate, actionable, and reproducible through storytelling that binds values to practices and anchors legitimacy in tradition. Hence, rather than treating cultural resources as external inputs, we demonstrate how they are actively internalized and reproduced by entrepreneurs confronting conditions of dispositional illegitimacy.
The view of cultural entrepreneurship as a reproductive strategy resonates with Johnson’s (2007) work on organizational imprinting. Unlike Johnson’s (2007) study, however, which discusses the imprinting process by which elements of a founding context are included in a single new organization through the social process of cultural entrepreneurship, our study shows how selected aspects of the founding context are imprinted across a nascent category of organizations. Our findings suggest that early Japanese entrepreneurs did not just internalize their context; they collectively reproduced its core values, leading to the emergence of the family business as a distinct organizational form unique to its environment. These observations are theoretically important because they illuminate how and why certain broad cultural values are instantiated within a class of organizations and may more broadly impact markets and forms of capitalism.
Cultural Entrepreneurship and the Spirit of Japanese Capitalism
Our study contributes to broader sociological debates on ethics and the spirit of capitalism. Specifically, it expands on previous works that examined the influence of religion on Western and Japanese capitalism (Bellah, 1957; Weber, 2011). Our study provides new insights into the literature by showing the role of cultural artifacts as both reproductive and generative mechanisms. Therefore, while previous works have explained how religion motivated and legitimized a more rational style of economic activity, our study reveals how cultural artifacts, such as family mottos, may reproduce core institutional principles and transpose them from the institutional domain into the entrepreneurial practices of family business.
Like Weber, we show how a religious regimentation of life can affect the development of a business mindset and shape a particular version of capitalism. Our findings, however, reveal strikingly different characteristics between the two contexts. Weber’s spirit of capitalism is based on Judeo-Christian beliefs, particularly Protestant doctrines, which center on individual salvation. Weber argued that religion provided a moral legitimization for a person’s vocational life, responding to the predestination designed by God as a “tool” of God’s will (Weber, 2011, p. 123). In this worldview, ethical business behavior was seen not just as a means to profit but as “the path of righteousness” guided by God (Weber, 2011, p. 80). According to Weber, this moral legitimization and “frame of mind” (p. 86) encouraged the development of modern capitalism, driven by an aspiration to increase productivity and growth.
The Japanese case identifies a distinct path toward capitalist development. The new Shingaku religious movement (Shibata, 1962) was based on a form of collective salvation in which “work was a means of self-cultivation, but only when done to promote the family’s survival [… and] reputation” (Sorte Junior, 2016, p. 326). The fate of individual souls depended on the eternal survival of the ie system. This collective focus encouraged ethical behavior that went beyond mere profit-making, with the goal of ensuring the longevity of the ie and broader social stability (Sorte Junior, 2016). The adoption of these merchant ethics enabled the legitimization of the merchant class during the Edo period, as profit-making became associated with positive social outcomes (Sorte Junior, 2016). Some Japanese historians argue that this enabled the merchant class to become so wealthy and powerful that it eventually threatened the rule of the samurai class and the Shogunate (Kumagai, 1986; Sorte Junior, 2016). Thus, paradoxically, by reproducing the moral values of the dominant class, the merchants were able to outstrip them.
We build on the co-constitutive relationship between the religious and familial spheres by proposing the role of mottos as cultural artifacts that legitimize entrepreneurial activities while translating institutional capital into actionable scripts. Specifically, we show how mottos reproduced the religious and family systems by embedding their values directly into the entrepreneurial practices of the family business. Our study therefore demonstrates how a “central value system” (Bellah, 1957) generates an entrepreneurial spirit that becomes materialized in the organizational form of the family business.
These insights are theoretically relevant because they show how different religious systems can influence entrepreneurial practices and the emergence of a distinctive entrepreneurial spirit. While differences in social factors such as religion, national historical trajectories, and class form variations in moral concerns (Hitlin & Vaisey, 2013; Inglehart & Baker, 2000), agentic aspects also play an important role in producing moral changes in society. To bring about change, actors often need to alter the prevailing moral values to gain support (Quinn, 2008; Swidler, 2013; Zelizer, 1978). Our findings, however, show that such agency—the ability to define the rules of the game (Fligstein, 1996)—could not be exercised as freely in pre-modern societies. In the absence of capitalist institutions, religious institutions were the predominant motivational drivers that informed the values, norms and rules of the family businesses.
Japanese business historians (Ashida, 1974; Miyamoto, 1941; Sakudo, 1990; Sone, 2016; Yoshida, 2010) observe that many long-standing corporations in Japan, such as Mitsui, Sumitomo, and Takashimaya, continue to uphold the values and entrepreneurial practices inscribed in their family mottos written a few hundred years ago. This suggests that the storytelling practices we have examined were not only mechanisms for initial legitimation but also enduring vehicles of imprinting that helped shape a distinctive form of Japanese capitalism. Likewise, recent work in management and organizations indicates that the moral principles inscribed in the Edo family mottos continue to influence Japanese business practices today (Sasaki et al., 2019, 2020).
The content of the family mottos we have identified—longevity and inter-generational continuity, a hierarchy of roles based on seniority and sense of duty, and conservative moral values and risk avoidance—continues to be profoundly influential in today’s Japanese corporate world (Kawamura, 1993). First, regarding longevity and inter-generational continuity, long-lived Japanese corporations tend to be small and mostly family-run, focusing on a central credo that goes beyond just making a profit (Iwasaki & Kanda, 1996; Yokozawa, 2000). They concentrate primarily on the Japanese market and benefit from a corporate culture that has prioritized intergenerational continuity and historically avoided the mergers and acquisitions that have occurred in the West (Izumi, 2008; Samezima, 2004). Second, the principle of hierarchy of roles based on seniority and sense of duty is evident in today’s Japanese human resource practices based on lifetime employment and the seniority system. Our study explains how these cultural values became embedded in the entrepreneurial domain in the first place, going deeper than previous accounts (Hofstede & Bond, 1988). Finally, the principles of conservative moral values and risk avoidance can be observed in contemporary business practices that value harmony and the minimization of internal conflict, as well as in Kaizen—an organizational practice that is rooted in the values of humility, patience, and incremental change. A deep respect for customers and a focus on long-term relationships are also defining characteristics of this approach.
More generally, our study portrays the development of a form of capitalism that prioritizes the collective. This approach places a strong emphasis on the family, long-term orientation, and societal well-being, standing in stark contrast to the more individualistic approaches that became predominant in the Western world.
Conclusion
This study theorizes the process by which family business as an organizational form becomes legitimate in socio-cultural contexts characterized by fundamental legitimacy challenges. We show how Japanese proto entrepreneurs used family mottos as a form of cultural entrepreneurship to legitimate the novel family business form within and across variegated family businesses that normalized appropriate roles and practices. This form of cultural entrepreneurship involved a form of mythmaking (Meyer & Rowan, 1977) where the mottos provided core cultural resources that denoted appropriate ways of doing business while signaling virtue through their incorporation of dominant family and religious logics.
Our research context is socio-culturally unique, providing revealing theoretical insights. While our research focuses on a unique historical context, its theoretical insights are generalizable to other contexts characterized by incipient forms of entrepreneurship. Our theory explains how cultural entrepreneurship influences organizational imprinting during the foundational stage, particularly when a new form emerges in the face of significant legitimacy challenges. This interplay applies to any context where emergent businesses face institutional constraints and legitimacy struggles at their inception.
We suggest that future studies should explore family business legitimation in other historical and contemporary contexts where these businesses may be viewed as less legitimate, such as settings where they are perceived as corrupt or as hindering economic growth and social well-being (Amore & Miller, 2024; Berrone et al., 2022). Future research could build on our work to examine how family businesses in these contexts use cultural entrepreneurship to overcome their unique legitimacy challenges.
Finally, we are aware that drawing parallels between Buddhist and Protestant ethics and between ie and House could be considered as “translating” distinctive elements of Japanese culture into Western equivalents. While this is perhaps unavoidable, given the main readership of scholarly journals, it carries the risk of implicitly falling into ethnocentrism (Barkema et al., 2015). Therefore, future research could investigate how contextual differences—such as language, philosophies, and management practices—influence interpretations of legitimacy and cultural entrepreneurship in both Eastern and Western settings.
Footnotes
Appendix A
Summary of Data Sources Used for Additional Reading.
| Data source | Use in the analysis |
|---|---|
| Primary data sources (a database of publicly available family mottos) | |
| Family mottos compiled in the following publications by Japanese business historians: Daiichi Kangin Keiei Center (1977), Kitahara (1917), Yoshida (2010), Miyamoto (1941), Nihon Shahin Insatsu Ltd. (1970), Kokutei (1902), Irie (1996), Ashida (1974a), Ashida (1974b), Fujino (1955), Miyamoto (1967), Miyamoto (2010), Kitajima (1962), Samejima (2006), Arata (2006), Fukaya (2013), Yamamoto (2001) | To identify and compile a database of publicly available family mottos written in the Edo period and analyze their content. |
| Journal articles on early Modern Japanese family mottos: Fujiwara (2015), Ishii (2013), Tonomura (1993), Yonemura (2011), Shimasaki (1995), Yasuoka (1985), Watanabe (2014), Fukutome and Utsunomiya (2016), Kawaguchi and Fujimoto (2007), Arata (2003), Sone (2016) | |
| Secondary data sources | |
| Books on the history of long-standing corporations: Nagasawa and Someya (2009), Takehara (2010), Teikoku Data Bank (2009), Kamata (2006), Murayama (2008), Hiramatsu (2004), Izumi (2008), Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha (2010), Kyoto Shinise Hyakumikai (2004), Yonehara and Fujita (2008), Sone (2019), Funabashi (2003), Yokozawa (2000) | To deepen our understanding of the characteristics of long-lived Japanese corporations. |
| Journal articles on the history of long-standing corporations: Matsuoka and Tsujita (2012), Yoshimura and Sone (2005), Matsuoka and Muranishi (2011), Kanda and Iwasaki (1996) | |
| Books on modern Japanese religious and family histories, in particular in the Edo period: Satou (1993), Miyamoto (1980), Takemura (1996), Shibata (1962), De Bary (1963), Jansen (2000), Totman (1993) | To deepen our understanding of the religious and family institutions in the Edo period. |
| Journal articles on modern Japanese religious and family histories, in particular in the Edo period: Yutani (2007), Tanaka (2006), Shields (2014), Ooms (1986), Ooms and Makoto (1994), Mohr (1994), Kawaguchi (1990), Sorte Junior (2016), Iyanaga (2006), Iseki (2008), Fujita (1990), Drixler (2016), Dolche (2006), Clements (2017), Clautau (2008), Boot (1995), Bito (1984), Ambros and Williams (2001), Bhappu (2000), Hall (1985), Horie (1966), Kitaoji (1971), Kumagai (1986), Nonoyama (2000), Ochiai (2000), Sakane (2016), Shimizu (1987), Tsutusmi (2001), Tudor et al. (1996) | |
The full list of data sources are available from the author upon request.
Appendix B
List of Corporations Examined in the Study.
| Year company was founded | Year mottos were written | Company | Industry | Authors | Generation | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1566 | Between 1549 and 1644, 1843 | Yamagataya | Mosquito nets and futons | Nishikawa Jinemon, Jongorou and others | 1st, 9th, 10th, and 11th | Kyoto |
| Around 1400–1573 | Between 1571 and 1632 | Suminokura family | Lenders, international trade | Suminokura Soan | 2nd | Kyoto |
| 1585 | Early 1600, 1868 | Sumitomo family | Copper mines | Sumitomo Masatomo and others | 5th, 4th and 14th | Osaka |
| Circa 1500s | 1610 | Shimai Family | Pawnshop, sake brewing | Shimai Soushitsu | 1st | Hakata |
| 1615 | Between 1615 and 1788 | Hosotsuji family | Textiles | Iemon | 4th | Kyoto |
| 1600s | 1670, 1723 | Shirakiya | Clothing | Omura hikotaro | 1st and 2nd | Edo |
| 1700 | Between 1682 and 1765 | Nunoya | Textiles | Tomura Kyouzaemon | 5th | Oumi |
| Unclear | 1682–1765, 1833 | Tonomura Family | Money exchange | Tonomura Hiraemon and others | 1st | Osaka |
| 1717 | 1688–1748 | Daimaru | Clothing | Shimomura Hikoemon | 1st | Kyoto |
| Unclear | Around 1688 | Kubota family | Medicine | Kubota Shouzaemon | Unclear | Kyoto |
| Unclear | 1711 | Amemori family | Medicine | Amemori Wakamizu | Unclear | Kyoto |
| Unclear | 1714, 1775 | Ichida family | Textiles | Ichida Seibee | 3rd | Oumi |
| Unclear | 1722 | Ebisuya | Unclear | Shimada Hachirozaemon | Unclear | Kyoto |
| Between 1596 and 1615 | 1732 | Kounoike family | Sake-brewing, shipping, money exchange | Kounoike Zenemon munetoshi | 3rd | Osaka |
| Unclear | 1733–1801 | Honma Family | Loaning lands | Homma Mituoka | 3rd | Dewa |
| 1611 | 1736 | Itou family | Clothing | Itou Sukejyu | 5th | Osaka |
| Between 1703 and 1787 | 1738, 1774 | Totani family | Clothing and daily household products | Totani Hanbee | 1st | Honjyo |
| 1555 | 1745 | Chigiriya | Kimonos | Nishimura Kichiemon | 5th | Kyoto |
| 1752 | Around 1752 | Satake family | Tatami | Satake Ihee | 1st | Kyoto |
| Unclear | 1754 | Namakura family | Textiles | Nakamura Jihei | 2nd | Oumi |
| 1720 | 1758 | Yashiro family | Clothing | Konda Shoubei | 2nd | Kyoto |
| 1653 | 1761 | Ozu family | Clothing | Ozu Kiyozaemon | 3rd | Ise |
| Between 1662 and 1663 | 1762, 1799 | Izutuya | Silk, finance | Ono Zensuke | 8th | Kyot |
| Between 1619 and 1684 | 1770–1855 | Matsukyu | Textiles | Matsui Kyusaemon | 3rd | Oumi |
| Unclear | 1773 | Wakasaya | Medicine and ink | Wakasa Taroubee | 1st | Osaka |
| 1700 | 1775 | Fukuda family | Gold, silver, metals | Fukuda Renseki | 2nd | Kyoto |
| 1798 | 1777–1854 | Kobayashi family | Textiles | Kobaysashi Ginemon | 1st | Kohigashi |
| Unclear | 1783 | Kashiwabara family | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | Kyoto |
| 1694 | 1784, 1831, 1835 | Yamagata family | Money exchange | Yamagata Bantou | Unclear, a powerful employee of Masuya Heiemon (4th) | Osaka |
| Unclear | 1789–1837 | Ito family | Farming, textile, banking | Ito Chojiro | 2nd | Hyogonotu |
| Around 1791 | Around 1791 | Kikuchi family | Clothing, shichiya | Kikuchi Ryozaemon | 1st | Edo |
| Unclear | 1791 | Ban family | Tatami, mosquito nets | Ban Koukei | 1st | Oumi |
| 1661 | Early 1800 | Zougeya | Lacquer | Hikobee | 1st | Kyoto |
| 1718 | 1802 | Yamanaka family | Sake | Yamanaka Heiemon | 2nd | Oumi |
| 1734 | 1805 | Hinoya | Shikki and medicine | Nakai Genzaemon | 1st | Hino |
| 1603 | 1818 | Takanashi family | Soy sauce | Unclear | Unclear | Shimousa |
| 1655 | 1819 | Uchiike Family | Soy sauce | Uciike Toushitu | 5th | Oumi |
| Around 1586–1611 | 1819 | Toraya | Wagashi | Kurokawa Mitsutoshi | 9th | Kyoto |
| 1712 | 1822 | Taniguchi family | Clothing | Taniguchi Hyozaemon | 9th | Oumi |
| During the Edo period | 1822 | Horikiri family | Sake, soy sauce | Horikiri Monjirou | 2nd | Edo |
| 1666 | 1823 | Iwaya family | Metals | Iwaya Shichizaemon | Unclear | Kyoto |
| 1712 | 1824 | Mizukuchiya | Clothing | Unclear | Unclear | Owari |
| Unclear | 1826 | Yoshinaga | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | Oumi |
| Unclear | 1827 | Nagai Family | Textiles | Nagai Kazaemon | Unclear | Ise |
| Between 1593 and 1615 | 1829 | Souguya | Paints | Souguya Soubei | 9th | Osaka |
| In the 1600s | 1830 | Kawakita family | Textiles | Unclear | Unclear | Ise |
| 1831 | 1831 | Iida family | Clothing | Iida Shinshihi | 1st | Kyoto |
| Around 1773 | 1831 | Fuwa Family | Store owner | Fuwa Saburou | 1st | Oumi |
| Unclear | 1833, 1843, 1852 | Tsukada family | Cotton, vegetables | Tukada Heibee | 4th | Shimotuke |
| 1873 | Between 1835–1885 | Mitsubishi | Foreign trade, finance | Iwazaki Yatarou | 1st | Osaka |
| Unclear | 1836 | Okui family | Trade | Okui Heijirou | Unclear | Oumi |
| 1669 | 1836 | Okaya family | Metal | Unclear | Unclear | Nagoya |
| Unclear | 1836 | Hasegawa family | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | Ise |
| Unclear | 1837 | Yatani family | Sake | Gentuu | Unclear | Kyoto |
| 1866 | Between 1838–1921 | Yasuda family | Tax-farming services, Finance | Yasuda Zenjiro | 1st | Edo |
| Unclear | Between 1840–1917 | Dogura family | Forestation | Dogura Shouzaburou | 4th | Nara |
| Unclear | 1842 | Chigusaya | Money exchange | Unclear | Unclear | Osaka |
| 1717 | 1845 | Yano family | Soy sauce | Yano Hisazaemon | 1st | Oumi |
| 1863 | 1846–1906 | Moroto family | Shipping, forestry | Moroto Seiroku | 1st | Ise |
| Unclear | 1853 | Kawabata family | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | Osaka |
| Between 1596 and 1615 | 1694, 1722 | Mitsui family | Shichiya, sake, miso, money lending | Mitsui Takatoshi and Mitusi Takahira | 1st, 2nd | Ise |
| During Edo period | During the Edo period | Kondou family | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | Kyoto |
| Between 1781 and 1789 | During the Edo period | Usami family | Repairing | Usami Naohachi | 4th | Kyoto |
| 1657 | During the Edo period | Nakayama family | Dolls | Unclear | Unclear | Kyoto |
| Unclear | During the Edo period | Yoshitake family | Kimonos | Unclear | Unclear | Kyoto |
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback. They would also like to thank Mrs. Mitsue Masuhiro, who translated the mottos. We are also grateful to all friends and colleagues who have provided comments and encouragement along the research journey!
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
