Date/Time
Date(s) - 20/05/2026
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Location
Salle de Seminaire B001, Weicker Building, Kirchberg Campus
Categories
What 1,000-Year-Old Japanese Companies Can Teach Highly Connected Societies About the Future:
What is culture? How can we claim that it is important? These are some of the questions that we’ll tackle using the case of the traditional crafts in Japan.
Over the past several years, Yuki Tokunaga has conducted fieldwork across Japan, visiting long-established companies such as sake breweries, traditional confectionery shops, craft workshops, and family-run inns. Most of these are not large corporations, but locally rooted enterprises.
Despite wars, economic crises, and major societal transformations, they have continued across generations.
Yuki Tokunaga’s research explores a fundamental question: How can an organization survive for centuries?
What he found is that longevity is not explained only by financial strength or technological advantage.
Many of these businesses do not see themselves merely as economic actors. Instead, they function as custodians of local identity, maintaining connections between people, place, and tradition.
In this talk, Yuki Tokunaga will introduce stories and examples from his fieldwork, by exploring how culture shapes decision-making and how relationships sustain trust across generations.
Interested? Find out more here.