400-year-old Mitsui goes through identity crisis

Tokyo

IT EARNS more than Coca-Cola, has operations in as many countries as Starbucks, boasts a payroll almost as long as Google and has been around longer than Philadelphia. Yet many consumers outside of Japan probably have not heard of it.

This is the great Japanese trading house of Mitsui & Co, whose roots go back almost 400 years to entrepreneur Hachirobei Mitsui, who turned his father's sake and soya sauce shop into a company that sold whatever people needed at the time. Over the centuries, Mitsui group made everything from silk kimonos to skyscrapers, and spun off better-known brands such as Toshiba and Sapporo Beer. It even funded a small cotton-loom business called Toyota that years later decided to make cars.