ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Sumitomo, one of Japan’s largest and oldest corporate groups, displays its heritage in a number of company-related facilities such as historical, technological and industrial museums and exhibition halls.1
The aim is to examine the significance of the reconstruction and representation of Sumitomo’s four-century history, industrial heritage, business tradition, corporate philosophy and collective memory. The House of IzumiyaSumitomo, the forerunner of the present Sumitomo corporation, originated in the late sixteenth century, and its business has concentrated on copper smelting, mining, and ancillary industries ever since. The firm developed into one of the largest merchant houses during the Edo period, survived the Meiji Restoration, grew into a pre-war zaibatsu, and after the post-war dissolution re-organised as a keiretsu, a group of interlocking companies. The Sumitomo Group at present consists of forty companies engaged in mining, real estate and construction, finance and insurance, trade, warehousing and transportation, electronics and electric equipment, IT services and manufacturing of steel, non-ferrous metals, ceramics, machinery, chemicals and rubber products.2
