ABSTRACT
IN THE BRITISH EMBASSY in Tokyo we used, perhaps incorrectly, to regard Royal Dutch Shell as a British company. A majority of the company's expatriates were British, especially in the early days and it traced its origins to a British businessman, Marcus Samuel, who set up the firm of Samuel and Samuel in Japan in 1878 (as Neville Fakes who was Chairman and Chief Representative of the Shell Group of Companies in Japan between 1967 and 1972 has explained in his note on ‘The Early Days of Petroleum in Japan’ which is attached as an appendix to this chapter). It was also one of the few ‘British’ companies which had trained staff in the Japanese language.
