Resisting the antitrust split order, and refusing bribes to win the designation lifted (1949)

Torn apart from outside; collapsed from within

The integrated business that Hokkaido’s dairy farmers had built over a quarter of a century — running unbroken from the collection of raw milk to manufacture — was dismantled under the Occupation’s deconcentration policy on the strength of its outward shape alone. Remembering that this was not a monopoly built to dominate a market but a co-operative organization the farmers sustained by pooling their own milk, one can see an inescapable shadow of unreason over the split. Even so, Kurosawa believed that reason would tell in the end, refused to the last the shortcut of a bribe, and held to the straight road. That he would not bend even in defeat shows the pride of a man as a manager.

History, though, left this split another meaning. Snow Brand Milk Products, born out of a forced dismemberment, grew into the company that represented postwar Japanese dairy. That same company, half a century later, would gravely damage the public’s trust in its food by its own hand and travel once more a road close to dismantlement. Set the beginning — torn apart unreasonably from outside — against the later figure that collapsed from within after losing trust, and the record quietly asks again how far a company’s existence rests on institutions and how far on itself.