Giving the Tomioka mill buildings to the city, then selling the land (2005)

Opening an exit you had narrowed yourself

The difficulty of this decision lay less in the transfer than in the eighteen years that preceded it. In resolving neither to sell, nor to lease, nor to demolish, Katakura had sealed off its own means of disposing of the asset and accepted an open-ended outlay of more than ¥100 million a year. For a listed company to commit that much time and money to an asset that generates no income is a choice that requires explaining to shareholders. That it held the policy anyway, and then released the burden with a final move of giving the buildings away, is what characterises the decision.

The form of a donation was chosen partly because no other route satisfied both the continuity of preservation and the ending of the cost. Splitting the treatment — buildings without charge, land for a price — was also a piece of clear-headed practice, separating what had to be protected from what could be sold. Among the non-operating assets a company carries, some have a character that the figures in the ledger alone cannot settle; depending on how the release is designed, ending the burden and passing something on to society can be made compatible. The World Heritage listing was an outcome conferred afterwards, and it should be remembered that in 2005 it could not have been priced in.