Moving the Institute for the Science of Labour to Ohara Magosaburo personally (1930)

What a company can hold, and what a person can

As a decision taken during the depression, it belongs to the moderate category. Close the institute and the research disappears; leave it inside the company and it conflicts with shareholders’ interests. What Ohara Magosaburo chose was to move only the ownership to himself and leave the work standing. There is, however, a limit to the scale an individual can carry, and the reliance on outside funding and the move to Tokyo appear to be that limit showing itself. These were six years in which research that had begun as a company welfare function started looking for a way to stand on its own outside the company.

For Kurabo, the year it detached its social enterprise was also the year it began widening the core business again. The founding of Kurashiki Wool in 1935 and the entry into wool and staple fibre in 1936 amount to restarting, in fibres other than cotton, the investment the depression had halted. After the institute left, the company hospital remained in Kurashiki and continues today as Kurashiki Central Hospital. The institute that moved into personal ownership also continues, as the Ohara Memorial Institute for Science of Labour, still studying working people; it marked its centenary in 2021.