Splitting from the Nichitsu konzern to become Asahi Kasei Kogyo (1946)

A postwar start that gave up the name to keep the business

Dropping the Nichitsu name did not end with the repainting of a signboard. The Nobeoka operation had been a separate legal entity since 1931, when the ammonium sulphate works was spun out as Nobeoka Ammonia Fiber, but its power and its raw materials still ran back through the Nippon Nitrogenous Fertilizer line. The 1946 change of name can be read as the procedure that severed that connection in name as well — moving a company holding ammonium sulphate, fibre, explosives and food across to the side that had to stand on its own feet.

It is hard, though, to say that Asahi Kasei Kogyo chose this separation. The reason for the new name was the dissolution of the zaibatsu, and the restricted-company designation, the application of the Deconcentration Law, the reparations designation and the purge were all conditions imposed from outside. Where the old Nippon Nitrogenous Fertilizer lost more than 80% of its overseas assets and was wound up in 1950, Nobeoka was able to move toward restoring its plant largely because of a difference of location — the works had stayed inside Japan. The work of management in this period lay in deciding what to keep within a frame that had been set for it.