Kaneka - Company History

Updated: Author:

Financial history 1953–2026 — revenue, cost structure, balance sheet, cash flow and key ratios, year by year →

Founded 1949
Origin 鐘淵紡績からの分離独立
Founding location 大阪市
Core business at founding The caustic soda, oil pressing and soap inherited from Kanegafuchi Spinning
Listed 1949
President Fujii Kazuhiko President since 2024 (age 65, as of 2026)
Current priority Higher value-added products · New product development Growing Health Care, and solar cells for building materials and vehicles
Founding
On 1 September 1949, under the corporate reorganisation plan of Kanegafuchi Spinning, Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry was set up in Osaka with capital of $555,556 (¥200m), taking over every business of the parent other than textiles. What it received was scattered — caustic soda, oil pressing, soap, Western-style paper, cosmetics — and none of it could serve as the core of a company. It listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange that October, and in July 1950 it combined the soda plant that made its own chlorine with the synthetic rubber research it had done during the war to industrialise polyvinyl chloride for the first time in Japan. Plant that began at 60 tonnes a month reached 400 tonnes a month by March 1955. In 1957 it began making the acrylic fibre Kanekalon, and it changed its name to Kaneka in 2004.
The Decision
The company has chosen only markets large enough for it to take a majority, and has retreated to the materials side once it could no longer take one. In 1967 it switched the feedstock for PVC monomer from the carbide process to the petrochemical route, taking in a cost difference of $0 (¥20) per kilogramme against the carbide process. In artificial hair, Kanekalon accounted for eight-tenths of world production, yet in August 1985 the company transferred Fontaine, with 140 shops including directly run outlets, to Aderans. The judgement was that demand for the material itself would keep growing even after the shop floor was handed over. Securing a majority of a niche worth around $439.2M (¥50bn) and withdrawing on falling to third became the standard by which businesses were entered and left thereafter.
Today
Across the four units, the largest by revenue is not the largest by margin. Of consolidated revenue of $5.1B (¥812bn) in the year to March 2026, Material accounted for $2.1B (¥327bn), the biggest of the four, but its segment margin stopped at 7.6 per cent. Health Care did better, at $524.2M (¥83bn) and 17.9 per cent. Nutrition followed at $1.3B (¥206bn) and Quality of Life at $1.2B (¥194bn), so the gap between largest and smallest is held to a factor of four. The solar cells the company entered in 1998, setting up Kaneka Solartech and committing more than $76.4M (¥10bn), never became a mainstay, and were remade from thin-film silicon into heterojunction crystalline silicon. Their buyers narrowed too — not power stations but building materials and vehicles, in the roof-integrated VISOLA tile and the roof glass of the Prius PHEV.
Competition
The companies that set out from the same PVC divided three ways, between chasing scale and getting out. Shin-Etsu Chemical pushed vertical integration by taking full ownership of Shintech in the United States and siting plant in Texas, and became the world leader; Tosoh went on refining commodity chlor-alkali and PVC as its base businesses. Nippon Zeon went the other way, ending production at Mizushima in 2000 and withdrawing from the PVC it had been founded on. Kaneka chose none of these: it kept PVC and widened into foamed resins, edible fats and oils, pharmaceutical intermediates and medical devices. That shape, though, assumes that niches of around $439.2M (¥50bn) will go on existing. As the solar cells moved from power stations to building materials and vehicles, the same discipline becomes a reason to build and a reason to withdraw once the market itself moves.

Timeline

1949–1959Set up as Kanegafuchi Spinning's second company, and finding a footing of its own in PVC

  1. 1949Founded on 1 September, taking over all of Kanegafuchi Spinning's non-textile businesses
  2. 1949Shares listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and elsewhere in October
  3. 1950First in Japan to industrialise PVC; the resin becomes the core of the company
  4. 1951Capital raised to ¥400m
  5. 1952Amino acid production discontinued; the inherited businesses are wound down
  6. 1953Shortening production begins — entry into the food business
  7. 1953PVC compound production begins
  8. 1954Kanechlor pentachlorodiphenyl production begins at 100 tonnes a month
  9. 1955PVC output reaches 400 tonnes a month; caustic soda 1,000 tonnes a month
  10. 1957Kanekalon acrylic fibre production begins

1960–1979PVC, styrenic resins and Kanekalon: the turn into a diversified chemical company

  1. 1961Premium confectionery fats and oils production begins
  2. 1964Kane Ace MBS resin modifier production begins
  3. 1965Entry into the foamed-resin business with Kanepearl
  4. 1967Speciality PVC-based resin production begins; PVC capacity reaches 6,600 t/month
  5. 1967PVC monomer feedstock switched to the oxychlorination process
  6. 1968Kanechlor contaminates Kanemi rice oil, causing the Kanemi Yusho poisoning
  7. 1970Kashima works completed; Kashima Vinyl Chloride Monomer starts up
  8. 1970Kaneka Belgium N.V. established — first overseas production
  9. 1972The PVC industry enters a recession cartel amid stalled demand
  10. 1973Spice production begins
  11. 1974Entry into the pharmaceutical business; the Chemical Substances Control Law takes effect
  12. 1977Ubidecarenone (coenzyme Q10) bulk pharmaceutical production begins
  13. 1979Modified silicone polymer production begins; Kaneka Singapore established

1980–1999The discipline of niche leadership, and the recasting away from petrochemicals

  1. 1982PVC window sash production begins; Kaneka Texas Corp. established
  2. 1983Pharmaceutical intermediates added to the bulk pharmaceutical business
  3. 1984Ultra heat-resistant polyimide film production begins
  4. 1985Fontaine shares transferred to Aderans; the company returns to supplying fibre
  5. 1986Medical device manufacture begins
  6. 1993Subsidiary Kaneka Medix established
  7. 1995Liquid-crystal-related products begin; Kaneka Malaysia established
  8. 1996Kaneka Eperan established; the company enters housing construction
  9. 1997Kaneka High Tech Materials established in the United States
  10. 1998Subsidiary Kaneka Solartech established with over ¥10bn committed
  11. 1999Takeda Masatoshi becomes president in June
  12. 1999Manufacture of thin-film silicon solar cells for power use begins in October

2000–2025The renaming to Kaneka, and the regrouping into four Solutions Units

  1. 2001Coenzyme Q10 reclassified as a food; domestic sales as a functional food ingredient begin
  2. 2003Two subsidiaries established in China, at Suzhou and Qingdao
  3. 2004Kaneka Nutrients L.P. established in North America
  4. 2004Trade name changed from Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry to Kaneka
  5. 2005Onishi Masami becomes president of a sixteen-business, ¥470bn operation
  6. 2010Eurogentec S.A. taken as a subsidiary through investment
  7. 2012Americas and Asia regional headquarters established
  8. 2013Four food-division sales companies reorganised into Kaneka Foods
  9. 2015Kaneka Europe Holding Company N.V. established as the European headquarters
  10. 2016Cemedine made a consolidated subsidiary through a tender offer
  11. 2022Moved to the Prime Market; Cemedine made wholly owned by share exchange
  12. 2023Heterojunction back-contact cells ship for the Toyota Prius PHEV roof
  13. 2024Hokkaido Tomatoh works opened; EndoStream Medical Ltd. made a subsidiary

Founding Story

1949–1959Set up as Kanegafuchi Spinning's second company, and finding a footing of its own in PVC

Kaneka did not begin as a start-up but as a receiver. On 1 September 1949 it took over every business Kanegafuchi Spinning owned apart from textiles — a jumble of caustic soda, oil pressing, soap, paper, cosmetics and starch that nobody had assembled on purpose — and spent the following decade closing or selling most of it. What survived the subtraction was not inherited at all: polyvinyl chloride, industrialised in Japan for the first time in July 1950 on idle wartime plant, around which the leftovers could finally be organised. Total sales reached $16.9M (¥6bn) in the 1954 financial year.

The second company that took over every business except textiles

On 1 September 1949, under the approved corporate reorganisation plan of Kanegafuchi Spinning (鐘淵紡績), Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry was established to take over every business of the parent other than the textile division[1]. Capital was $555,556 (¥200m)[2], and the head office was placed at Honmachi, Higashi-ku, Osaka[3]. The businesses it inherited ran from caustic soda, oil pressing, soap, edible oil, yeast and foodstuffs to Western-style paper, washi Japanese paper, enamelled wire, cosmetics and starch[4]. It carried the sign of a chemical company, but in substance it was a receptacle for the miscellany a spinning company had accumulated during and after the war: legally a new company, yet with businesses as old as Kanebo's own history. In October 1949 its shares were listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and elsewhere[5].

The first ten years after founding were spent reducing what had been taken on. Amino acid production was discontinued in June 1952; starch was transferred in March 1953 and Western-style paper in July of the same year; washi paper was wound up in August 1954[6]. Only three of the inherited lines escaped the cull — caustic soda, edible oil and yeast — and the rest were folded one after another. By 1967, all that remained of the businesses handed down from Kanebo were caustic soda and soap[7]. At the same time the company was improving and expanding existing plant and starting new businesses, so that subtraction and addition were carried out in the same period. It was in these years that it enlarged its soap, electrolytic caustic soda and BHC facilities and installed and ran its own captive power generation[8]. Capital was raised to $1.1M (¥400m) in August 1951, and total sales for the 1954 financial year reached $16.9M (¥6bn)[9].

The company went a long time without a clear outline of its own, passing several half-year periods with no dividend at all. Eighteen years after its founding, in 1967, Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry was still seen by the outside world as a division of Kanebo. Osawa Takashi (大澤孝), then a managing director of the company[10], described that situation frankly in a lecture to the Securities Analysts Association of Japan. Capital had risen to $12.2M (¥4bn), and between the start of 1967 and that summer some 20 million shares moved from general shareholders to financial institutions, so that together with earlier holdings close to 50 per cent of the shares in issue passed into stable hands[11]. The company acquired the outward form of an independent business first through its shareholder register.

Japan's first industrial production of PVC, and the chain that ran from chlorine

In July 1950 Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry became the first company in Japan to industrialise polyvinyl chloride[12]. It was assembled on idle plant out of the technology and experience gained from synthetic rubber research the company had pursued during the war at the Army's request[13]. Initial capacity was only 60 tonnes a month, but after several rounds of expansion it reached 400 tonnes a month by March 1955[14]. That the process rested on the company's own technology rather than a licence, and that it owned the soda division supplying the chlorine, were the two conditions that allowed the business to be placed at the centre of the company. Successive refinements and rationalisations followed, until Kaneka counted as one of Japan's leading producers in both quality and volume.

PVC was not only a resin in its own right; it branched downstream one product at a time. In July 1950 the company began making PVC-insulated electrical cable, drawing its resin from the synthetic-resin division, and in January 1952 it launched Kaneproof Paper, a PVC-coated paper made by applying a vinylidene chloride and vinyl chloride copolymer latex to paper[15]. It went into the packaging of chemical fertiliser and agrochemicals as moisture-proof and grease-proof paper. In April 1953 came PVC compound, blended with plasticiser and stabiliser so that converters could mould it directly, and in February 1953 the company began making shortening, extending its reach into food[16].

The way the businesses were arranged around chlorine as a starting point was settled in this period. BHC, in production since 1948, was at first pushed aside by DDT, but through expanded plant and improved quality the company became the industry leader in the crude form[17]. In July 1954 it began producing pentachlorodiphenyl, made by chlorinating diphenyl and sold under the name Kanechlor, on a plant of 100 tonnes a month[18]. It was used as a synthetic electrical insulating oil and as a heat-transfer medium and plasticiser, and as of 1955 Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry was the only manufacturer of it in Japan[19]. As the industries consuming chlorine multiplied, the soda division expanded with them, and by March 1955 caustic soda capacity stood at 1,000 tonnes a month[20].

1960–1979PVC, styrenic resins and Kanekalon: the turn into a diversified chemical company

In less than a decade the company laid down the products that would carry it — an acrylic fibre, an MBS modifier and an expandable polystyrene — until polymer chemistry alone accounted for well over half of sales, and then committed $14.2M (¥5bn) at Takasago to move its PVC monomer off carbide and onto petroleum, joining an industry that was consolidating into a handful of large centres. The same period produced the company's gravest failure: Kanechlor, the heat-transfer fluid it had launched in 1954, leaked into rice oil in 1968 and caused the Kanemi Yusho poisoning.

Building up until polymer chemistry accounted for sixty per cent of sales

The Kanekalon acrylic synthetic fibre in July 1957, the Kane Ace MBS resin in June 1964[21] and the Kanepearl expandable polystyrene resin in July 1965[22] — the products that would become the company's mainstays lined up within less than ten years. All were commercialised on the company's own technology. In the sales mix for the second half of 1966, synthetic resins accounted for 34 per cent, Kanekalon 14 per cent and electrical cable 15 per cent, so that the polymer chemistry division alone made up 63 per cent[23]. The oils and fats and the yeast taken over at founding had already moved off the centre of the company. Products multiplied within the existing divisions as well: premium confectionery fats and oils began in December 1961, and speciality PVC-based resins in June 1967[24].

The mainstay PVC reached a nominal capacity of 6,600 tonnes a month by 1967, making the company Japan's joint largest producer alongside Nippon Zeon. Measured against world capacity it stood eleventh or twelfth[25]. In ABS resin too it led Japan at 900 tonnes a month, ahead of Ube Cycon's 750 tonnes and Toyo Rayon's 600 tonnes[26]. That said, ABS was in heavy oversupply across the industry, and Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry grew because it held not the S type but the B type — the grade blended with PVC to confer transparency and impact resistance[27]. It did not win by selling the same product into the same market. The view at the time was that if the resin passed the food-hygiene tests in Europe and the United States, demand for containers would expand at a stroke.

The distribution network was spoken of as carrying the same weight as the products themselves. The company made technical guidance and technical service to converters thorough[28], and set up an organisation in which sales and technology were not separated. That way of selling told every time a resin other than PVC was launched, and it was the ground on which the company could later say it had no worries about its selling power when it entered expandable polystyrene as a latecomer[29]. In placing the axis of competition not on the ability to make a product but on the ability to make customers use it, the company was built differently from the petrochemical firms of the same period. In expandable polystyrene it trailed Sekisui Sponge and Yuka Badische, and on entry was challenged over infringing patents, but it judged the matter soluble on the ground that its own patents had been granted in Japan as well as in the United States, Britain and France[30].

Feedstock conversion and Kashima — joining the scale-up of petrochemicals

In the second half of the 1960s the industry was consumed by the argument over switching the feedstock for PVC monomer from carbide to petroleum. Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry compared the Wulff process, which used naphtha, with oxychlorination, which used ethylene, sent engineers abroad and examined the domestic feedstock situation, and in 1967 decided on oxychlorination[31]. It licensed the technology from Stauffer Chemical of the United States and planned to invest $14.2M (¥5bn) at Takasago for completion in October 1968[32]. Works cost including interest, which under the carbide process had been $0 (¥58) per kilogramme, was expected to fall to $0 (¥38) after conversion[33].

The decision went beyond one company's capital spending. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry had envisaged PVC monomer centres at four sites — Tokuyama, Chiba, Mizushima and Takaoka — to which Takasago was now added, making five, and with Mitsubishi Petrochemical's Kashima also planned, six[34]. This was the period in which the minimum scale standard for an ethylene plant was raised in 1967 to 300,000 tonnes a year, and derivative plant scaled up in step[35]. As the shift from the carbide route to the petrochemical route and the enlargement of plant advanced, PVC resin overtook polyethylene in 1970 to become the plastic with the largest share[36].

The Kashima works were completed in November 1970[37]. Kashima Vinyl Chloride Monomer, jointly funded by Shin-Etsu Chemical, Asahi Glass, Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry and Asahi Denka Kogyo in response to Mitsubishi Petrochemical's 300,000-tonne ethylene plan[38], is representative of the PVC centres of the period. Rather than carry feedstock plant alone, the common method in the petrochemicals of the day was to share the burden of naphtha procurement and finance through joint investment and investment by rotation[39]. Almost all of these PVC centres completed their plant between 1970 and 1971[40]. In December of the same year the company established the overseas subsidiary Kaneka Belgium and began production in Europe as well.

Kanekalon's shift of application, and the Kanemi Yusho that Kanechlor caused

Kanekalon had led Japan in acrylic synthetic fibre, but Exlan, Bonnel and Cashmilon followed as the large fibre specialists entered one after another[41]. Judging that it could not win fighting on the same ground, Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry moved its products into the gaps the specialists left alone. It pushed the flame-retardant properties of the fibre into interior decoration — curtains and carpets — and carried the same non-flammability into bedding[42]. It then gave the fibre properties close to human hair through a special treatment and used it as wig material. Several companies brought out wigs made from synthetic fibre, but by 1967 the only ones left on the market were made of Kanekalon[43].

In the same period a product of Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry caused large-scale harm to health. In October 1968 illness from cooking oil broke out across a wide area, centred on western Japan. According to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Kanechlor made by Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry, used as the heat-transfer medium in the deodorising process, contaminated rice oil manufactured by Kanemi Warehouse, putting polychlorinated biphenyls and polychlorinated dibenzofurans — a class of dioxins — into the product[44]. The heat-transfer plasticiser released in 1954 as the only product of its kind in Japan had, fourteen years later, leaked out inside a food manufacturing process. Registered victims numbered 14,627 as of July 1969[45], and in February of that year proceedings were brought against Kanemi Warehouse, its president and Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry. A nationwide unified action naming the state as defendant followed in November 1970[46].

The litigation ran on for years; the plaintiffs won against the state at both district and high court level[47], and then reached a settlement with Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry[48]. To view the incident as an isolated act of negligence is to mistake the whole. The Kanemi Yusho case caused by PCBs is counted among a series of pollution cases — methylmercury contamination of the Agano river, air pollution at Yokkaichi, cadmium contamination of the Jinzu river, methylmercury contamination of Minamata bay — in which the industrial structure of a rushed drive into heavy and chemical industry was itself called into question[49]. In April 1974 the Act on the Regulation of Manufacture and Evaluation of Chemical Substances came into force[50], changing from the ground up the procedure for putting a new chemical substance into the world. In the same period PVC resin reached an annual capacity of two million tonnes by the spring of 1971 through successive expansions while demand stalled, and the industry entered a recession cartel from January 1972[51].

Read the full history in Japanese →


Notes

  1. Kaneka, annual securities report, corporate history section
  2. Kaneka, securities report for the 82nd term (FYE March 2006), corporate history section
  3. 会社銀行八十年史 (Eighty Years of Companies and Banks, 1955), the Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry entry
  4. Kaneka, securities report for the 82nd term (FYE March 2006), corporate history section
  5. Kaneka, annual securities report, corporate history section
  6. 会社銀行八十年史 (Eighty Years of Companies and Banks, 1955), the Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry entry
  7. 証券アナリストジャーナル (Securities Analysts Journal), August 1967, 'The present state and future of Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry' by Osawa Takashi
  8. 会社銀行八十年史 (Eighty Years of Companies and Banks, 1955), the Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry entry
  9. 会社銀行八十年史 (Eighty Years of Companies and Banks, 1955), the Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry entry
  10. 証券アナリストジャーナル (Securities Analysts Journal), August 1967, 'The present state and future of Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry' by Osawa Takashi
  11. 証券アナリストジャーナル (Securities Analysts Journal), August 1967, 'The present state and future of Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry' by Osawa Takashi
  12. Kaneka, annual securities report, corporate history section
  13. 証券アナリストジャーナル (Securities Analysts Journal), August 1967, 'The present state and future of Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry' by Osawa Takashi
  14. 会社銀行八十年史 (Eighty Years of Companies and Banks, 1955), the Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry entry
  15. 会社銀行八十年史 (Eighty Years of Companies and Banks, 1955), the Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry entry
  16. Kaneka, annual securities report, corporate history section
  17. 会社銀行八十年史 (Eighty Years of Companies and Banks, 1955), the Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry entry
  18. 会社銀行八十年史 (Eighty Years of Companies and Banks, 1955), the Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry entry
  19. Ministry of the Environment, 'The background to PCB waste disposal measures' (PCB early-disposal information site)
  20. 会社銀行八十年史 (Eighty Years of Companies and Banks, 1955), the Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry entry
  21. 赤門マネジメント・レビュー (Akamon Management Review) vol.7 no.8, August 2008, 'The competitiveness of Kaneka MBS resin' by Hashimoto Noriyuki
  22. Kaneka, annual securities report, corporate history section
  23. 証券アナリストジャーナル (Securities Analysts Journal), August 1967, 'The present state and future of Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry' by Osawa Takashi
  24. Kaneka, annual securities report, corporate history section
  25. 証券アナリストジャーナル (Securities Analysts Journal), August 1967, 'The present state and future of Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry' by Osawa Takashi
  26. 証券アナリストジャーナル (Securities Analysts Journal), August 1967, 'The present state and future of Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry' by Osawa Takashi
  27. 証券アナリストジャーナル (Securities Analysts Journal), August 1967, 'The present state and future of Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry' by Osawa Takashi
  28. 証券アナリストジャーナル (Securities Analysts Journal), August 1967, 'The present state and future of Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry' by Osawa Takashi
  29. 証券アナリストジャーナル (Securities Analysts Journal), August 1967, 'The present state and future of Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry' by Osawa Takashi
  30. 証券アナリストジャーナル (Securities Analysts Journal), August 1967, 'The present state and future of Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry' by Osawa Takashi
  31. 証券アナリストジャーナル (Securities Analysts Journal), August 1967, 'The present state and future of Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry' by Osawa Takashi
  32. 証券アナリストジャーナル (Securities Analysts Journal), August 1967, 'The present state and future of Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry' by Osawa Takashi
  33. 証券アナリストジャーナル (Securities Analysts Journal), August 1967, 'The present state and future of Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry' by Osawa Takashi
  34. 証券アナリストジャーナル (Securities Analysts Journal), August 1967, 'The present state and future of Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry' by Osawa Takashi
  35. 日本産業史 vol.3 (A History of Japanese Industry, Nikkei Inc., 1994), 'Chemicals — maturing after the scale-up of plant'
  36. 日本産業史 vol.3 (A History of Japanese Industry, Nikkei Inc., 1994), 'Chemicals — maturing after the scale-up of plant'
  37. Kaneka, annual securities report, corporate history section
  38. 日本産業史 vol.3 (A History of Japanese Industry, Nikkei Inc., 1994), 'Chemicals — maturing after the scale-up of plant'
  39. 日本産業史 vol.3 (A History of Japanese Industry, Nikkei Inc., 1994), 'Chemicals — maturing after the scale-up of plant'
  40. 日本産業史 vol.3 (A History of Japanese Industry, Nikkei Inc., 1994), 'Chemicals — maturing after the scale-up of plant'
  41. 証券アナリストジャーナル (Securities Analysts Journal), August 1967, 'The present state and future of Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry' by Osawa Takashi
  42. 証券アナリストジャーナル (Securities Analysts Journal), August 1967, 'The present state and future of Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry' by Osawa Takashi
  43. 証券アナリストジャーナル (Securities Analysts Journal), August 1967, 'The present state and future of Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry' by Osawa Takashi
  44. Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 'On the Kanemi Yusho incident'
  45. 社会学評論 (Japanese Sociological Review) vol.63 no.1, 2012, 'The singularity and defects of the compensation scheme in the Kanemi Yusho case' by Uda Kazuko
  46. 社会学評論 (Japanese Sociological Review) vol.63 no.1, 2012, 'The singularity and defects of the compensation scheme in the Kanemi Yusho case' by Uda Kazuko
  47. Kanemi Yusho Victims Support Centre, 'Chronology of the Kanemi Yusho problem'
  48. 社会学評論 (Japanese Sociological Review) vol.63 no.1, 2012, 'The singularity and defects of the compensation scheme in the Kanemi Yusho case' by Uda Kazuko
  49. 日本産業史 vol.3 (A History of Japanese Industry, Nikkei Inc., 1994), 'Chemicals — maturing after the scale-up of plant'
  50. 日本産業史 vol.3 (A History of Japanese Industry, Nikkei Inc., 1994), 'Chemicals — maturing after the scale-up of plant'
  51. 日本産業史 vol.3 (A History of Japanese Industry, Nikkei Inc., 1994), 'Chemicals — maturing after the scale-up of plant'

References & sources

  1. Kaneka Corporation (annual securities reports), including the corporate-history section and the 82nd report for the year ended March 2006.
  2. Securities Analysts Journal: Aug 1967, Osawa Takashi on the present state and future of Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry; Dec 1985, Nemoto Nobuo on Aderans.
  3. vol.3 (A History of Japanese Industry, Nikkei Inc., 1994), the chapter on chemicals and the maturing of large-scale plant.
  4. Eighty Years of Companies and Banks (1955), the Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry entry.
  5. Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (on the Kanemi Yusho incident). Ministry of the Environment, on the PCB waste disposal information site.
  6. Japanese Sociological Review vol.63 no.1 (2012), Uda Kazuko on the singularity and defects of the compensation scheme in the Kanemi Yusho case. Kanemi Yusho Victims Support Centre.
  7. Akamon Management Review vol.7 no.8 (Aug 2008), Hashimoto Noriyuki on the competitiveness of Kaneka MBS resin.

Yen amounts are converted at the average rate of each figure’s own year — not today’s rate; revenue charts are shown in yen. Exchange rates & sources — the full ¥/US$ table →


Data API

Kaneka’s history, presidents and financials are published as static JSON — no key, plain GET. One API per public page, and one per section where a page carries several tables. Full specification →

/api/4118/company.json ·/api/4118/history.json ·/api/4118/ceo.json ·/api/4118/financials.json ·/api/4118/financials/segment.json ·/api/4118/financials/pl.json ·/api/4118/financials/cf.json ·/api/4118/financials/bs.json ·/api/4118/financials/employee.json ·/api/4118/financials/stock.json ·/api/4118/financials.csv ·/api/4118/financials_history.csv

/api/companies.json ·/api/decisions.json ·/api/api-manifest.json