Merging Chichibu Onoda and Nihon Cement to create Taiheiyo Cement (1998)

What it means to fold up a hundred years of rivalry

Imamura Kazusuke began imagining the industry’s consolidation in 1985, long before the bubble burst. Trying to get at least one company clear of chronic oversupply, he spent more than a decade engineering a two-stage merger — first with Chichibu Onoda, then with Nihon Cement. The founding of the new company in October 1998 was also a decision to end, inside a single firm, the contest for first place that the Nihon Cement and Onoda lineages had waged since the Meiji era. The banks were barely involved: it proceeded on an agreement between chief executives from different corporate groups.

The merger did not, however, end the competition. The new company sank to a ¥18.7bn loss in its first year, and price competition at the retail end did not subside. Even having bound the domestic industry together, Taiheiyo Cement had little choice but to strike outward through acquisitions such as Ssangyong and Grand Cement, and the contest with the giant capital of Europe and America was only beginning. Bringing three lineages into one can be read as a settlement at home and, at the same time, the doorway through which the competition moved from Japan to the world.