Rebuilding into a “strong trading house”: Haruna names the flaws (1987)

Naming the disease is not the same as curing it

The heart of this decision was not that Marubeni carried out some sweeping reorganization, but that its incoming president named his own company’s weaknesses in his own words. The race to be number one in sales, the weakness in domestic trade, the vertical silos that walled off the divisions — each was the underside of the success that had carried Marubeni from a textile trader to a general trading house, an inner weakness hard to see from outside. Haruna named them one by one in plain, unadorned language. To frame the aim as a “rebuilding into a strong trading house” was itself a declaration that it all began with admitting where the company actually stood.

Yet naming a disease and curing it are two different things. The weaknesses Haruna listed were not resolved during his tenure; only after more than a decade — the cleanup of financial engineering, the pruning of subsidiaries, the disposal of bad assets — did they finally connect to the rebuilding of the 2000s. An accurate diagnosis promises no early cure. “Rebuilding into a strong trading house” can be read as a prelude that shows how long that distance was. Looking at today’s Marubeni, which has renewed record profits on high resource prices, how far did this 1987 self-diagnosis of its earnings constitution bear fruit, and what did it carry over? It leaves a question worth re-asking at every turning point.