Merging with Toho Kaiun and dropping the Nittetsu name (1962)

Giving up the name to buy a wider set of shippers

What stands out in this merger is that Nittetsu Kisen, the surviving company, did not keep its own name. For a firm born out of a steelmaker’s shipping department, the characters for “Nittetsu” were proof of where it came from and, at the same time, a declaration that it was a captive carrier for a single industry. Becoming one company with a general cargo operator descended from the South Manchuria Railway, and choosing a name that carried neither side’s inheritance, reads as an intention to stand as a shipping line with a breadth of shippers. It can be seen as an attempt not merely to add ships but to recompose the character of the company itself.

Widening the range of shippers, however, did not put it in a position to choose who stood behind its capital. Two years later the consolidation placed Shinwa Kaiun in the Nippon Yusen group, fixing the double relationship of steel as its cargo and NYK as its capital. Forty-eight years after that, the same relationship would be rewritten by a merger led by Nippon Steel. How far does the effort to build scale translate into autonomy for a mid-sized shipping company? The 1962 merger was the first occasion on which that question appeared.