2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Arrangement for the Release of Historical Materials on the ITO-Chubei Family Business, and Archival Research with Original Documents

Research Project

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Project/Area Number	19H01308
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Review Section	Basic Section 03020:Japanese history-related
Research Institution	Shiga University
Principal Investigator	USAMI Hideki 滋賀大学, 経済学部, 名誉教授 (60273398)
Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha)	伊藤博之大阪経済大学, 経営学部, 教授 (20242969) 井澤龍東京都立大学, 経営学研究科, 准教授 (30761225)
Project Period (FY)	2019-04-01 – 2022-03-31
Keywords	伊藤忠兵衛家文書 / 丸紅株式会社史資料 / 伊藤忠商事史資料 / ビジネスアーカイブズ
Outline of Final Research Achievements	The purpose of this study was to organize and catalog documents related to the ITO-Chubei family business in the archives of the Faculty of Economics, Shiga University, and make them available to the public, and to compare the methods of classification, preservation, and disclosure of corporate documents using the original documents with those in the United States and Britain. All of the historical documents of Marubeni Corporation have been inspected, and a preliminary draft of the classification of historical materials has been prepared. 90% of the original documents of the ITO-Chubei family have been verified, and the final check and classification of the documents have been completed just prior to the start of the work. Regarding the preservation and disclosure methods of corporate documents in the U.K. and the U.S., we studied the case studies of 3M, DEC, and Dupont in the U.S. and of business archives in the U.K., and published the results.
Free Research Field	日本経営史
Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements	伊藤忠兵衛家文書・伊藤忠商事史資料・丸紅株式会社史資料は、総合商社伊藤忠商事・丸紅の創業家による事業経営の実態と現在の伊藤忠商事・丸紅が１９４９年に発足し、総合商社化するまでの経営の実態を明らかにできる史料群である。とりわけ伊藤忠兵衛家文書は存在すら知られていなかった。従来の研究は、ほとんど両社の社史に依拠して論じられており、ごく少数の社内資料を用いただけであった。しかし、伊藤忠兵衛家文書は5万点超の学界未知の原文書であり、上記の文書群が公開され利用に供されるならば、個人商店から法人化、経営の分離・統合、合併など経営の沿革史を明らかにでき、学術的・社会的に画期的な意義を有している。