How the Oldest Firm within the World, Japan’s Temple-Builder Kongō Gumi, Has Survived Almost 1,500 Years
Picture from New York Public Library, by way of Wikimedia Commons
When you visit Osaka, you’ll be urged to see two outdated constructings in particular: Osaka Castle and Shitennō-ji (above), Japan’s first Buddhist temple. In beholding each, you’ll behold the work of construction agency Kongō Gumi (金剛組), the outdatedest continuously run company on the planet. It was with the constructing of Shitennō-ji, commissioned by Prince Shōtoku Taishi within the yr 578, that introduced it into existence within the first place. Again then, “Japan was predominantly Shinto and had no miyadaiku (automobilepenters educated within the artwork of constructing Buddhist temples),” writes Irene Herrera at Works that Work, “so the prince employed three expert males from Baekje, a Buddhist state in what’s now Korea,” amongst them a certain Kongō Shigetsu.
Thereafter, Kongō Gumi continued to operate independently for greater than 1,400 years, run by 40 generations of Kongō Shigetsu’s descendants. By the point Toyotomi Hideyoshi had the company construct Osaka Castle in 1583, it had been established for close toly a millennium. Within the centuries since, “the castle has been destroyed repeatedly by hearth and light-weightning,” Herrera writes. “Kongō Gumi professionalspered due to these main reconstructions, which professionalvided them with plenty of labor.” Byout most of its lengthy history, an excellent steadier business got here from their specialty of constructing Buddhist temples, not less than till serious challenges to that business model arose within the twentieth century.
“World Battle II introduced significant adjustments to Japan, and the demand for temple construction waned,” says the tourism company Toki. “Sensing the shifting tides of the time, the company made a strategic decision to pivot its expertise in the direction of a brand new endeavor: the crafting of coffins.” Governmalestal permission was organized by the widow of Kongō Haruichi, Kongō Gumi’s thirty seventh chief, who’d taken his personal life out of financial despair inflicted by the Shōwa Depression of the 9teen-twenties. Right here time on the head of the company illustrates its long-held willingness to grant leadership duties not simply to first sons, however to family members finest swimsuited to do the job; for that reason, the history of the Kongō clan includes many sons-in-law deliberately sought out for that purpose.
The combined forces of the decline of Buddhism and the popping of Japan’s real-estate bubble within the nineties eventually compelled Kongō Gumi to turn out to be a subsidiary of Takamatsu Construction Group in January 2006. “The curhire Kongō Gumi workpower has just one member of the Kongō family,” the Nikkei Asia reported in 2020, “a daughter of the fortieth head of the family” who “now serves because the forty first head.” However its miyadaiku — distinctively organized into eight independent kumi, or teams — continue to do the work they at all times have, with ever-more-refined versions of the traditional instruments and techniques they’ve been utilizing for close toly a millennium and a half. Kongō Gumi continues to obtain international attention for majortaining its excessive level of craftsmanship, however viewers of American TV drama in recent times may even appreciate that its having solved the problem of succession.
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Primarily based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His tasks embrace the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the e book The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facee book.
