Aki Kinjo

Aki Kinjo is Professor of Business History at Gakushuin Women’s College, Tokyo. He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Law and Management and President of the Society of Law and Management. Prior to his academic career, he spent 25 years as an international banker and business executive in Tokyo and New York City. He holds a BA in International Relations from the University of Tokyo (1987), an MBA from Columbia Business School (1992), and a PhD in Economics from Kyoto University (2015).

His academic ambition is to develop a nuanced understanding of the factors behind Japan’s rapid modernization and economic success—as well as its recent stagnation—within a global context. His research focuses on three main areas: first, the history of collateral, supported by four Japanese government grants (KAKEN) since 2012, for which he was the principal investigator; second, the history of warehouses, with particular emphasis on their role in collateralising movable assets; and third, corporate museums, where he analyses both explicit and implicit narratives and their underlying motivations.

Aki is also a recognised thought leader in liberal arts education in Japan, having chaired conferences in 2022 and 2023.

The project

Titles: Technology and Early Industry in Japan, 1800-1885

"The J-InnovaTech research project aims to break new ground in understanding Japan’s first industrialisation and to challenge the prevailing consensus on how a relatively isolated agrarian economy transformed into a globally significant industrial power within just five decades. Funded by the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 programme, the J-InnovaTech team focuses on Japan’s technological culture between 1800 and 1885—a period recognised as crucial to the country’s development but still insufficiently studied from an empirical standpoint. Challenging the so-called ‘Eureka model’, the project provides examples that counter the notion of innovation as the product of solitary genius or sudden inspiration and disentangles the concepts of disruption and innovation. Drawing on examples from the recent industrial past, J-InnovaTech demonstrates how technological change is often incremental, collective, collaborative, and initially slow—before accelerating—yet no less transformative over the long term."

Selective Bibliography

• Co-editor, History and Management Studies on Collateral (in Japanese) with Wataru Miyasaka: Shinzansha Publisher, 2024.
• “Shibusawa Eiichi and the Origin of Japanese Modern Warehouse Finance: Investigating Bank and Warehouse Business in the Early Meiji-Era through the Takuzenkai Proceedings,” Journal of Law and Management, No.5, pp.31-54, 2022, in Japanese).
• “A Comparative Analysis of Corporate Museums of Volvo and Isuzu: Leveraging an Untapped Asset for Investigating Narratives in Business History,” with Naoya Takayanagi, Enterprises et historie, No.116, pp. 33-52, 2024.
• “How Companies Heal and Maintain Health: A Unique Function of Corporate Museums in Japan,” Comparative Civilizations Review, No 92, pp. 100-118, 2025.
•  Co-editor, Liberal Arts Education in a Changing World (in English and Japanese with Aya Hashimoto: Shinzansha Publisher, 2025).