How the Oldest Company in the World, Japan’s Temple-Builder Kongō Gumi, Has Survived Nearly 1,500 Years

Image from New York Pub­lic Library, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you vis­it Osa­ka, you’ll be urged to see two old build­ings in par­tic­u­lar: Osa­ka Cas­tle and Shiten­nō-ji (above), Japan’s first Bud­dhist tem­ple. In behold­ing both, you’ll behold the work of con­struc­tion firm Kongō Gumi (金剛組), the old­est con­tin­u­ous­ly run com­pa­ny in the world. It was with the build­ing of Shiten­nō-ji, com­mis­sioned by Prince Shō­toku Taishi in the year 578, that brought it into exis­tence in the first place. Back then, “Japan was pre­dom­i­nant­ly Shin­to and had no miyadaiku (car­pen­ters trained in the art of build­ing Bud­dhist tem­ples),” writes Irene Her­rera at Works that Work, “so the prince hired three skilled men from Baek­je, a Bud­dhist state in what is now Korea,” among them a cer­tain Kongō Shiget­su.

There­after, Kongō Gumi con­tin­ued to oper­ate inde­pen­dent­ly for more than 1,400 years, run by 40 gen­er­a­tions of Kongō Shiget­su’s descen­dants. By the time Toy­oto­mi Hideyoshi had the com­pa­ny build Osa­ka Cas­tle in 1583, it had been estab­lished for near­ly a mil­len­ni­um. In the cen­turies since, “the cas­tle has been destroyed repeat­ed­ly by fire and light­ning,” Her­rera writes. “Kongō Gumi pros­pered because of these major recon­struc­tions, which pro­vid­ed them with plen­ty of work.” Through­out most of its long his­to­ry, an even stead­ier busi­ness came from their spe­cial­ty of build­ing Bud­dhist tem­ples, at least until seri­ous chal­lenges to that busi­ness mod­el arose in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.

“World War II brought sig­nif­i­cant changes 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 towards a new endeav­or: the craft­ing of coffins.” Gov­ern­men­tal per­mis­sion was arranged by the wid­ow of Kongō Haruichi, Kongō Gumi’s 37th leader, who’d tak­en his own life out of finan­cial despair inflict­ed by the Shōwa Depres­sion of the nine­teen-twen­ties. Here time at the head of the com­pa­ny illus­trates its long-held will­ing­ness to grant lead­er­ship duties not just to first sons, but to fam­i­ly mem­bers best suit­ed to do the job; for that rea­son, the his­to­ry of the Kongō clan involves 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 in the nineties even­tu­al­ly forced Kongō Gumi to become a sub­sidiary of Taka­mat­su Con­struc­tion Group in Jan­u­ary 2006. “The cur­rent Kongō Gumi work­force has only one mem­ber of the Kongō fam­i­ly,” the Nikkei Asia report­ed in 2020, “a daugh­ter of the 40th head of the fam­i­ly” who “now serves as the 41st head.” But its miyadaiku — dis­tinc­tive­ly orga­nized into eight inde­pen­dent kumi, or groups — con­tin­ue to do the work they always have, with ever-more-refined ver­sions of the tra­di­tion­al tools and tech­niques they’ve been using for near­ly a mil­len­ni­um and a half. Kongō Gumi con­tin­ues to receive inter­na­tion­al atten­tion for main­tain­ing its high lev­el of crafts­man­ship, but view­ers of Amer­i­can TV dra­ma in recent years will also appre­ci­ate its hav­ing solved the prob­lem of suc­ces­sion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Japan Has the Old­est Busi­ness­es in the World?: Hōshi, a 1300-Year-Old Hotel, Offers Clues

Build­ing With­out Nails: The Genius of Japan­ese Car­pen­try

Hōshi: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on the 1300-Year-Old Hotel Run by the Same Japan­ese Fam­i­ly for 46 Gen­er­a­tions

Japan­ese Priest Tries to Revive Bud­dhism by Bring­ing Tech­no Music into the Tem­ple: Attend a Psy­che­del­ic 23-Minute Ser­vice

A Vis­it to the World’s Old­est Hotel, Japan’s Nisiya­ma Onsen Keiunkan, Estab­lished in 705 AD

See How Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Can Build a Whole Build­ing Using No Nails or Screws

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.