The Relation of Museum and Corporation in Japan

In Wednesday’s RW class, we watched beginning part of the documentary film, The Corporation.

It shows many experts and executives’ opinions about corporation, and the strong point of this movie is that it presents various ideas of corporation from both supportive and opposing side.

But the core idea is that the primary aim of the corporation is to pursue a profit, in order to return it to their stockholders.

As I learned this idea by the film and the book with same name, the corporation, I wondered the situation in Japan.

In Japan too, though many corporations appeals their friendly image or social responsibility,the prior intention is profit. But as I think about it, I remembered that there are many corporation-owned museums in Japan like Bridgestone Museum of Art, or Suntory Museum of Art.

Such corporation-owned museums are famous and attract many visitors, because they hold various exhibition with collecting art works from within the country and abroad. Many such museums are as good as Japanese national museums on the points of exhibition, architecture and service.

I can say such services are also one of the industries of big corporation, but I feel those museum management is somewhat different from other industries. And it can be seen that those corporation-owned museums, especially ones which have corporation name in their name, are distinctive in Japan, because I can’t mention many museums in U.S. and European countries which are owned by corporations or have corporations’ name.

In the situation of Japanese museums, I think corporations supply the services for the public people which cannot be fully covered by national or local government.

So I feel that we can see and find the contribution of corporations for the society in some aspects, as we think about each country's situation.