"Personnel Management in a City Bank in Prewar Japan: A Case of Mitsui Bank, 1897-1943"(in Japanese)

This paper aims to analyze personnel management of Mitsui Bank, which was one of the largest banks in prewar Japan, from 1897 to 1943. Around 1900 it began to hire only new school leavers, although it hired many people in mid-career in the 19th century. As a result vacant positions came to be filled by employees under such positions. It took three kinds of people into employment: people with higher education, people with secondary education, and people with primary education. People, who received higher education, were mainly allocated to sections such as loan, screening, and foreign business and promoted to sub-manager and/or managers. People with secondary education were hired as probationers (minarai-in) and qualified as full-fledged employees in two or three years. People with only primary education were hired as trainees (renshusei) by a branch manager and qualified as probationers in three or four years. People with primary or secondary education were allocated to sections such as calculation and teller and promoted to section heads of a branch. Deposit section was filled by all three kinds of employees. Most employees, who stayed at the bank for more than twenty years, experienced three or four sections, though employees in foreign business section experienced fewer sections. When two branches were closed in 1933, fifty-six employees, of which number was nearly equal to the number of employees in the closed branches, were placed on a reserve list. Employees on the list were consisted of kinds of employees: employees, who had been with the bank for twenty-five or more years and had right to receive pension fund and employees, who had been ill and absent for a long time. The bank intended to decrease a surplus in personnel rapidly, but discharged people whose income were assured by the bank or people, who could not work on equal terms with others. This policy seemed to encourage employees to invest in firm-specific skills.