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Painting of a demon's face and a bag of beans.
Work Year
  1. Beginning of Work Day
  2. Business Year and Transfer Season
  3. Cherry Blossom Viewing Parties
  4. May Day (May 1)
  5. May Sickness
  6. General Shareholders Meeting
  7. Obon Holidays and Homecoming Rush
  8. Recreational Trips
  9. Year-End Party
  10. End of Work Day
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People in a meeting room, listening to a speech
A shareholder meeting at the Tokiwa-Yakuhin Company.
Photo Courtesy of Tokiwa-Yakuhin Company.
General Shareholders Meeting
The executives of a public company hold regularly scheduled meetings to notify shareholders, those who own stock in the company, about the state of the company, or tell them about important decisions. This general shareholders meeting or kabunushi sokai is the highest organizational meeting in a corporation. Some claim that general shareholders meetings of Japanese corporations tend to be simply rituals. Indeed, the boards of directors of many corporations often hold annual shareholder meetings on the same day in June, effectively preventing those who have shares in multiple corporations from attending more than one shareholder meeting. Corporate directors, however, claim they need to hold shareholders meeting on the same day in order to prevent corporate racketeers or sokaiya from disrupting the meetings with threats of blackmail. However, sokaiya have begun to decline because of the revision of the commercial code. Corporations used to try to finish shareholder meetings quickly, taking few questions from shareholders. However, they now consider shareholder meetings to be a good opportunity to inform the shareholders of progress the company has made. Furthermore, many corporate directors have begun to hold shareholder meetings on different days.
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