Why Japanese companies do so many different things

为什么日本企业业务如此多元化

The internal logic of the world’s strangest corporations 全球最奇特企业的内在逻辑

Consider Toto. If you spend much time in American public bathrooms, or rather if you’re simply a particularly attentive patron of American public bathrooms, you’ll probably have noticed Toto’s toilets at some point or another: they’re distinguished by a quite memorable serif-font “TOTO” logo. Toto toilets aren’t quite dominant in American bathrooms, since they have healthy competition from our homegrown toilet champions American Standard and Kohler—though Toto is doing better and better as Americans start to fall in love with the bidet-toilet—but globally Toto is the world’s largest manufacturer of toilets and bidets. And in its home country of Japan, Toto is simply everywhere: 80 percent of Japanese homes contain a Toto bidet-toilet.

以东陶（Toto）为例。如果你经常使用美国的公共卫生间，或者说你是一个特别细心的使用者，你很可能在某个时刻注意到过 Toto 的马桶：它们以那个令人印象深刻的衬线字体“TOTO”标志而著称。Toto 的马桶在美国市场并未占据绝对主导地位，因为它们面临着本土卫浴巨头美标（American Standard）和科勒（Kohler）的激烈竞争——尽管随着美国人开始爱上智能马桶盖，Toto 的表现越来越好——但在全球范围内，Toto 是世界上最大的马桶和卫浴洁具制造商。而在其大本营日本，Toto 简直无处不在：80% 的日本家庭都安装了 Toto 的智能马桶。

And if you’re a longtime Toto shareholder—maybe an investor with a particular interest in bathroom fixtures—this has been a wonderfully lucrative year for you. Toto’s stock is up 60 percent year to date; in just the last few weeks, it’s risen by 30 percent. Toto is doing better than ever: its net profit, in the first quarter of 2026, was up 230 percent year over year.

如果你是一位长期的 Toto 股东——或许是一位对卫浴设备特别感兴趣的投资者——那么今年对你来说是收获颇丰的一年。Toto 的股价今年迄今已上涨了 60%；仅在过去几周内，涨幅就达到了 30%。Toto 的表现比以往任何时候都要好：2026 年第一季度的净利润同比增长了 230%。

But Toto’s remarkable year doesn’t have much to do with toilets or bidets. Toto might have been founded in the 1910s to “provide a healthy and civilized way of life” through affordable toilets, and in the decades since might have become the global leader in the bathroom game. But Toto also does a lot of other things. Toto manufactures not just bidets and toilets but also bathroom tiles, prefabricated bathroom modules, faucets, modular kitchens, photocatalytic coatings for buildings, and assistive equipment for the elderly. And, most importantly, Toto has a very lucrative sideline in the fabrication of memory chips.

但 Toto 今年惊人的表现与马桶或智能马桶盖并没有太大关系。Toto 成立于 1910 年代，旨在通过经济实惠的马桶“提供健康文明的生活方式”，并在随后的几十年里成为了全球卫浴行业的领导者。但 Toto 还涉足了许多其他领域。它不仅生产智能马桶和马桶，还生产浴室瓷砖、预制浴室模块、水龙头、整体厨房、建筑用光催化涂层以及老年人辅助设备。最重要的是，Toto 在存储芯片制造领域还有一项非常赚钱的副业。

Since 1988, in a once-obscure corner of the company called the “advanced ceramics division,” Toto has been producing a very particular component called the electrostatic chuck, or the “e-chuck.” The e-chuck is a sort of high-precision ceramic plate, about the size of a steering wheel, that uses electrostatic force to hold a silicon wafer perfectly flat and thermally stable while memory chips are etched into it with bombardments of plasma. Making these components is extraordinarily difficult, since the ceramic body needs to have near-zero particle generation and be polished to submicron flatness: and this means that there are only a few companies in the world that are capable of manufacturing e-chucks reliably. Almost all of them—Shinko Electric, NGK, Toto, Kyocera, Sumitomo Osaka Cement, Niterra—are based in Japan.

自 1988 年起，在公司一个曾经默默无闻的角落——“先进陶瓷部门”，Toto 一直在生产一种非常特殊的组件，称为静电吸盘（electrostatic chuck），简称“e-chuck”。E-chuck 是一种高精度陶瓷板，大小约为方向盘，它利用静电力将硅片固定得平整且热稳定，以便在等离子体轰击下刻蚀存储芯片。制造这些组件极其困难，因为陶瓷本体需要实现近乎零颗粒产生，并被抛光至亚微米级的平整度：这意味着世界上只有少数几家公司能够可靠地制造 e-chuck。而这些公司——新光电气（Shinko Electric）、日本碍子（NGK）、Toto、京瓷（Kyocera）、住友大阪水泥（Sumitomo Osaka Cement）、日本特殊陶业（Niterra）——几乎全部位于日本。

For most of its history, the advanced ceramics division was a rounding error on Toto’s balance sheet: the money maker, as it had been since the 1910s, was the toilet and bidet business. But we’re in a new era. Demand for AI is exploding, meaning that demand for the high-bandwidth memory that AI data centers require is exploding, meaning that demand for memory chips is exploding, meaning that demand for e-chucks is exploding. And so Toto’s advanced ceramics division is suddenly the company’s largest business, generating the majority of its operating profit. Toto’s leadership, suddenly awash in AI-driven revenue, announced that they would double down by investing hundreds of millions in expanded electrostatic chuck production: the toilet company had become, quite unexpectedly, a supplier to the semiconductor supply chain.

在公司历史的大部分时间里，先进陶瓷部门在 Toto 的资产负债表上几乎可以忽略不计：自 1910 年代以来，真正的摇钱树一直是马桶和卫浴业务。但我们正处于一个新时代。人工智能的需求正在爆炸式增长，这意味着 AI 数据中心所需的高带宽内存需求激增，进而导致存储芯片需求激增，最终导致对 e-chuck 的需求激增。因此，Toto 的先进陶瓷部门突然成为了公司最大的业务板块，贡献了大部分营业利润。Toto 的领导层在 AI 驱动的收入激增下，宣布将加倍投入，斥资数亿美元扩大静电吸盘的生产：这家马桶公司出人意料地成为了半导体供应链的供应商。

The Toto story is a fun and interesting illustration of corporate diversification and how strange bets can pay off. But that type of diversification—a toilet company that also produces photocatalytic coating and high-precision components for semiconductors—isn’t really unique to Toto. Practically every company in Japan seems to do a thousand very different things.

Toto 的故事是一个关于企业多元化以及“奇怪的赌注”如何获得回报的有趣案例。但这种多元化——一家生产马桶的公司同时生产光催化涂层和半导体高精度组件——并非 Toto 所独有。在日本，几乎每家公司似乎都在经营着成千上万种截然不同的业务。

Consider, for example, Kyocera, another one of the e-chuck makers. Kyocera was founded in 1959 as a producer of ceramic insulators for cathode-ray tubes; today it manufactures not only industrial ceramics but also printers, smartphones, ballpoint pens, kitchen knives, solar PV modules, lens components, industrial cutting tools, automotive camera modules, electronics components, semiconductor packaging, biocompatible tooth and joint replacements, UV-LED curing systems, LCD systems, medical products, and lab-grown gemstones. Or another e-chuck maker. Sumitomo Osaka Cement, as you might have been able to deduce from the name, produces cement and ready-mixed concrete; but it also produces optical components, measuring instruments, industrial ceramics, artificial marine reefs, cosmetics and nanoparticle materials.

以另一家 e-chuck 制造商京瓷（Kyocera）为例。京瓷成立于 1959 年，最初是生产显像管陶瓷绝缘体的；如今，它不仅生产工业陶瓷，还生产打印机、智能手机、圆珠笔、菜刀、太阳能光伏组件、镜头组件、工业切削工具、车载摄像头模块、电子元器件、半导体封装、生物相容性牙齿和关节置换物、UV-LED 固化系统、LCD 系统、医疗产品以及实验室培育宝石。再看另一家 e-chuck 制造商，住友大阪水泥（Sumitomo Osaka Cement），正如你从名字中推断出的那样，它生产水泥和预拌混凝土；但它同时也生产光学组件、测量仪器、工业陶瓷、人工鱼礁、化妆品和纳米颗粒材料。

And this degree of diversification extends to many of Japan’s most famous companies. Yamaha, for example, manufactures pianos, motorcycles, guitars, drums, boats, snowmobiles, ATVs, audio equipment, golf clubs, tennis rackets, home appliances, specialty metals, molding and bonding equipment for semiconductors, and industrial robots. Hitachi makes nuclear reactors, power grids, railway systems, elevators, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, medical imaging devices, data storage, IT consulting, and industrial machinery. Even a company as simple as Oji, Japan’s largest paper company, has been drawn into the production of disposable diapers, functional films, adhesives, cellulose nanofibers, and wood-based EUV photoresists; and it also operates a hotel, an airport catering business, a concert hall, and an insurance agency.

这种多元化程度延伸到了日本许多最著名的公司。例如，雅马哈（Yamaha）生产钢琴、摩托车、吉他、鼓、船只、雪地摩托、全地形车、音响设备、高尔夫球杆、网球拍、家用电器、特种金属、半导体成型和键合设备以及工业机器人。日立（Hitachi）制造核反应堆、电网、铁路系统、电梯、半导体制造设备、医疗影像设备、数据存储、IT 咨询和工业机械。即使是像日本最大的造纸公司王子制纸（Oji）这样看似简单的公司，也涉足了纸尿裤、功能性薄膜、粘合剂、纤维素纳米纤维和木质 EUV 光刻胶的生产；此外，它还经营着酒店、机场餐饮业务、音乐厅和保险代理机构。

All of which is to say: Japanese companies do a lot of things.

总而言之：日本企业确实业务繁杂。

There are, of course, other countries with companies that “do lots of things”: much of Indian economic life, for example, is defined by the sprawling activities of a few large business clans—the Adanis, the Ambanis, the Tatas, the Birlas. But India is a relatively poor country with a low level of economic specialization, and the sprawling con…

当然，其他国家也有“业务繁杂”的公司：例如，印度经济生活的很大一部分是由几个大型商业家族——阿达尼（Adani）、安巴尼（Ambani）、塔塔（Tata）、比拉（Birla）——庞大的业务活动所定义的。但印度是一个经济专业化程度较低的相对贫穷国家，而这种庞大的……