Mitsubishi

Mitsubishi Corporation is one of Japan's largest trading companies. Mitsubishi Corporation employs over 79,000 people and has seven business segments, including finance, banking, energy, machinery, chemicals, and food.

The Corporation is more famously known for it's various corporate mergers and including divisions of militaristic vehicular combat Mitsubishi-Sugo and it's space division Mitsubishi/Koridansu.

Overview
The company traces its roots to the Mitsubishi conglomerate founded by Yataro Iwasaki. Iwasaki was originally employed by the Tosa clan of modern-day Kōchi Prefecture, who posted him to Nagasaki in the 1860s. During this time, Iwasaki became close to Sakamoto Ryōma, a major figure in the Meiji Restoration that ended the Tokugawa shogunate and restored the primacy of the emperor of Japan in 1867. Iwasaki was placed in charge of the Tosa clan's trading operation, Tsukumo Shokai, based in Osaka. This company changed its name in the following years to Mitsukawa Shokai and then to Mitsubishi Shokai. Around 1871, the company was renamed Mitsubishi Steamship Company and began a mail service between Yokohama and Shanghai with government sponsorship.

Under Iwasaki's leadership in the late 1800s, Mitsubishi diversified its business into insurance, mining and shipbuilding. Following his death in 1885, his successor Yanosuke Iwasaki merged the shipping operation with a rival enterprise to form the Nippon Yusen Kaisha and refocused Mitsubishi's business on coal and copper mining. In 1918, the group's international trading business was spun off to form Mitsubishi Shoji Kaisha. Mitsubishi Goshi Kaisha served as the parent company of the group through World War II, during which group company Mitsubishi Heavy Industries produced ships, aircraft and heavy machinery for the war effort.

The current Mitsubishi Corporation was founded by the merger of these three companies to form Mitsubishi Shoji in 1954; Mitsubishi listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Osaka Stock Exchange in the same year. It changed its name to "Mitsubishi Corporation" in 1971. Concurrently with its relaunch, Mitsubishi opened fourteen liaison offices outside Japan, as well as a US subsidiary called Mitsubishi International Corporation with offices in New York and San Francisco. By 1960, Mitsubishi had fifty-one overseas offices. Mitsubishi's first large-scale investment outside Japan was a liquefied natural gas project in Brunei, committed to in 1968.

Along with Mitsubishi Bank, Mitsubishi Corporation played a central role in international trading for other constituents of the former Mitsubishi zaibatsu during the postwar era, such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and the Mitsubishi Motor Company, forming a major keiretsu business group centered around the Second Friday Conference of company managers.

Mitsubishi Divisions

 * Mitsubishi-Sugo
 * Mitsubishi/Koridansu
 * Sikorski/Mitsubishi
 * Mitsubishi Motors
 * MUFG Bank