Japan Tobacco
cigarette manufacturing company
Japan Tobacco Inc. (JT) is a Japanese diversified tobacco company and parent company to Japan Tobacco International, one of the three largest international Big Tobacco product manufacturers in the world. It was established in 1985 as a tokushu gaisha that inherited the right to monopolize and manufacture cigarettes from the Japan Tobacco and Salt Public Corporation and required the government to hold at least 50% of its shares. In addition to tobacco, JT diversified its businesses, establishing the pharmaceutical research institute in 1993 and making a full-scale entry into the food and beverage industry in 1998. In 2008, it acquired the food manufacturer Katokichi, now TableMark, as a wholly owned subsidiary, integrating its food business.
It is part of the Nikkei 225 and TOPIX Large70 indices. In 2009, the company was listed at number 312 on the Fortune 500 list. The company is headquartered in Toranomon, Minato, Tokyo, and Japan Tobacco International's headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland. As of 2012 the chairman is Hiroshi Kimura and the CEO is Mitsuomi Koizumi.
History
Japan Tobacco is the successor entity to a nationalized tobacco monopoly first established by the Government of Japan in 1898 to secure tax revenue collections from tobacco leaf sales.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Japan Tobacco” is cigarette manufacturing company. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Japan, Tobacco and cigarette, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “cigarette manufacturing company” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q898568. VIAF identifies the subject as 130623457. The Library of Congress control number is nr92018774. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1985, 1993, 1998 and 2008.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Japan Tobacco”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Japan Tobacco primary sources, Japan Tobacco archive and Japan research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Japan Tobacco”?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Japan Tobacco” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.