How it started
Early years
Nippon Steel traces its roots to Japan Iron & Steel Co., Ltd., established in 1934 through the merger of the Yahata Steel Works and several other steel producers with blast furnaces. In 1950, the company's steel production business was split into two companies: Yawata Iron & Steel (八幡製鉄, Yahata Seitetsu), and Fuji Iron & Steel (富士製鉄, Fuji Seitetsu).
These two companies merged again in 1970 to form Nippon Steel Corporation (新日本製鐵, Shin Nippon Seitetsu). Beginning in early 1981, however, the company cut production and saw a sharp decline in profit that fiscal year. Forced to close furnaces, the company exhibited a typical Japanese economic aversion to layoffs, opting instead to offer standard early retirement enticements but also less conventional schemes such as a mushroom cultivation venture that used the surplus heat created by steel furnaces to temperature control a fecund fungi complex.
Troubled times
Attributing the drop to higher material costs, the company entered into another troubled year. In 1983, the company reported the end of the fiscal year (March 31) would reveal Nippon Steel was in an even more beleaguered situation. A fall in demand brought about a 39 percent tumble in profits from an already weak previous year.
During this time, the entire Japanese steel industry struggled in a period of turmoil as other nations such as South Korea, with only a fraction of labor costs, won over business. The company announced a loss in 1986, prompting a determined effort to diversify away from the moribund "smokestack" industrial sector and to provide new work for thousands of employees that would be transferred from closing furnaces. During the 1980s and 1990s, Nippon Steel permanently closed blast furnaces at three of its eight primary domestic locations: Kamaishi (1989), Sakai (1990), and Hirohata (1993).
From Wikipedia’s article on Nippon Steel Corporation, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3