Early Years
Nippon Steel was created by the merger of two giants, Yawata Iron & Steel (八幡製鉄 Yawata Seitetsu) and Fuji Iron & Steel (富士製鉄 Fuji 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.
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