東京証券取引所

(Tokyo Shoken Torihikisho)

Founded in 1878, the TSE is one of the oldest financial exchanges in Asia, and the largest of Japan's five stock exchanges. Its current incarnation was signed into law in 1947, after SCAP dissolved the wartime TSE. Now, the TSE is a private corporation with eleven directors, nine officers, and four auditors.

88 Japanese firms and 22 foreign firms have seats on the exchange: 2,115 domestic companies and 35 foreign companies are listed. The domestic stocks are broken down into a large-cap "first section" and a small-cap "second section." Rather than using letter symbols, the TSE gives each company a four-digit numerical code for computers: when looking up stocks in a newspaper, you have to search by section and industry. The official index is the TOPIX or Tokyo Stock Price Index, but most foreign outlets will give you the Nikkei 225 index from the Nihon Keizai Shimbun instead.

Since closing its trading floor in 1999, the TSE has gone completely electronic, much like the American NASDAQ. It occupies a sparkling new headquarters, the "TSE Arrows," in Nihombashi across the water from the Imperial Palace. The most distinctive feature of the new TSE building is the Market Center, a glass cylinder about fifty feet in diameter that houses the market's administrators as they supervise trading. This is what you see when the TSE comes up on CNBC or the Bloomberg Channel, as the media have studios directly overlooking the center.

Recently, the TSE opened a new sub-market, called "Mothers," for emerging and high-growth companies: there are now 36 Mothers, including Skymark Airlines, WOWOW, and Sky Perfect Communications.


00100 informs me that this is the 1,500th addition to the Everything Japanese Encyclopedia. Huzzah! To 00100 and the many other EJE contributors, a hearty yoroshiku.

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