Nissho Iwai Corporation

Sojitz Corporation
双日株式会社

Type	Public KK
Traded as	:
Industry	Conglomerate (Sogo shosha)
Founded	August 2004 (August 2004)
Headquarters	Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan
Key people	Yoji Sato, President & CEO
Revenue	JPY4,006 billion (2016)
Net income	JPY36.5 billion (2016)
Number of employees	14,330 (2016)
Website	Official website

Sojitz Corporation (Japanese: 双日株式会社, Hepburn: Sōjitsu Kabushiki-gaisha) is a sogo shosha (general trading company) based in Tokyo, Japan. It is engaged in a wide range of businesses globally, including buying, selling, importing, and exporting goods, manufacturing and selling products, providing services, and planning and coordinating projects, in Japan and overseas. Sojitz also invests in various sectors and conducts financing activities. The broad range of sectors in which Sojitz operates includes automobiles, energy, mineral resources, chemicals, foodstuff resources, agricultural and forestry resources, consumer goods, and industrial parks.

Sojitz was formed in 2004 by the merger of Nissho Iwai Corporation (日商岩井株式会社, Nisshō Iwai Kabushiki-gaisha) and Nichimen Corporation (ニチメン株式会社, Nichimen Kabushiki-gaisha). The name "Sojitz" is derived from the names of Nissho Iwai and Nichimen, both of which include the character "日" (sun). "Sojitz", literally meaning "twin suns", implies a merger of equals between the two companies. The corporate logo is a stylized version of the first character in its Japanese name.

Beginning around 1878, the Japanese government promoted the development of cotton spinning as an initial means of developing modern industry in Japan in the wake of the Meiji Restoration. Japan's native raw cotton supply proved inadequate to meet demand, and there was only one Japanese importer of raw cotton at the time, making the industry highly reliant on foreign merchants. To improve this situation, a group of spinning companies established Japan Cotton Trading Co., Ltd. (日本綿花株式会社, Nippon Menka Kabushiki Kaisha) in Osaka in 1892 under the leadership of Tsuneki Sano, a 38-year-old former government official.