Yoshiharu Hoshino’s first at-tempt to turn round his family’s 100-year old hotel business backfired when his modernising ideas got him the sack after six months. But three years later the fourth-generation heir-apparent was call-ed back by the management team, which was still dominated by family members, to run the struggling business.

Back then, in the early 1990s, the management was one of many aspects Mr Hoshino wanted to change, he recalls, speaking in the modest Tokyo offices of Hoshino Resorts.

The way he then set about reforming outdat-ed practices shows how Jap-an’s family-run businesses might buck a worrying trend. As family ties loos-en generally, they are struggling to find the right successors to take over. More than 68 per cent of family businesses do not have an heir lined up, according to Teikoku Databank, an independent Japanese research group.