Inside Yagisawa Shouten Corp. Factory And Kimuraya Bakery As Crowdfunding Revives Quake-Hit Japan Companies Avoiding Red Tape

Michihiro Kono, president of Yagisawa Shouten Co., checks a bag of soy beans in a storage room at the company's factory in Ichinoseki, Iwate prefecture, Japan, on Friday, Jan. 16, 2015. When an 18-meter tsunami demolished his soy sauce factories in 2011 and killed an employee, Kono despaired about the future of the company his family founded two centuries ago. Three years later, his plants are running again and sales have recovered to about 70 percent of what they were before a record earthquake hit Rikuzentakata in northern Japan. The source for the investment needed to rebuild? Crowdfunding cash, Kono says. Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg via Getty Images