Germany's Mittelstand, the closest Western equivalent of the chuken kigyo, also boasts many smallish world-beaters.
The Mittelstand's reliance on loans from local banks has long been seen as a virtue.
ECONOMIST: The fabled Mittelstand is feeling the pinch more than most
However, many Mittelstand companies, especially those in family ownership, see outside strategic shareholders as a threat.
Many Mittelstand firms are oligopolists, argues Mr Schmiedeberg, occupying niches so narrow that they attract few rivals.
Mittelstand firms, which account for some 40% of all manufactured exports, seem especially vulnerable to the downturn.
ECONOMIST: The fabled Mittelstand is feeling the pinch more than most
Most Mittelstand companies sprang up in the absence of competition with capital provided by the Marshall Plan.
At least the leading British firms can, it seems, keep up with the best of the Mittelstand.
Yesterday, in Phoenix, I interviewed the CEO of a terrific American mittelstand, G.
To some companies, at the top end of the Mittelstand, Deutsche's corporate bankers can expect to sell fancy products.
Commerzbank, the fourth biggest, pledged recently to lend euro1.8 billion to Mittelstand companies.
It is further down the ladder that Germany's banking system is proving inadequate to satisfy the Mittelstand's thirst for credit.
Mittelstand managers suggest that sick pay should start at 80% of the full wage, and drop with a prolonged absence.
It is the heartland of Germany's export-driven Mittelstand enterprises and has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country.
This is particularly true of the Mittelstand, the small and not-so-small companies that are the backbone of the German economy.
Berthold Leibinger, the doyen of Trumpf, a classic Mittelstand firm based in Stuttgart, is another critic of restrictions that hamper entrepreneurship.
That leaves the Mittelstand, the mid-sized firms that are the backbone of Germany's export-driven economy, most exposed to a credit squeeze.
The banks deny this, but the sort of Mittelstand companies they deal with tend to be at the top end of the scale.
The heart of the German manufacturing economy moreover consists of the so-called mittelstand of medium-sized, family-controlled companies that are for the most part unlisted.
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Indeed, the Mittelstand's main preoccupation now seems to be getting good grades from its creditors, not displaying the business flair that made it famous.
Since 1993 direct investment by German companies outside their country has soared, as the Mittelstand have moved production to cheaper locations such as Eastern Europe.
Another great American mittelstand is Cirrus Design of Duluth, Minn.
The country's Mittelstand of small and medium-sized firms enjoys less flexibility.
In much the same way as the Mittelstand, Japan's chuken kigyo is not simply a part of the national economy, but the core of its industrial structure.
The famous Mittelstand (small and medium-sized firms, often family-owned) went through its operations, step by step, judging what to do in Germany, what to send abroad and what to outsource.
But smaller firms that make up the backbone of Germany's famous Mittelstand have also been packing up and moving abroad, especially into lower-cost and more flexible countries to Germany's east.
French economic pundits spend all day stroking themselves on the air about German Mittelstand family-owned businesses that see themselves as serving a legacy instead of kowtowing to the corporate raiding speculators.
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Yet another Mittelstand gripe is that Germany's high income-tax rates hurt the Mittelstand more than bigger firms because, being almost all family- or trust-owned, they tend to distribute profits in the form of higher pay.
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