My understanding is that many of the oldest companies have lasted so long because they were/are family operations. Countries where “son takes over the business” is the norm will have more older businesses.
Japan is one such country and also happens to have been around a long time too.
AFAIK, in the case of the German company Robert Bosch GmbH, the founder was pretty sure his family would not do a good work of keeping the company running (he didn't even trusted himself), so he devised a somewhat complicated mechanism, where the family receives some money, but has little power over the direction of the company. Some other companies followed after that.
Japan is one such country and also happens to have been around a long time too.