Makers of Japan

by J. Morris

It was in May 1900 that a peerage was conferred on Baron Shibusawa, and it was the first instance in which such a mark of imperial favour had ever been extended to a business man in Japan, the rank being in his case accorded in recognition of his past services to the State. It was on his initiative, supported by Marquis Ito and Count Okuma, that the Tokio Chamber of Commerce was founded in 1878, with himself as its president, an honour which he still enjoys. He has played a distinguished part in connection with the municipal affairs of Tokio, and was mainly instrumental in establishing an Asylum for the Poor. When at a later date the Tokio municipality abolished this useful institution, he took upon himself the work of raising a fund for an asylum to exist purely as a private establishment, and to be maintained wholly independently of official aid. In the end it was taken over by the municipality, with Baron Shibusawa as its president, and he continues to be the head of the institution, which is the largest and best equipped of its kind in the land.

Before he quitted the Government service in 1873 he had taken the first steps to establish a mail steamship service to China and Korea, and around the Japanese coasts. The Company formed to undertake this work was afterwards amalgamated with the Mitsu-Bishi (Three diamonds) Shipping Company, and subsequently, when another concern was started and a fierce competition arose for the coastwise trade, Baron Shibusawa induced the opponents to make terms with each other and unite in one Company which is now among the great Shipping Organisations of the world, and known as the Nippon Yusen Kaisha, or Japan Mailboat Company. He is still one of its directors, and has helped, moreover, very materially to establish a trans-Pacific line,—the Toyo Kisen Kaisha,—which runs mail steamers from Yokohama to Hong Kong and San Francisco.

In the cotton-spinning industry he is prominent, having founded the Osaka and Miye Spinning Mills, and he has either promoted or started numerous undertakings for the supply of gas or electric light, for silk or cotton weaving, hemp and rope manufacturing, brickworks, cement factories, sugar refining, and many other enterprises for the utilisation of the knowledge which modern science has conferred on his fellow-countrymen. He is deeply concerned with railway extension, not only in Japan but in Korea, he is interested in harbour construction, and reclamation works, in farming, the breeding of horses and cattle, the manufacture of artificial manures, hat-making, and a variety of other ventures that need not be particularised. Altogether, including several banks other than the Bank of Japan of which he is president—e.g. the Yokohama Specie Bank, the Industrial Bank, and the Japan Credit Mobilier—the Baron is connected with upwards of thirty companies in the capacity of either president or director. He founded the Tokio Clearing-House, the Commercial Agency, and other business institutions, and in Korea he has from the outset taken a leading part, the construction of the railway from Fusan to the Capital, and between Seoul and Chemulpo, having been due principally to his efforts. When the railway development of Southern Manchuria is seriously undertaken this line from Fusan to Seoul, and thence to Wiju, is destined to form a link in the long chain of railway communication which will stretch from London to Tokio, with short breaks at the Straits of Dover and the Straits of Korea which divide Fusan from Shimonoseki in South-west Japan. There are incomplete links, notably between the Yalu river and Liao-Yang, but a military line exists, which needs only to be strengthened, so the permanent establishment of that section should present correspondingly fewer difficulties. Ultimately it is to be expected that England will be brought within a fortnight by rail of Japan.

Baron Shibusawa was nominated by the Emperor as a member of the newly formed House of Peers in 1890, when the Imperial Diet was first opened, but he resigned that post a year later, and afterwards occupied the chair of the Higher Council of Agriculture, Commerce, and Industry, and he has served on many commissions appointed by the Sovereign to make investigations on various subjects of importance to the nation.

In the domain of philanthropy Baron Shibusawa’s exertions have tended materially to the establishment and support of schools, orphanages, reformatories, hospitals, and kindred benevolent institutions designed to confer public benefit, on the directorates of which his name is frequently to be found, for he has ever been an active worker in the cause of charity.

In 1902 he again visited England, and was entertained by the London Chamber of Commerce, his speech on that occasion containing the happiest allusions to the growth of commercial relations between Japan and Great Britain. He was able to point with satisfaction to the existence in his own country of no fewer than 2534 banks possessing an aggregate paid-up capital of £35,000,000 sterling. After the Chino-Japan war the number of joint-stock companies rose, as he explained, with phenomenal rapidity, for in 1900 the total number was not less than 6176, and their paid-up Capital amounted to 440,476,000 yen, or over £44,000,000 sterling. The volume of the export and import trade, as he was able to assure his audience, had risen from 50,000,000 yen in 1877 to 138,330,000 in 1890, and 506,160,000 in 1901. Though Japan has since been at war with Russia the volume of her trade for the year 1905 will in all probability show a very appreciable increase over any intervening year, and with the immense commercial activity which she has developed subsequent to the conclusion of peace the figures for the fiscal year ending with March 1907 must inevitably exhibit a degree of progress and an expansion of international trade in which her people may justifiably take the utmost pride.

Speaking as a business man to men of business, Baron Shibusawa proceeded to refer in his speech to the then recently concluded Anglo-Japanese Agreement of 30th January 1902. His remarks may be said to apply with equal force to the extended form of that Agreement entered into on the 12th of August 1905.

“It is true,” he said, “our manners and customs are so different from yours that it would be impossible to make them common to both nations; but, as judging from past experience we are getting ever nearer to and assimilating with each other, and especially as there is no racial or national distinction in economic affairs, I firmly believe that the future development of commerce and industry in our country must be cosmopolitan in its character, that is to say, we should freely invite the co-operation of knowledge, experience, and capital from the most advanced nations of the West, not only for the further development of industry and commerce in Japan, but also for the opening up of the great natural resources of China and Korea. Our country is geographically so near to these countries and has so much of literature and art in common with them that we can understand the manners and desires of their people much better than you do, and your country has the advantage of being rich in capital as well as in the knowledge and experience of modern scientific appliances. There is no reason, it seems to me, why we should not co-operate in the Far East to our mutual advantage, since we have so many interests in common, and especially now that we are so closely knit together by the Anglo-Japanese Agreement of Alliance.

“Just as I was planning to leave Japan on my present tour, the United Chambers of Commerce were holding their General Meeting in Tokio, and they passed a resolution requesting me to convey their unanimous desire to bring the business world of Japan into closer relation with that of Europe and America, and to reach a better understanding of the real business conditions of each other’s countries. Vague as such a resolution must sound, its ultimate aim can be no other than what I have stated,—the co-operation of Japanese and foreign capitalists for the industrial and commercial development of the Far East,—and I trust that if there be anything in our business methods and customs which will obstruct the realisation of this happy union, our people will not spare their utmost efforts to remove it. I sincerely hope that not only will your Chamber take note of this desire on the part of the Japanese business world, but that it will kindly help to convey this desire to all other Chambers of Commerce in your country as well as to the business world at large. It is more than thirty years since I first visited your land, as a petty government official, but I now am here as a business man, and I cannot but admire the wonderful development of industry and commerce which is here exhibited. May the Anglo-Japanese Alliance be the means of realising the richest results in the pacific expansion of commerce and industry in the Far East, and may it thus be a source of inestimable blessing to the nations of the world!”