Business: Great Imperialist

The word “tycoon” originated in Japan. Last week a bona fide tycoon, Takashi Masuda, died in Japan.

When Commodore Perry’s “black ships” arrived in Japan in 1853, Takashi Masuda (pronounced ma’-su-da) was six years old, son of a mining official on the island of Sado. The family moved to Yedo before it was rechristened Tokyo, and at 13 Takashi Masuda went to work as office boy in the compound where the first U. S. Legation was located. Every day he walked ten miles to work, seized every opportunity to learn English and study the commercial ways of Americans. Goggle-eyed with admiration for all things American, he stole American food from the kitchen, and even strangled pigs, dogs and rats to get meat which he thought would make him civilized and powerful like the foreigners.

With the overthrow of the shogunate in 1867 and the restoration of power to the Imperial House, the 200-year-old banking house of Mitsui, which had backed the new Emperor Meiji, emerged as the most potent financial force in new Japan. Masuda, now an exporter of rice, tea and silk, joined forces with the Mitsui family in 1876 and launched Mitsui Bussan Kai-sha (Mitsui & Co., Ltd.), the trading firm which became the largest single unit of the vast Mitsui empire.

Mitsui mines were yielding gold, silver, zinc and coal; Mitsui factories were making silks and steel; Mitsui ships were carrying farm, mine and factory products to all parts of the world. Mitsui money helped the Japanese to victory in the wars with China (1894-95) and Russia (1904-05). The House of Mitsui became in fact the most potent Japanese commercial enterprise, and to Takashi Masuda, managing director of the “partnership company” that held the empire together, went much of the credit.

In 1913, when he was 66, Masuda retired and became elder statesman to the House of Mitsui. Five years later he was named Baron Masuda. He took to collecting paintings, sculpture and pottery, devoted himself to the cult of chanoyu (Japanese tea ceremony). A heavy eater and drinker in his younger days, he developed stomach trouble, had to watch his diet. He kept a cow and whatever his cow ate Masuda would eat, including grass. When a neighbor recommended globefish as a particular delicacy, he offered some to his cow (who loved eels and herring). The cow refused and so did Masuda.

A great imperialist, Takashi Masuda saw the imperialism he had fostered grow to ungovernable dimensions. After a lifetime in international trade he began to fear Japanese isolation. He experimented endlessly with cheap native foods in an effort to make his country agriculturally self-sufficient, wrote pamphlets to show farmers how to reduce their costs, enthused over a charcoal-burning automobile which he thought would make Japan independent of foreign fuel.

He never lost his admiration for things American, or his pride in the language he had learned as a boy. He corresponded with American friends in English, taught English to his household servants, sent two Japanese girls to the Chicago World’s Fair to introduce tea ice cream to America. Last year when an American friend toasted his 92nd birthday (Japanese are one year old at birth) he said he expected to live to be 125. But he had previously transferred his title to his son, Taro, and was ready for death. Last week it came to Tycoon Takashi Masuda.