JAPAN: Fall of the House of Mitsui

Old Sokubei Mitsui had a head as round, as bald and as bright as a full moon. “With remarkable moral fortitude,” says a chronicle, “he decided to abandon all rank and class and enter a commercial career.” Sokubei put it more bluntly. “The Mitsuis,” he said, “must get money.” Some time before 1650 he put away his two samurai swords and—like many a British aristocrat of the same period—became a brewer. Soon Mitsui sake was selling fast throughout Yedo’s thirsty red-light district.

The second Mitsui enterprise was a pawnshop. Later, a money-changing office grew into the great banking system which financed and controlled the Mitsui merchandising, manufacturing and shipping empire. In 1937 the private wealth of the eleven Mitsui family heads was estimated at 1,635,000,000 yen ($450 million).

They were not only the richest but also the most enlightened (that is, the least thug-like) of the zaibatsu. They lived quietly though sumptuously, and it was easier for a newsman to see the Prime Minister than one of them.

Yet their eyes never shifted from the main chance. Long before U.S. merchants went in for advertising stunts, Mitsui stores gave away paper umbrellas bearing the three-barred family crest and news of bargains. Their Tokyo store had a fuddy-duddy spaciousness, a time-ignoring air and an aura of genteel prosperity not unlike John Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia.

When Commodore Perry, with his men at battle stations, “opened” the ports of Japan, the Mitsui sent out staff artists to make minutely detailed sketches of the Perry ships. These sketches helped the family build modern ships of their own. It was the first sign of the Jap flair for imitation which later gave the Occident so much trouble.

In World War II the Mitsuis lost most of their shipping and much of their physical manufacturing plant. They could recoup that—but they could not recoup Allied victory. First, they dissolved their holding company. But that was only a superficial shedding. The real core of Mitsui power and solidarity was the family constitution; each male Mitsui, on coming of age, swore sacred Shinto oaths to uphold the Mitsui constitution and further the family interest.

Last week the Mitsuis voluntarily dissolved that core. They abolished the family constitution and started plans for liquidating the family holdings. The plans must have General MacArthur’s approval, but it seemed last week that he would approve them if they contained no tricky loopholes.

Many of the top Mitsuis, though not exactly starving, were already jobless. They had returned, full circle, to the aristocratic idleness of the time before old Sokubei, the brewer. The most sadness, however, was expressed by one of the Mitsui “clerks” (actually a top executive), a grey, frail little man named Tatsuo Sumi, who is said to be descended from a 17th Century Mitsui clerk or banto. Tatsuo talked like an aging English butler whose lord & lady had come on evil times. “I have given my life to Mitsui,” he said; “there is nothing more to do. . . . A glorious history has been wiped out.”