Suzuki Masaya (鈴木馬左也)
Masaya SUZUKI (April 3, 1861 - December 25, 1922) was the third general director of Sumitomo Group.
He was born as the fourth son of Karo (chief retainer) of the Takanabe clan, Taneyo Akizuki and his wife Hisako in Takanabe, Hyuga Province (present Takanabe-cho, Koyu County, Miyazaki Prefecture). In 1868, his maternal grand-uncle Takafusa SUZUKI died at the age of 75, and Takafusa's adopted son Morifusa also died in the battle of the Boshin War at the age of 27. In 1869, Masaya was registered as an adopted child of the war-dead Morifusa to rebuild the Suzuki family and inherit the family headship. In 1876, he finished Miyazaki Junior High School under the old system of education and enrolled to Keimei School in Kanazawa. However, he withdrew from Keimei School the next year and in 1878 entered the preparatory school of Tokyo Imperial University. In 1887 he graduated from Tokyo University at the age of 27 and joined the Ministry of Home Affairs, and in 1889 he was transferred to Ehime Prefecture as secretary. The next year he was invited to the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Besshi Copper Mine held in Niihama as a guest, which became his first encounter with the House of Sumitomo. In 1896, he resigned as counselor of the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce (Japan) to enter a company of the House of Sumitomo, and became assistant manager of the head office of Osaka. In 1899, he became manager of Besshi Kogyo-sho (Sumitomo Copper Plant of Besshi). He took over the project of planting a forest of Besshi originally launched by Teigo IBA, and in 1917 started afforestation business from Kitami in Hokkaido down to Shiiba Village of Miyazaki Prefecture in Kyushu, and further extended afforestation business to the national forest in Korea. In 1913, Suzuki founded Sumitomo Hiryo Seizo-sho (Sumitomo Fertilizer Factory, current Sumitomo Chemical) as a measure to control Niihama's smoke pollution. Before that year, Suzuki was already appointed as the third general director in 1904. In 1911, he founded Sumitomo Densen Seizo-sho (Sumitomo Electric Wire and Cable Works, current Sumitomo Electric Industries). In 1912, he started the production of seamless steel pipes in Sumitomo Shindo-jo (Sumitomo Copper Plant, current Sumitomo Metals and Sumitomo Light Metal Industries) to meet the demand of the navy's condensation pipes. In 1913 he founded Sumitomo Hiryo Seizo-sho (current Sumitomo Chemical), and in 1919 built Osaka Hokko (the North Port of Osaka, the predecessor of Sumitomo Land and Construction) for the coastal industrial areas of Osaka. In that year, he also founded Tosa Yoshino-gawa Suiryoku Denki (Tosa Yoshino-gawa River Hydroelectric Power Plant, the predecessor of Sumitomo Joint Electric Power) for the development of the power supply in Besshi copper mine, and acquired the water right of Mimi-kawa River for the afforestation project in Shiiba, Miyazaki Prefecture. Those businesses became indirect causes of the foundations of current Shikoku Electric Power and of Kyushu Electric Power. In 1918, Suzuki founded Nichibei Ita-garasu (Japan America Sheet Glass, current Nippon Sheet Glass), and since 1920 he had had a stake in NEC Corporation. As in 1921 he reorganized the head office of Sumitomo into a joint-stock company, he significantly contributed to the development of the Sumitomo Group.
Satsuo Akizuki was Suzuki's brother.
Declaration of Prohibition on Establishing Trading Company
Sumitomo Group had no independent trading sector before the World War. The outbreak of the World War I brought an unusual economic boom. After the cease-fire agreement was concluded in November 1918, roaring export of Japan enabled trading companies to earn large profits. This situation led to the continuous spout of companies and their getting into trading business. Suzuki went abroad to inspect the postwar situation of Europe and America in March, 1919. During his absence, in the head office of Sumitomo, some executives began to insist that Sumitomo should start a trading business to keep up with the times, partly because they felt overwhelmed by the prosperities of the other conglomerates including the Mitsui-zaibatsu and the Mitsubishi-zaibatsu.
The executives waited the general director's return even preparing a draft of a framework for establishing a trading company titled 'Issue of Handling Other Company's Products.'
Suzuki completed his visit to Europe and America, and dropped by Shanghai City in January, 1920. At that time, the manager of Sumitomo Shanghai Yoko (branch) strongly insisted the necessity of the establishment of trading company, and told him the consensus of the head office. However, Suzuki did not agree with that suggestion. Furthermore, he summoned the persons concerned as soon as he returned to Japan, and gave them a strict order of prohibition on establishing trading company, and declared at a supervisors' conference that Sumitomo must not begin any trading business. That was the 'Declaration of Prohibition on Establishing Trading Company' of January, 1920, and since then nobody had said about establishment of trading company as taboo until a actual trading company of Sumitomo was opened after the World War II. Unlike Mitsui and Mitsubishi which had developed from trading, Sumitomo had developed from industries, mainly Besshi copper mine, and had been biased against trading company. Therefore, among Sumitomo, establishing trading company had been under taboo for almost a quarter of the century until Nippon Kensetsu Sangyo (current Sumitomo Corporation) was finally founded in 1945.