Everything about Yoshisuke Aikawa totally explained
was a
Japanese
entrepreneur, businessman, and politician, noteworthy as the founder and first president of the Nissan
zaibatsu between
1931 and
1945.
Biography
Aikawa was born in what is now part of
Yamaguchi city,
Yamaguchi prefecture. His mother was the niece of
Meiji period genrō Inoue Kaoru. He graduated from the engineering department of
Tokyo Imperial University in 1903 and went to work for Shibaura Seisakusho, the forerunner of
Toshiba.
Although his pay was very low, he managed to save enough to make a trip to the
United States, where he studied malleable
cast iron technology. After his return to Japan, with the backing of Inoue Kaoru and other ex-
Chōshū politicians in the
Diet of Japan, he established the Tobata Foundry in
Kyūshū in 1909. The company is now known as Hitachi Kinzoku (Hitachi Metals Company Ltd).
In 1928, he became president of the Kuhara Mining Company (present day Nippon Mining & Metals Company) taking over from his brother in law
Fusanosuke Kuhara and created a
holding company called Nihon Sangyo, or
Nissan for short. Kuhara went on to a career in politics, forging ties with future
Prime Minister Giichi Tanaka and other political and military leaders, which Aikawa would later use to his advantage.
In the
stock market boom following the 1931
Manchurian Incident, Aikawa used the opportunity to buy majority shareholdings in 132 subsidiary companies of Nissan to create a new
zaibatsu, the
Nissan Konzerne. The companies included
Nissan Motors,
Isuzu,
NEC Corporation,
Nippon Mining Holdings Company, Nissan Chemicals,
Hitachi, Nichiyu Corporation, Nichirei Corporation,
Nissan Marine Insurance,
Nissan Mutual Life Insurance and others. The group included some of the most technologucally advanced companies in Japan at the time.
In 1937, at the invitation of his relative
Nobusuke Kishi, he moved to
Manchukuo and agreed with the Japanese
Kwantung Army's vision of a
syndicalist economy and centralized industrial development plan for Manchukuo. He also moved the headquarters of Nissan to Manchukuo, whereit became the core of the
Manchurian Industrial Development Company, a new Manchukuo
zaibatsu, partly owned by Nissan and the Manchukuo government.
In his position as president and chairman Aikawa guided all industrial efforts in Manchukuo, implementing two five-year plans during the 1930s, following some the previous economical and industrial lines envisioned Army ideologist
Naoki Hoshino. However, Aikawa differed from Noshino's original conception in that he favored a more
monopolistic approach, arguing that the economic state of Manchukuo was still too primitive to permit free market
capitalism. Aikawa also received bank loans from American steel industrialists to support the Manchukuo economy, which created considerable controversy in the
United States with its policy of
Non-recognition.
However, while his economic views were in line with
Imperial Japanese Army policy, his political views were not. Aikawa was a strong opponent of the
Tripartite Alliance, and predicted that the forces of the
United Kingdom and
France would eventually prevail over
Nazi Germany should a general war break out. He supported the
Fugu Plan, a project to settle
Jewish refugees in Manchukuo. In 1942, at the instigation of the Kwantung Army, Aikawa resigned chairman of the Manchurian Industrial Development Company, and moved back to Japan.
After the
surrender of Japan, Aikawa was arrested by the
American occupation authorities and incarcerated in
Sugamo Prison for 20 months as a Class A war crimes suspect. He was freed before his case came to trial, however, during this time, the Nissan
zaibatsu was dissolved.
After his release, Aikawa played a key role in post-war economic reconstruction of Japan, and purchased a
commercial bank to organize loans to small companies. He served as president of Teikoku Oil Company and of the Japan Petroleum Exploration Company, and in 1953, was elected to a seat in the
House of Councilors of the Diet of Japan. With the help of
Nobusuke Kishi, then prime minister, he achieved his goal in implementing economic-control law and policies as leader of the
Chuseiren, a pressure group that became the main federation of small and medium sized companies in the 1960s.
Aikawa died of
acute gall bladder inflamation in 1967. His grave is at the Tama Cemetery outside Tokyo.
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