著者

三島 康雄

出版者

経営史学会

雑誌

経営史学 (ISSN:03869113)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.12, no.3, pp.1-21,i, 1978-06-30 (Released:2010-11-18)

---

S. Kawasaki, a famous ship-builder in Meiji era, founded the Tsukiji Shipyard (Tokyo) in 1827, for which he borrowed 30 thousands yen from the Ministry of finance. Masayoshi Matsukata, a chief officer in the Ministry of Finance, appointed Kawasaki to the privileged dealer of the sugar collected from Ryukyu Islands as tax. He could amass a great amount of commission in this sugar business and poured it to fill the deficit of his Tokyo and Kobe shipyards. He also managed to operate his business diversified into shipping, ships fittings, cotton spinning, machine-works and trading.Kawasaki bought the government shipyard in Kobe, and founded the Kawasaki Shipyard in 1887. But he suffered from heavy illness and retired from the presidency in 1896 when his company was reorganized into joint-stock company. After the retirement, Kawasaki bought a good deal of stocks of other companies, founded Kobe Kawasaki Bank in 1905, and also bought rice fields in Korea and forests in Miyazaki Pref., becoming a great land-owner around 1910. When he died in 1912, he thus left his private properties of about 5 millions yen, on the basis of which Kawasaki Sohonten (a stock-holding company) was founded in 1920, and the Kawasaki could developed as a modern zaibatsu fairly diversified into shipbuilding, shipping and aircraft manufacturing.