大正期における寺田財閥の成長と限界

Abstract

This article describes the rise and fall of what might be termed a local zaibatsu which was founded by Terada Jinyomo (1853-1931). During the Tokugawa era, the Terada family manufactured sake just south of Osaka in the Kishiwada district of Senshu, where cotton spinning had long been practical as a subsidiary industry in agricultural households.During the Meiji period, Terada Jinyomo invested profits from sake manufacture in many new industries, such as spinning, banking, and railroad construction. In 1894, he established Kishiwada Cotton Spinning Co. Ltd., which was to become the most successful of his new ventures, especially in the rapidly expanding China market.Terada Jinyomo was born into a large family. He had six brothers and a sister, but all but one of these brothers, Motokichi, were step brothers born after Jinyomo's mother remarried following the death of the first husband. Significantly, Jinyomo excluded not only his step-brothers and their families but also his very talented and fullblooded brother, Motokichi, from the Terada Holding Company established in December 1920 after the spinning company had reaped unprecedented profits during world war One. Jinyomo allowed only members of his own nuclear family, that is himself, his wife, and their children, to become stockholders in the newly founded holding company. His brother, Motokichi, followed his lead by setting up his own holding company, the Sano Cotton Spinning Company, with his own nuclear family members as stockholders in the same month and year.Jinyomo's decision to separate himself from his more distant relatives and to not rely on lineage ties proved to be a fatal errors because although he had bought property in Shanghai in 1923 in the hope of establishing there, this plan was never realized. At home, he failed to make the switch to manufacturing newer products like rayon.Perhaps Jinyomo was more narrow-minded and conservative than he himself believed or understood.