The founding of the Hyōgo Shōsha, the first joint-stock company in Japan

How the Hyōgo Shōsha came to be founded was given at the head of this chapter. Here we look a little more closely at the contents of the proposal, the frame of the organization, and the shock it gave those around it.

Oguri proposed the founding of the Hyōgo Shōsha in the fourth month of 1867, the same month in which Sakamoto Ryōma organized the Kaientai. The proposal was titled “A memorandum on the opening of the port of Hyōgo, on the founding of a trading company, and on the prospect for the funds required”.

Oguri opens by describing the state of the open ports. While merchants grasp each at his own profit alone, and men of thin capital compete against one another in trade, the rights will be taken by foreigners whose capital is thick. As with the merchants of Yokohama, a bare thousand in gain today is followed tomorrow by a loss of ten thousand ryō, and this because the merchants form no association and each trades as he pleases. He goes on as follows.

This may appear to be no more than the loss of individual merchants … but it becomes the loss of our country; in the end the rights of the whole nation are lost, we are held in contempt by the foreign merchants, and we give the merchants of the West their ground for making money in the East. It is truly a matter for lamentation.

That he grieves not over the shogunate's gain or loss but over “the loss of our country” shows Oguri's position well. The means he named against it was the founding of a company on large capital. He uses the word “konpenī” — company — here. Sakamoto Fujiyoshi notes that this is probably the first appearance of the word in a Japanese official document. Mutsu Munemitsu of the Kaientai used the same word a little later.

The proposal also included a suggestion that the company's profits be used to set up gas lamps and to open a shoshinkan, a post office. Shibusawa Eiichi's Tokugawa Yoshinobu Kō Den records that Oguri proposed the laying of a railway as well, but the proposal itself says nothing of a railway.

The concrete steps for founding it were these. Some twenty townsmen of Osaka of good standing were to be chosen and appointed heads of the trading merchants of the open port of Hyōgo. Those twenty were to form an association and trade, and whoever wished might join it. Merchants whose business is profit would hardly comply at the mere order of a commission — seeing that, Oguri sought to make the arrangement profitable to the merchants themselves by allowing them to issue a million ryō in gold notes.

Oguri held that this note issue should be changed over to a government issue in three years' time. The idea that money will not be gathered unless the merchants are given a profit is shared with the thinking of Mitsuoka Hachirō (Yuri Kimimasa), who later held the finances on the imperial side.

The shogunate acted on the proposal, and on the fifth day of the sixth month of 1867 twenty wealthy merchants of Osaka were gathered at an inn in Kyoto and the Hyōgo Shōsha was founded with them as its officers. Among the names were Yamanaka Zen'emon of Kōnoikeya; Hirooka Kyūemon and Nagata Sakubei of Kajimaya; Tonomura Heiemon and Ishizaki Kihei of Komeya; Shirayama Hikogorō of Sumiya; Wada Kyūzaemon of Tatsumiya; Takagi Gohei of Hiranoya; and Hirase Kamenosuke of Chigusaya.

The wealthy merchants of Osaka had no experience of foreign trade, however, and no wish to take part willingly. So on the fourteenth day of the sixth month they were called together again, and Kanō Jirōsaku, speaking for Oguri, set out the need for the company. The frame shown in his address was as follows.

Anyone might invest whatever his rank, dividends followed the sum invested, and the money could be taken back if needed — this is close to the basis of a joint-stock company today. Sakamoto Fujiyoshi places the Hyōgo Shōsha as the first joint-stock company in Japan.

The body of officers was strengthened afterwards. Eight stewards were added on the twelfth day of the seventh month; on the sixth day of the ninth month Ōmayu Gohei of Tennōjiya became an assistant head, and six men including Kōnoikeya Shinjūrō, Tennōjiya Chūbei and Sumitomo Kichizaemon became assistant stewards; and in the tenth month Kitakaze Sōemon of Hyōgo joined as a promoter. The hard case was Mitsui. Oguri urged Mitsui Hachirōemon to take the headship, but he hesitated on the ground that he was serving in many commissions, the “office for the exchange of the Edo–Yokohama gold notes” among them; pressed hard, he took the post in the eighth month, but resigned it afterwards.

The company's office was called the Shōsha Kaisho and was placed at Nakanoshima in Osaka. The officers attended there, but many sent a clerk in their stead, and they served in monthly turns. After the port of Hyōgo opened, the Hyōgo customs house served as an office of the company as well.

That the shogunate's side had set up so thorough a company organization at Osaka gave a great shock to the Satsuma domain and the Kaientai. That the Kaientai Nisshi, which records only matters of particular importance, writes the Hyōgo Shōsha up at length shows how great the surprise was.

Godai Tomoatsu and others of Satsuma tried to answer it by founding a “Satsuma company”, something close to the “company of the daimyo in common” that Godai had had in mind for some time. Saigō Takamori went further and egged the British minister Parkes on, saying that the Hyōgo Shōsha would cost Britain its profit from trade; and there was a scene in which Parkes, taking this up, shouted down a senior councillor in the most high-handed manner and opposed the Hyōgo Shōsha. Neither the reorganizing of the Kaientai nor the plan for a Satsuma company went forward, while the Hyōgo Shōsha advanced steadily.

Just as the Hyōgo Shōsha was about to begin work in earnest, the political situation changed altogether: the shogun Yoshinobu returned power to the emperor. The plan itself did not disappear, though. In the hands of Minomura Rizaemon and Shibusawa Eiichi, a “Tokyo foreign-trade company” was founded in the second month of 1869 with Mitsui Hachirōemon as “general head”, and was reorganized into the “Tokyo exchange company” in the fifth month of the same year and the “Tokyo trading company” in the seventh. The foreign-trade company's officers were general head, head, promoter and steward, the other investors made up the body of members, and the officers served in monthly turns — the Hyōgo Shōsha exactly as it was. Read its statement of purpose beside the opening of the Hyōgo Shōsha proposal and the same spirit can be seen carried on.

That the shogunate and the great domains alike were looking to promote commerce through company organization at nearly the same time shows well that the shogunate's last years were themselves a turning point. → Set beside Sakamoto Ryōma's Kaientai　／　Minomura Rizaemon

(Source: Sakamoto Fujiyoshi, “Hyōgo Shōsha” o Tsukutta Saigo no Bakushin: Oguri Kōzukenosuke no Shōgai (the last shogunal official, the man who created the Hyōgo Shōsha: the life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke), Kōdansha, 1987)