Kawasaki Shozo

Kawasaki Shozo

Baron ( Danshaku ) Kawasaki Shōzō ( Japanese 川 崎 正 蔵 ; * August 10, 1837 ( traditionally Tempō 7/7/10) in the province of Satsuma (today: Kagoshima Prefecture ); † December 2, 1912 ) was a Japanese industrialist and shipbuilder . He is the founder of Kawasaki Jūkōgyō (English Kawasaki Heavy Industries ).

Life

Kawasaki Shōzō was born in Kagoshima to a kimono dealer and, at the age of 17, became a businessman in Nagasaki , the only place in Japan that was open to the West. He started a shipping company in Osaka at the age of 27, which perished when his cargo ship went down in a storm. In 1869 he took part in a company that traded sugar from the Ryūkyū Islands , founded by a samurai from Kagoshima Prefecture , and which in 1893, at the request of the Japanese Ministry of Finance, explored routes for the Ryukyu sugar and shipping lines to Ryukyu. In 1894 he was appointed executive vice president of Japan Mail Steam-Powered Shipping Company ( Nippon Yūsen ) and had success opening a sea line to the Ryukyus and transporting sugar to mainland Japan.

After experiencing many marine casualties, Kawasaki trusted western ships more because they were more spacious, stable and faster than typical Japanese ships. At the same time he was very interested in the modern shipbuilding industry. In April 1878, with the help of Matsukata Masayoshi, the deputy finance minister, who was from the same province as Kawasaki, he founded the Kawasaki-Tsukiji shipyard on leased land from the government on Sumidagawa in Tsukiji Minami-Iizaka-cho, currently Tsukiji 7-chome , Chuo , Tokyo . That was a big step forward as a shipbuilder. In 1881 he founded the Kawasaki Hyogo shipyard in Hyogo Prefecture .

For the first Reichstag in 1890, Kawasaki was elected to the manor house as the representative of the highest taxpayers in Hyogo Prefecture .

The Kawasaki Jūkōgyō company traces its origins back to 1878. 18 years later it was renamed the Kawasaki Shipyard Company in 1896.

Some sources state that Kawasaki is said to have built the first Japanese locomotive in 1901 (or 1911). However, the exact evidence for this is missing. Possibly it was a replica of a European model.

Web links

• Kawasaki's founder (Engl.)
• Kawasaki History Summary, World History Study Guide (English).
• Kawasaki story

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 川 崎 造船 所 時代 1906 年 （明治 39 年） ～ 1927 年 （昭和 2 年） 川 崎 正 蔵. In: khi.co.jp . Archived from the original on June 7, 2009 ; Retrieved August 28, 2019 (Japanese). 
2. ^ Vulcan News. (pdf, 4.6 MB) (No longer available online.) April 2019, p. 6 , formerly in the original ; accessed on August 28, 2019 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus, Kawasaki is the family name, Shōzō the first name.