Mitsubishi Corporation

is Japan's largest trading company (sogo shosha) and a member of the Mitsubishi keiretsu. As of 2022, Mitsubishi Corporation employs over 80,000 people and has ten business segments, including energy, industrial finance, banking, machinery, chemicals, and food. History The company traces its roots to the Mitsubishi conglomerate founded by Yataro Iwasaki. Iwasaki was originally employed by the Tosa clan of modern-day Kōchi Prefecture, who posted him to Nagasaki in the 1860s. During this time, Iwasaki became close to Sakamoto Ryōma, a major figure in the Meiji Restoration that ended the Tokugawa shogunate and restored the nominal primacy of the emperor of Japan in 1867. Iwasaki was placed in charge of the Tosa clan's trading operation, Tsukumo Shokai, based in Osaka. This company changed its name in the following years to Mitsukawa Shokai and then to Mitsubishi Shokai. Around 1871, the company was renamed Mitsubishi Steamship Company and began a mail service between Yokohama and Shanghai with government sponsorship. Under Iwasaki's leadership in the late 1800s, Mitsubishi diversified its business into insurance (Tokio Marine Insurance Company and Meiji Life Insurance Company), mining (Takashima Coal Mine) and shipbuilding. Following his death in 1885, his successor Yanosuke Iwasaki merged the shipping operation with a rival enterprise to form the Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) and refocused Mitsubishi's business on coal and copper mining. In 1918, the group's international trading business was spun off to form Mitsubishi Shoji Kaisha. Mitsubishi Goshi Kaisha served as the parent company of the group through World War II, during which group company Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (launched in 1934) produced ships, aircraft and heavy machinery for the war effort. After the war, the administration of Douglas MacArthur called for the dissolution of the "zaibatsu" corporations that dominated the Japanese economy. Mitsubishi was the only major zaibatsu to initially refuse this request, at the orders of the president Koyata Iwasaki, who shortly thereafter fell seriously ill. Mitsubishi eventually dissolved in 1947, and under restrictive rules imposed by the occupation authorities, the employees of the Mitsubishi Shoji trading arm rebranded into 100 separate companies. Beginning in 1950, the restrictions on re-consolidation of the zaibatsu were eased, and by 1952 most of the former Mitsubishi Shoji had coalesced into three companies.