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The Great Earthquake of 1923, metropolitan banks in ruin, 1923–1926 On 1 September 1923, at 11.58 a.m., a severe earthquake of 7.9 on the Richter scale hit the Pacific coast of Japan at Tokyo Bay in the area known as the southern Kanto district. This was the Great Kanto Earthquake, the most serious natural disaster ever to fall on Japan. The number of people affected was 3.4 million, of whom more than a hundred thousand died out of a total Kanto population of 11.8 million. Deaths were particularly heavy in Tokyo and Yokohama, which accounted for 65 per cent and 32 per cent of the dead and for 82 per cent and 17 per cent of the missing respectively. The government later estimated the aggregate amount of assets destroyed to be ¥4,570 million, which was 38 per cent of the national income of 1923. More than a third of these were burnt to ashes in the Great Earthquake. The disastrous earthquake had major consequences for the Japanese banking system. On the day of the Great Earthquake, there were 542 bank offices in Tokyo comprised of 168 head offices and 374 branches, of which 285 offices, or 63 per cent, were burnt down. In Yokohama, where most of the banking offices in Kanagawa prefecture were concentrated, all forty-two offices, save for the Specie Bank head office, disappeared completely. In Tokyo, of the eighty-four member banks of the Tokyo Bank Association there survived only eight banks without serious damage including the head offices of the Hypotech Bank, Industrial Bank and Mitsubishi and the Tokyo branches of the Specie Bank, Bank of Taiwan and Sumitomo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Private banking: adaptable ryogae, 1875–1881 The 1876 revisions of the National Bank Decree allowed would-be bankers to use the title ‘bank’, but it was only Mitsui who could immediately take this opportunity to establish themselves as a western-style modern bank. As was seen, Mitsui had earlier in 1872 planned to set up their own bank but were persuaded to support the government scheme of bringing about the national bank system. In addition to this earlier willingness, there was another reason for Mitsui to make efforts to renew their proposal. When it was established, the First National Bank was accommodated in premises specially built by Mitsui for their own banking purposes. As has already been explained,1 Mitsui had unwillingly joined the house of Ono in launching the First National Bank. When at the end of 1874 the house of Ono collapsed, Mitsui considered its position. Mitsui wrote to Shibusawa, chief auditor of the First Bank, detailing fifteen complaints including their shareholdings, use of Mitsui premises as the First Bank offices and withdrawal of bank clerks who had been Mitsui employees. Shibusawa, who was intending to take over the management of the Bank, remained unmoved, rejecting most of the complaints and concluding: As far as the institution [First Bank] has been established carrying ‘the bank’ as its title, I think that the issue department [for the Ministry of Finance] would not ignore the fact that Mitsui Gumi have treated the Bank as their branch shop. As the situation might be considered to cause certain inconveniences, the Bank should, I think, be put in a position free from such shortcomings when the revisions of the National Bank Decree would be made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]