Yoshisuke Aikawa was a Japanese entrepreneur, businessman, and politician, noteworthy as the founder and first president of the Nissan zaibatsu, one of Japan's most powerful business conglomerates around the time of the Second World War.
14 Facts About Yoshisuke Aikawa
2.
Yoshisuke Aikawa's mother was the niece of Meiji period genro Inoue Kaoru.
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Yoshisuke Aikawa graduated from the engineering department of Tokyo Imperial University in 1903 and went to work for Shibaura Seisakusho, the forerunner of Toshiba.
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In 1928, Yoshisuke Aikawa became president of the Kuhara Mining Company taking over from his brother-in-law Fusanosuke Kuhara and created a holding company called Nihon Sangyo, or Nissan for short.
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Yoshisuke Aikawa moved the headquarters of Nissan to Manchukuo, where it became the core of the Manchurian Industrial Development Company, a new Manchukuo zaibatsu.
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However, Yoshisuke Aikawa differed from Hoshino's original conception in that he favored a more monopolistic approach.
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Yoshisuke Aikawa argued that the economic state of Manchukuo was still too primitive to permit free market capitalism.
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Yoshisuke Aikawa received bank loans from American steel industrialists to support the Manchukuo economy, which created considerable controversy in the United States with its policy of Non-recognition.
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Yoshisuke Aikawa was a strong opponent of the Tripartite Pact, and predicted that the forces of the United Kingdom and France would eventually prevail over Nazi Germany should a general war break out.
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Yoshisuke Aikawa supported the Fugu Plan, a project to settle Jewish refugees in Manchukuo.
11.
In 1942, at the instigation of the Kwantung Army, Yoshisuke Aikawa resigned chairman of the Manchurian Industrial Development Company, and moved back to Japan.
12.
Yoshisuke Aikawa was freed before his case came to trial during this time, the Nissan zaibatsu was dissolved.
13.
Yoshisuke Aikawa served as president of Teikoku Oil Company and of the Japan Petroleum Exploration Company, and in 1953, was elected to a seat in the House of Councilors of the Diet of Japan.
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Yoshisuke Aikawa's grave is at the Tama Cemetery outside Tokyo.