Background
Zenjirō Yasuda was born on 25 November 1838 in the province of Etchu in present-day Toyama Prefecture.
安田 善次郎
Zenjirō Yasuda was born on 25 November 1838 in the province of Etchu in present-day Toyama Prefecture.
As a young man he made his way to Edo where, after serving as an apprentice, in 1864 he set up a money exchange shop at Nihonbashi. In the period immediately after the Meiji Restoration, when the currency situation was in considerable confusion, he made huge profits by cornering the paper money issued by the government and similar activities.
He founded and managed a number of banks, beginning with the Third National Bank in 1876, and in 1880 set up the Yasuda Bank, the forerunner of the present Fuji Bank. He gradually merged a number of local banks and in the course of his lifetime built up a zaibatsu, or business empire, that was strongly family oriented and centered mainly on finance. In 1912 he set up the Yasuda Hozensha, a company that grew out of a property management system, thus giving final shape to his zaibatsu activities. He was also a founding member of the Bank of Japan and later a director.
In the political field, he was elected a member of the first Tokyo Prefectural Council in 1879 and a member of the Tokyo City Council in 1889.
He was killed at his country home in Oiso by a right-wing thug named Asahi Heigo.