MITSUI BUSSAN'S OVERSEAS BRANCHES AND STAFF DURING ITS INCEPTION PERIOD

From its inception period, Mitsui Bussan (MB) actively recruited graduates of Shoho Koshujo (a business school, Hitotsubashi University) and other schools, and the posts of chiefs at overseas MB branches were occupied by the graduates around the 1890s. In fact, MB had already established branches in Shanghai, Hong-Kong, Paris, New York, London, Lyon, and Milan between 1877 and 1880. This paper aims to clarify who had taken charge of each branch and what career they had had before those posts were occupied by the graduates of such higher educational institutions as Shoho Koshujo.MB established the above seven offices mainly at the request of the Japanese government, which encouraged trade through Japanese trading merchants rather than through foreign trading houses. While the higher educational system was being established in Japan, MB struggled due to the shortage of Japanese staff who were able to cope with work in overseas offices. MB, however, did not entrust its overseas work to local merchants at its overseas branches. Instead, MB sought out capable Japanese nationals who had gone abroad to study, worked as overseas consular officials, or worked at international exhibitions as civil servants or private citizens. MB dispatched them to overseas branches as chief, and the graduates of the higher schools worked under them. Until those graduates were trained and promoted as branch chief, the staff recruited overseas played a temporary, yet important role in establishing the MB's overseas offices.