| Mitsui | |
|---|---|
| Family name | |
| Pronunciation | Mitsui |
| Meaning | three wells |
| Region of origin | Japanese |
| Footnotes: [1] | |
The Mitsui family (三井家 Mitsuike, literally, Three wells, as depicted in their present trademark logo) is one of the most powerful families of merchants and industrialists in Japan.
The Mitsui enterprise made its debut in 1673 when Mitsui Takatoshi (1622–1694), son of a sake brewer, established Echigo-ya, a dry goods department store in both Edo and Kyoto. Meeting with great success, Takatoshi extended his services to moneylending and exchange. In 1691 the Mitsuis were officially chartered as merchants of the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled during that time. Three years later the family members set up their first constitution, which included details about the amount of property due to each branch as well as the duties of the family council, a periodical assembly that controlled business and other personal matters.
In the late Edo period, the Mitsuis were the richest and most eminent family in Japan, their business being thoroughly encouraged by the government of the time. After the Meiji Restoration, the family switched allegiance to the Meiji government.
In 1909, a Mitsui controlled holding company took over the business, with Mitsui thus becoming a zaibatsu of more than 150 companies operating financial, industrial and commercial industries.
During World War II several of the Mitsui group companies, including Mitsui-Miike mining, used Allied prisoners of war as slave labor, during which the prisoners were subjected to brutal treatment and torture. One of the surviving prisoners, United States citizen Lester Tenney, unsuccessfully sued Mitsui in 1999 for punitive damages and compensation.[2]
By the end of the Second World War the Mitsui group included more than 270 companies. After the group was dissolved by the occupation forces at the end of war, the companies started to reassociate again in 1950, creating a corporate grouping, or keiretsu.
Today the group counts dozens of multinational companies in fields such as trade, banking, shipping, construction, mining, oil and gas, insurance, chemicals and real estate development. The three main branches are: