As a widow with two sons, Yone Suzuki took over her late husband's business, the Suzuki Trading Company (Suzuki Shoten), trusting manager Kaneko Naokichi with many of the strategic decisions.[2][3] In 1900, she made a fortune in a deal involving sugar, real estate, and camphor. She started a peppermint factory, she bought the Kobe Steel Works, and expanded her operations in camphor manufacture, sugar refineries and flour mills. She built a factories to produce fish oil and bean oil, owned a fleet of ships,[4] and added branch offices of the Suzuki conglomerate in several international locations, including Europe, North America, Australia, and elsewhere in Asia.[5]
Suzuki Shoten burnt out, 1918
She was described in 1918 as "the wealthiest woman in Japan",[6] and in 1927 as the "richest woman in the world."[7] However, she was also
described as "one of the best-hated persons in the country" for taking advantage of wartime conditions and for running up the price of rice.[8] She had to go into hiding with an alias for a while during the rice riots of 1918, after angry crowds burned her company's headquarters in Kobe.[8]
The Suzuki conglomerate was badly affected by a foreign exchange crisis in 1923–1924, and finally failed in a financial panic in 1927.[9] The 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, dysfunctional internal dynamics, unpopular business practices,[10] and external rivalries with other large Japanese conglomerates (zaibatsu), are also cited as contributing to the Suzuki collapse.[11] Among the present-day companies descended from Suzuki & Co. are Kobe Steel ,Sojitz,J-oilmils（Honen Corporation）.[12][2]
She married Iwajiro Suzuki, a sugar merchant, when she was 13 years old. Their sons were Iwajiro and Ewazo.[13] She was widowed when he died in 1894.[7] At the peak of her wealth, she lived in a mansion at Suma-ku, Kobe; she moved into more frugal conditions after the collapse of Suzuki & Co.[14]
The 2014 Japanese television drama Oiesan was a historical drama based on a novel by Kaoru Tamaoka about Yone Suzuki's life. Yūki Amami played Yone Suzuki in the program.[15]
^Yoshio Katsura, "The Role of One Sogosha in Japanese Industrialization: Suzuki & Co., 1877–1927", a paper presented at the Business History Conference, Nishinomiya, Japan (November 18–19, 1972).
