Hirooka Asako (1849-1919)

[nnozomi]

Hirooka Asako was born in 1849 in Kyoto as the third daughter (born to a concubine) of the well-off Mitsui family, merchants who ran what would eventually be the Mitsukoshi department store chain. Intelligent and driven as a child, she argued her father into the ground over her studies (“I may be a girl but I’m also a human being! I might need what I learn!”). Inevitably, however, she was betrothed at the age of two to Hirooka Shingoro, who came from a similar family in Osaka. They married when he was twenty-five and she seventeen.

The disorder of the Meiji Restoration followed immediately after, disrupting but not destroying the Hirooka family’s considerable business assets; however, Shingoro had started to devote himself to yokyoku music, and left the business in the hands of his plump, active wife, who had studied bookkeeping and arithmetic on her own, and was happy to find herself responsible for a store, a bank, a spinning company and a mine among other ventures. Her hands-on management was successful (she carried a pistol in her sash when going down into the mine), and the businesses thrived, including a large life insurance company as well. It was not long before she became known as “the Amazon of Osaka entrepreneurship.”

In 1901, she visited Tokyo to found Japan Women’s University along with the educator Naruse Jinzo. Three years later, when Shingoro died, she married off her daughter Kameko, passed on the business, and retired.

She became a Christian in 1911 and devoted her last years to religious and educational practice, helping establish the Japan YWCA. From 1914 through 1918, she held study groups for young women at her summer villa (designed by William Vories, whose wife Makiko was Hirooka Kameko’s sister-in-law), with participants including Ichikawa Fusae.

She also loved the game of go, held a respectable amateur ranking, and was a fan and supporter of the professional go player Ishii Senji. She died in Tokyo in 1919.

Sources
Nakae
https://www.innovation-osaka.jp/startup-ecosystem/founders/daido/ (English, inspiration for modern-day entrepreneurs! Not sure if the photograph is of Asako herself or from the TV drama based on her life)
https://www.sojitz.com/special_site/pioneer/en/manga/vol1_ep02_e.pdf (English, manga about business which may or may not be intended to be funny [“Well, I admit Asako’s business sense is superior to mine. But nobody can beat me when it comes to Noh chants!”])

Comments

[passingbuzzards]

I did not know life insurance existed in the 19th century, omg! (And laughing at “hands-on management” for the pistol, bless.)

[scytale]

She sounds so fascinating!

And I laughed out loud at "Well, I admit Asako’s business sense is superior to mine. But nobody can beat me when it comes to Noh chants!”)"

[chestnut_pod]

A spinning business! That sounds very interesting, as does the rest of this woman's life.