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The earliest member of the Shibakawa family in the official records was Tachu Shibakawa, doctor of the Edo Period. The family history dates back more than 200 years, from the 1700s.
Tachu, the son of a Samurai family from the island of Tsushima, made a career for himself as a medical practitioner in Kyoto. Shibakawa Shinroku, the husband of Tachu’s daughter Waka, opened a kimono fabric shop in Osaka called Mukadeya. This was the origin of the business of the Shibakawa family. The Shibakawas transformed Mukadeya into a successful trading firm and expanded it year after year. In time, the heads of the Shibakawa family were major business tycoons of Osaka.
The Meiji Restoration at the end of the 19th century and later decades were a period of abrupt modernization and westernization for Japan. Perceiving the trends, the Shibakawa family realized that the enormous profits of their trading business could not be matched in future years. This persuaded them to switch to real estate management, a business that would allow them to manage and sustain their accumulated fortune stably. Chishima Real Estate Co., Ltd., a company established in 1912, ultimately took over the real estate management business of the Shibakawa family. The family businesses took the form of companies limited, adopting a corporate structure still new for those days (general partnerships and limited partnerships were the prevailing structures). They also departed from the common practices of the day by designating their company with the name of place (Chishima) instead of the name of their family, and by adopting the advanced and unique management approach of separating capital and management.
Though they retained ownership of the capital, they did not participate directly as managers.
The business of the Shibakawa family thrived, but the family sought more than profit alone. Their philosophy was epitomized by what we now describe as the “Onawachi incident.” The incident began when the Shibakawa family filed a lawsuit against the Osaka City government over the Onawachi right, a landfill right covering an area of water owned by the family. The case was deemed so important, even the prime minister of Japan intervened. When the court ruled in the Shibakawa’s favor, granting them the full ownership right to the landfill, the family decided to donate all of the land to Osaka City. This good gesture of the Shibakawas earned them widespread acclaim. They had sued not to gain monetary profit, but to protect an ownership right that was about to be infringed.
Convinced that “a company can grow by contributing to society with its own assets,” the Shibakawa family has been actively involved not only in business, but also educational activities, public projects, and other forms of social contribution (see the following table of the history of the family’s engagements).
More recently the Shibakawas have stepped up their efforts to promote art. Some of their properties have been renovated to create venues where young artists can perform, create, and cooperate in art events.
Namura art meeting Vol.00 held in 2004
