The Fifteenth National Bank, from 1897 the Fifteenth Bank (, ''Jugo Ginko''), established in 1877 in

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

, was initially the largest of the early

National Banks in Meiji Japan The National Banks in Meiji Japan were a system of organization of the Japanese banking system created in the 1870s, inspired by the U.S. National Bank Act of the previous decade. Under the system, national banks were individually chartered by th ...

. Its failure in 1927 was a climactic point of the

Shōwa financial crisis The was a financial panic in 1927, during the first year of the reign of Emperor Hirohito of Japan, and was a foretaste of the Great Depression. It brought down the government of Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijirō and led to the domination of ...

. It was subsequently reorganized by the Japanese government, and eventually absorbed in 1944 by the

Teikoku Bank was a major Japanese bank from 1876 to 1990. The home bank of the Mitsui conglomerate, it was one of the largest Japanese banks for much of the 20th century, together with Dai-Ichi Bank, Mitsubishi Bank, Sumitomo Bank, and Yasuda / Fuji Bank ...

, itself a predecessor of

SMBC Group , initialed as SMFG until 2018 and SMBC Group since, is a major Japanese multinational financial services group and holding company. It is the parent of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), SMBC Trust Bank, and SMBC Nikko Securities. SMB ...

Overview

The 15th National Bank was established by a group of high-ranking nobility including

Iwakura Tomomi was a Japanese statesman during the Bakumatsu and Meiji period. He was one of the leading figures of the Meiji Restoration, which saw Japan's transition from feudalism to modernism. Born to a noble family, he was adopted by the influential Iw ...

Tokugawa Yoshikatsu was a Japanese ''daimyō'' of the late Edo period, who ruled the Owari Domain as its 14th (1849–1858) and 17th daimyō (1870–1880). He was the brother of Matsudaira Katamori. His childhood name was Hidenosuke (秀之助). Early years Yoshi ...

, Yamauchi Toyonori, Kuroda Nagatomo, Ikeda Akimasa, Tōdō Takakiyo, Matsudaira Mochiaki,

Nanbu Toshiyuki Count was a Bakumatsu period Japanese samurai, and the 15th and final ''daimyō'' of Morioka Domain in northern Japan. He was the 41st hereditary chieftain of the Nanbu clan. Nanbu Yoshiyuki was the eldest son of Nanbu Toshihisa, the 14th ''d ...

, and , and was therefore colloquially known as the "

Kazoku The was the hereditary peerage of the Empire of Japan, which existed between 1869 and 1947. It was formed by merging the feudal lords (''Daimyo, daimyō'') and court nobles (''kuge'') into one system modelled after the British peerage. Distin ...

Bank". Its first president was . With an initial capital of 17.8 million yen, it was by far the largest Japanese bank, with its capital representing 44.5 percent of the total capital of all national banks. Immediately after its creation, it provided funding to the Japanese government during the

Satsuma Rebellion The Satsuma Rebellion, also known as the , was a revolt of disaffected samurai against the new imperial government of the Empire of Japan, nine years into the Meiji era. Its name comes from the Satsuma Domain, which had been influential in ...

. In 1920, the 15th Bank absorbed Naniwa Bank (est. 1878 in

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as the 32nd National Bank), (est. 1903 in

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), and Choyou Bank (est. 1897 in Tokyo). The bank still carried considerable prestige in the 1920s until its abrupt failure. By early 1927, half of its large loans and 30 percent of its total lending were to businesses associated with the Matsukata family, which was also its controlling shareholder and whose patriarch

Matsukata Masayoshi Prince was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 1891 to 1892, and from 1896 to 1898. Born in the Satsuma Domain to a samurai family, Matsukata served as finance minister for 15 of the 20 years between 1881 and 1901, ...

had died in 1924 at 89 years. In total, 322 of its shareholders were members of the nobility, with the Ministry of the Imperial Household and the head of the treasury also holding large numbers of shares, and the Imperial Household Ministry's main treasury was held at the bank. The 15th Bank's president was Duke , the eldest son of Matsukata Masayoshi. On , the 15th Bank announced a three-day suspension of its operations following a disorderly

bank run A bank run or run on the bank occurs when many Client (business), clients withdraw their money from a bank, because they believe Bank failure, the bank may fail in the near future. In other words, it is when, in a fractional-reserve banking sys ...

. Many samurai and aristocratic families used the information networks of their former retainers to transfer their assets elsewhere before the bankruptcy, but even so, aristocratic families suffered great losses. The Imperial Household Ministry had designated the bank's shares as hereditary property, which made them hard to sell, compounding the crisis. Matsukata Iwao sold off most of his personal assets to support his failing bank and, on , offered to surrender his title to the Imperial Household Ministry. Marquis Asano Nagayuki, a director of the bank, also offered personal assets for the bank's reorganization. In December 1927, the Japanese government announced a plan to reopen the bank in the following spring, with full repayment of deposits under 100 yen per account and only partial repayment above that threshold. The first was erected in 1972 on the site of the 15th Bank's former head office in Tokyo.

References

{{reflist Banks established in 1877 Defunct banks of Japan

Overview

See also

References