Yone Suzuki (鈴木よね, 1852.8.15–1938.5.6) was a Japanese businesswoman, described in 1918 as "the wealthiest woman in Japan".
Early life Yone Suzuki was from Osaka"Japan's Richest Woman" Boston Daily Globe (August 8, 1920): 54. or Himeji.
Career 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."Suzuki & Co. Ltd." The Sojitz History Museum.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). 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,"Japan's Ship Mistress" The Nautical Gazette (November 13, 1920): 21. and added branch offices of the Suzuki conglomerate in several international locations, including Europe, North America, Australia, and elsewhere in Asia."The World's Greatest Women: Mrs. Yone Suzuki, Business Woman" Green Book Magazine (December 1919): 13.
She was described in 1918 as "the wealthiest woman in Japan",Elsie F. Weil, "A Little Woman of Big Enterprises" World Outlook (September 1918): 10. and in 1927 as the "richest woman in the world.""Richest Woman in the World; Wonder Widow of Japan" Canberra Times (June 14, 1927): 5. via Trove 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."Japanese Mob Widow" Washington Post (December 8, 1918): E3. 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.
The Suzuki conglomerate was badly affected by a foreign exchange crisis in 1923–1924, and finally failed in a financial panic in 1927."Japanese Morgan" Time Magazine (April 18, 1927). The 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, dysfunctional internal dynamics, unpopular business practices,"Japanese Profiteer" Ashburton Guardian (January 3, 1919): 3. and external rivalries with other large Japanese conglomerates (zaibatsu), are also cited as contributing to the Suzuki collapse.L. H. Lynn and H. Rao, "Failure of Intermediate Forms: A Study of the Suzuki zaibatsu" Organization Studies 16(1)(1995): 55–80. Among the present-day companies descended from Suzuki & Co. are Kobe Steel, Sojitz, and J-oilmils (Honen Corporation).Stuart. D. B. Picken, Historical Dictionary of Japanese Business (Rowman & Littlefield 2016): 393.
Personal life and legacy She married Iwajiro Suzuki, a sugar merchant, when she was 13 years old. Their sons were Iwajiro and Ewazo.Lester Lear, "A Woman Tramples Tradition to Make Her People Great!" Brooklyn Daily Eagle (June 10, 1923): 9. via Newspapers.com She was widowed when he died in 1894. 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."Once Richest Woman Now Living Frugally" Washington Post (April 24, 1927): 3.
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."Oiesan" (2014), at Internet Movie Database.
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