Yasuda Zenjirō

For the hockey coach, see Zenjiro Yasuda (field hockey).

In this Japanese name, the family name is Yasuda.

Yasuda Zenjirō
File:Zenjiro Yasuda.jpg
Born	(1838-11-25)November 25, 1838 Toyama, Toyama
Died	Ōiso, Kanagawa
Nationality	Japanese
Occupation	Entrepreneur
Known for	Yasuda zaibatsu

Yasuda Zenjirō (安田 善次郎, November 25, 1838 – September 28, 1921) was a Japanese entrepreneur from Toyama, Etchu Province (present-day Toyama Prefecture) who founded the Yasuda zaibatsu (安田財閥). He donated the Yasuda Auditorium (安田講堂, Yasuda Kōdō) to the University of Tokyo. He was the great-grandfather of Yoko Ono.

Biography

Yasuda Zenjirō, the son of a poor samurai in Etchu Province. He was a member of the Yasuda clan.

Zenjirō moved to Edo at the age of 17 and began working in a money changing house. In 1863, he started providing tax-farming services to the Tokugawa Shogunate. After the Meiji Restoration, he provided the same services to the new Meiji government. Yasuda profited from the delay between the collection of taxes and their forwarding to the government. He greatly magnified his wealth by buying up depreciated Meiji paper money that the government subsequently exchanged for gold.

Yasuda helped establish the Third National Bank in 1876. Later, in 1880, Yasuda set up the Yasuda Bank (later the Fuji Bank, now Mizuho Financial Group) and the Yasuda Mutual Life Insurance Company (later merged to form Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance), which he organized into a zaibatsu holding company. In 1893, the Yasuda zaibatsu absorbed the Tokyo Fire Insurance Company (renamed the Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance Company, now Sompo Japan Insurance).

Yasuda was among the best financiers that Japan had; however he was not adventurous and hardly expanded the business beyond finance. Most of the industrial houses associated with Yasuda were actually those that Asano Soichiro started, whom Yasuda trusted and provided loans to. More accurately, therefore, they belonged to Asano Zaibatsu and were merely affiliated to Yasuda Zaibatsu.

In his later years, he donated the Yasuda Auditorium to the Tokyo Imperial University and the Hibiya Kokaido hall. Yasuda was assassinated in 1921 when he refused to make a financial donation to an ultra-nationalist, Heigo Asahi.

Yasuda was the maternal great-grandfather of avant-garde artist and singer Yoko Ono, the widow of musician John Lennon. Lennon, on seeing Yasuda's photograph for the first time, is alleged to have said 'That's me in a former life', to which Ono replied 'Don't say that. He was assassinated.' Lennon himself was later shot and killed.