Splitting the cable division out of the Fujikura partnership and incorporating it (1910)

Where the line was drawn

The line Matsumoto Tomekichi drew followed not the likeness of the products but the way money had to be raised. Cable is a business whose plant grows heavier the more of the chain it takes in — copper smelting, wire drawing, cabling — and the partnership’s ¥200,000 of capital was not enough for the next investment. That the new company started at ¥500,000 and had built that up to ¥2 million six years later shows the separation was also a procedure for raising capital. For a company that owned no mine, moving into processes that handle copper appears to have required the joint-stock form, which can take capital from outside.

Yet the line can be called correct only because the cable side is what survived. The new Fukagawa site completed in 1923 was wiped out by the earthquake eight months later, and production was carried by the Sendagaya works that had been in use since before the split. The rubber side swelled to eleven plants in wartime and then shrank after it, selling off four — Shinagawa, Numata, Toyama and Fujioka. For each of the two divided businesses a time came when it could not protect itself. What the split produced was not safety but the position of having to raise one’s own capital.