The second volume

Japanese

"Teigo Iba (1847 - 1926)" - 1 -

In 1847, Teigo Iba was born as a son of Sadataka Iba who was a local magistrate in Shiga prefecture. At the age of 22-year-old, he was appointed to a judicial officer and worked at a court for the decade. After that, he was planning to go back to his hometown in order to engage in farming, but he decided to enter the Sumitomo at the age of 32-year-old in accordance with the advice of his uncle named Saihei Hirose who was the first general director of the Sumitomo. Assigned to the chief manager of the head office in Osaka, Iba was committed to develop the businesses.

However, in those days, there was a serious conflict between supporters of Hirose and objectors about his dictatorship. On the other hand, a large scale of riot broke out at the Besshi copper mine, which is the main business of Sumitomo, about smoke pollution. The smoke discharged from Niihama smelting works in Besshi copper mine caused great damages to the forests and the crops. Therefore neighboring farmers suffered from respiratory diseases pressed the Niihama office of Sumitomo.

In the face of the increasing severe smoke pollution; Iba concluded that there would not be a moment to loose to settle this matter. He made up his minds to venture into Besshi by himself and assumed the manager of Besshi office. When Iba arrived at Besshi, there was a rumor that the company would cut employees who oppose general director Hirose. Therefore the workers were roused to violence to hear that a nephew of Hirose would come to Bessi. At the welcome party, one of workers intimidated Iba with the words, "Unlike Osaka, our party is little bit rough. Anytime this candlestick will hit you."

However, to the worker's surprise, Iba did not do anything. He had shown up at the mining everyday and talk to workers, "Hi, thanks a lot." Gradually Iba got to know the workers and established relationship of mutual trust. Eventually, the workers found that Iba was an indulgent boss. Only three months later, Besshi was restored to its usual tranquility as if the incident happened before had been a nightmare.

As soon as the workers in Besshi took back tranquility, Iba set about the solution of smoke pollution. He had an idea to move smelting to Shisakajima Island, which is uninhabited and located twenty kilometers offshore from Niihama. As it costs huge amount of money, some of executives objected his plan, but Iba stuck to his plan and exercised strong leadership. He had a firm belief that they should never be preoccupied with the immediate economic benefit. Even if it takes long time and spend large sum of money, they should work on environment preservation and bring inhospitable mountains back to verdant feature instead of performing temporary suspension of smelting or giving compensation to farmers.

To be continued...

References: "Wisdom"