Word: katakura
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...fine morning in 1858, a sweet infant boy, Gosuke Katakura, was born in the ancient empire of Japan. In that same year because a New Englander, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, had burst into the Bay of Yedo with four gunboats, the first commercial treaty between Japan and the U. S. was signed. If Gosuke's honorable father ever thought of any connection between the two events, he certainly did not conceive that the result would be 1) Gosuke becoming a multimillionaire; 2) Gosuke becoming peer of Japan; 3) Gosuke at the age of 75 going, in a silk suit...
...fell out. For in 1877 Gosuke and his two brothers formed Katakura Gumi (Co.) to manufacture silk in an obscure village on the shores of beautiful Lake Suwa. The silk business grew, slowly at first, then more swiftly as the countrymen of Commodore Perry came to desire more and more silk. U. S. silk consumption swelled from 80,000 bales in 1900 to 500,000 bales in 1929, of which the U. S. took 73%. This was wealth to the Kata-kura brothers. In 1920 they recapitalized their company at 52,000,000 yen, gave it a more resounding name...
...Katakura family still owns 60% of the company's stock, but Gosuke, who is president of the company, is no longer named Katakura. He married a daughter of the prominent Imai family and since there were no sons in his family took his wife's name according to custom. The deficiency of sons was promptly remedied. Today Gosuke Imai has two sons and two daughters, by one of his sons is the proud ancestor of six grandsons...
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