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The Sumitomo Trust Company Limited was founded in 1925, a little over a year after the catastrophic Great Earthquake that left Tokyo and adjacent cities in ruins and 142,000 dead and unaccounted for, and at a time when state control was tightening its grip on a society in turmoil. At the time, Japan already had some 500 trust companies. A mere 20 years after trusts had been introduced, most of them —established on the wave of an economic boom associated with World War I—had lost their credibility in the subsequent slump and prolonged recession, and had even become a social evil.
What is a trust? The practice is believed to date back to Roman times, but the model of today’s trusts originated in medieval England. Known as Use, its basic concept was to transfer ownership of an asset to a trusted third party. Thus, what the public demands of trust companies is absolute trustworthiness rather than profit-making.
The government enacted the Trust Law and Trust Business Law in 1922, based on a licensing system for trust companies to rework an “underdeveloped concept” and break out of the troubled status quo, marking a change of direction towards allowing only carefully selected trusts to operate. The task of rebuilding the trust business was placed in the hands of the zaibatsu industrial combines with their massive capital and credit. |
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The headquarters building in 1926
The exterior of the building where Sumitomo Trust Company’s headquarters were located from 1926 to 1931. The company sought to expand the business based on customer confidence by having its headquarters and sales base in Osaka, Sumitomo’s traditional home territory. |
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