T. CHEE & CO.
Mr. T. Chee is the head of the firm of T. Chee & Co., merchants, Des Voeux Road. The Company has been in existence for about fifteen years, and for nearly half this period Mr. Chee has been in control. An extensive business is done in all classes of goods, and especially in Manchester piece goods and Australian flour. The branch at Canton has the distinction of being the first house opened by a British subject in the native city, and a large trade is carried on there now. The firm are the agents in South China for the Heinz food products. The head of the business is a well-known figure in the field of sport, and acts as secretary of the Kowloon Cricket Club.
ATAKA & CO.
The first Japanese firm to open a branch in the Colony was Messrs. Ataka & Co., whose business is that of general importers and exporters. They are largely interested in coal, yarn, sugar, rice, cotton, metals and practically every kind of Japanese and colonial merchandise, and control an irregular line of cargo steamers running between Hongkong, Japanese ports, Saigon, Rangoon, and Java. They are also the agents for the Japan Ship-owners' Association, which has the charge of a fleet of over 130 vessels aggregating 300,000 tons; for the Nippon Marine Transport and Fire Insurance Co.; the Iwasaki Coal Mine; the Furukawa Coal-Mine, and for the Omi Cotton Duck Co., of Japan, of whose canvas they sell very large quantities. The proprietor of the firm is Mr. Yakichi Ataka, of Osaka. The headquarters are at Osaka, Japan, and branches have been established at Tokyo and other places in that country. The local offices at No. 3, Queen's Road Central, are superintended by Mr. S. Minami.
THE MITSUI BUSSAN KAISHA.
The history of the house of Mitsui is an interesting record of commercial prosperity following upon the unity of the various branches of one large family. The present heads of the firm can trace their descent from Takashige Mitsui, who held the title of "Echigonokami," and lived as the feudal lord of Namadzuyé Castle in the fifteenth century, and was a member of the famous Fujiwara clan. Takashige was succeeded by Takatsugu, but Takayasu, the son of Takatsugu, moved to Matsuzaka in Ise, where he settled as a private citizen, and laid the foundation of the present Mitsui firm. It was not, however, till the time of Hachirobei Takatoshi that the business assumed any very considerable dimensions. Takatoshi invented the system of cash-retailing; organised the system for the collection and remittance of money, and also the carriers' business, when economic science was in a very rudimentary stage and monetary transactions were almost unknown in the country. In 1687 the Mitsuis, represented by Takatoshi, were specially appointed by the Tokugawa Government as its purveyor and public exchange controller, and in recognition of their services in this connection were granted an estate in Yedo. In 1723, observing the oral will of Takatoshi, his son, Hachirobei Takahira, laid down in writing the family rules by which he and his five brothers pledged themselves to form a collective body of partners working with a collective capital. This is the agreement upon which the whole undertaking of the Mitsuis is based to-day. According to the social institutions of Japan, the unit of society is the family, and not the individual as in Western civilisation. Again, by the laws and customs of inheritance, the estate of the father descends to the first-born. The younger sons must be adopted into another family, or, failing this, must make their own fortunes independently.
In the case of the Mitsui house, however, from the oldest to the youngest there is not one who can enter an absolute claim to any particular property. The Mitsui house is a collective body, a joint association consisting of eleven families or partners, which works with the collective capital of the eleven families, in their joint name, and under the system of unlimited joint liability.
With the restoration of the Meiji era, an important epoch was opened in the history of the firm. While the new Government under the direct control of the Crown was in process of consolidation, the Mitsuis acted as its principal financing agent, and it was in a great measure due to this that Japan was enabled safely to negotiate the crisis with which it was then threatened. As a reward for this and other services Baron Hachiroemon
