Asset management of local wealth-holders

The Kamino and Tomita families and Kamitomishokusan

Abstract

This paper examines the asset management practices of local wealth-holders in the prewar era. Based on the cases of the Kamino and Tomita families in Aichi Prefecture, the analysis is advanced from two perspectives: (1) What kind of asset management were local wealth-holders aiming at ? (2) How was it actually practiced ? This paper analyzes the Kaseiyousoku, the family constitution, of these two families and identifies the asset management methods used. The Kaseiyousoku classified the assets of the two families into two categories: assets jointly owned and managed by the two families and assets individually owned and managed by each family. It seems that such mechanism delineated the action of both families afterwards over a long period of time.
This paper examines the remunerations of the heads of both families and the activities of Kamitomishokusan, the asset-preserving company for jointly-owned assets, during the relatively long period starting in 1891 to 1945 and clarifies how they were actually undertaken. As a result, the asset management practices of both families, not identified by existing literature, become clear.
The circumstances faced by both families were taken into consideration as much as possible in the process of analysis. Both families sought and acted to accomplish the asset management system set by family constitution. This paper shows that, as a result, both families were spending their entire efforts only to preserve their assets. This consists one answer to the question posed by previous literature on why the asset-preserving company of both families did not actively invest in stocks.