Yorozuya Magobë (萬屋孫兵衛)

Yorozuya Magobē (萬屋孫兵衛; May 7, 1843 - December 17, 1921), also known as Okura Magobē (大倉孫兵衛), was a Japanese publisher and businessman active in the very late Edo and Meiji periods. Born in Edo (Tokyo), he went into the family business of selling woodblock prints. When Yokohama was opened as a port for foreign trade in 1859, Yorozuya would travel there regularly to sell nishiki-e prints to foreigners. Around this time, he became a friend, business partner, and brother-in-law of Morimura Ichizaemon (森村市左衛門, 1839 - 1919), who encouraged him to open his own print and publishing firm. Doing so, Yorozuya found great success, focusing on a wide range of subjects popular in the early Meiji period, including maps, humorous prints, views of Tokyo, portraits of theater actors, bijinga (beautiful women), and illustrated works on the history of the Tokugawa Shogunate. By the mid-1870s, Yorozuya was opening new locations of his firm, which was renamed Okura Shoten (大倉書店), becoming one of the leading publishers of the Meiji and Taisho eras. However, the firm suffered badly in the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake and Fire and never recovered, going out of business in the early post-World War II period. A prolific businessman, Yorozuya founded a separate company importing Western paper to Japan (大倉孫兵衛洋紙店), which in time would go public and, after several mergers, continues to operate today as the Shinsei Pulp and Paper Co., Ltd. With Morimura, he also went into the ceramics business and helped found Nippon Toki Kaisha (now Noritake), a major Japanese exporter of ceramics.