A short distance from the bustle of the shoppers and tourists around Kobe's Motomachi Station unfolds a townscape with a leisurely Western ambience—the former Kobe Foreign Settlement. Constructed in 1868, when the port opened to trade, it was a special area where foreigners were allowed to live and work. Operation continued until 1899.

Akizuki was a colleague of Hunter's at E.C. Kirby & Co., and together with Hunter and others, invested 10,000 yen each in the establishment of Osaka Iron Works. An advertisement in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper dated September 21, 1881⁽⁴⁾ describes Akizuki as an "iron works agent." He was "stubborn . . . a man of his word . . . with the courage to see things through to the end."⁽⁵⁾ By 1890 or so, "Osaka Iron Works General Manager Seijuro Akizuki . . . having suffered many hardships . . . has become one of the wealthiest merchants in the prefecture."⁽⁶⁾ One can assume this is a result of his innate commitment.

The Nagasaki Foreign Settlement, established a decade or so earlier in the island of Kyushu, was the home of Glover & Co., a merchant that set up business in 1862 and played a key role around the Meiji Restoration of 1868. The proprietor, Thomas Blake Glover, later expanded into coal mine development and shipbuilding, but went bankrupt in 1870. This compares to Hunter, who also started as a trader and branched out into shipbuilding, as well as other new fields, and became a "successful entrepreneur based in Japan."⁽⁷⁾ One imagines that Hunter's success is a product of sheer will power even stronger than that of Akizuki.

Bibliography

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   なお、この時期にはハンター商会は「合名会社範多商会」となっている。
4. 4『川口居留地3』川口居留地研究会1994年64p
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7. 7杉山伸也 『日英経済関係史研究1860～1940』2017年、慶応義塾大学出版会株式会社、28p

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  Asahi Shimbun　1881.09.21　Page4 Advertisement