This museum is dedicated to my grandfather Kuhara Fuasnosuke, who created the Kuhara Mine in the town of Hitachi. He built a vast copper mine that grew to be the 2nd largest in Japan. He started the Hitachi electric company. He made and lost 2 vast fortunes, and when he died at 95, all he owned was a little estate in Tokyo. and alas he did no estate planning and I never received any financial inheritance, but I own an amazing legacy.

When I was a child I would spend summers in Tokyo, at my grandfather’s house, He died in 1968comfort at the age 95, marking the end of an empire. He made and lost 2 vast fortunes. He was a leader of a prominent political party. I celebrate his life in this blog.

KUHARA BLOG

My Japanese grandfather, KUHARA FUSANOSUKE made and lost 2 fortunes. I knew him for the last 10 years of his life, in the final flickers of his empire. He built the 2nd largest copper mine in Japan with 6200 employees, and founded HITACHI and NISSAN.

As a politician and diplomat he met with the Emperor, Mao Zedong, Prime minister Neville Chamberlain, Joseph Stalin and many Japanese Prime Ministers. He was elected to the Diet, was a Cabinet Minister and the head of a major political party. He was friends with Sun Yat Sen and invested heavily in his Chinese Revolution. Kuhara was honored by the writer Yukio Mishima.

He lived at Happoen, a famous garden property in Tokyo until he sold it in the late 1950’s. When he left this world, all he owned was the land under his feet. He made and lost 2 fortunes. He wasn’t into estate planning, and I inherited some amazing art, but not any money.

KUHARA FUSANOSUKE BIOGRAPHY - 107 page book translated into English from the Japanese

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