Shōjirō Ishibashi

Shōjirō Ishibashi was a Japanese businessman who founded the Bridgestone Corporation in 1931 in the city of Kurume, Fukuoka, building it into the world's largest maker of tires. The company name is a rendering of his own: ishi means stone and hashi, voiced as bashi, means bridge. After the Second World War he became an adviser to the politician Ichirō Hatoyama on postwar economic policy, and his daughter Yasuko married into the Hatoyama political family. His place in motor history also includes the Prince Motor Company: from 1949 he financed the Tokyo Electric Car Company, bought most of the stock of Fuji Precision Industries in 1951, and presided over the firm as it was renamed the Prince Motor Company in 1952, until he signed the 1965 merger memorandum that led to Prince being merged into Nissan in 1966. He also founded the Bridgestone Museum of Art in Tokyo and was a benefactor of the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art. He lived from 1889 to 1976.