Zaibatsu and the Fall of The Beatles

The nineteenth century Zaibatsu of Japan could be compared to the monolithic western conglomerates of yester-year. Whilst Andrew Carnegie was happily smelting iron, Mitsui had been a trading house for nearly two hundred years and whilst Rockefeller was furiously pumping away, Mitsubishi was already digging the coal from the ground to fuel the trading (and gun) ships across Asia. In other words, the Zaibatsu were enormous groupings of wealth more often than not centered around banking or insurance institutions. And orchestrated by a very limited club of immensely powerful families.

Not only did four Zaibatsu essentially control the economy during the Empire Days of Japan, they controlled the army, navy and government as well for good measure. Disbanded post war to create the keiretsu industrial groupings (hence eliminating centralised control similar to the US Anti-Trust Laws of the early twentieth century) the key players were Mitsui and Mitsubishi as mentioned above, Sumitomo (focussed on mining) and Yasuda, a financial leviathan founded at the time of (and greatly benefiting from) the Meiji Restoration. 

And this is where The Beatles come in. Founded by Zenjiro Yasuda, and through a series of mergers, divorces and re-mergers, is more recognisable today by the name of Mizuho Bank (formerly Fuji Bank plus a couple of lesser known entities) and he happens to be the great-grandfather of Yoko Ono. On seeing his photograph for the first time John Lennon is reputed to have commented that he was a re-incarnation of Zenjiro, not knowing Zenjiro Yasuda had been slain by an assassin's bullet in 1921. And so we will never know what would have happened if he had been a lousy businessman instead of one of the greatest of his time and would his great-granddaughter have met her future husband, quietly passing him a note that simply said "breath". 

Did Yasuda's great-granddaughter break up The Beatles?

Karuizawa - an interesting place

Karuizawa used to be a postal town. In the Edo period there weren't many highways in Japan but the Nakasendo was one of them. Linking Kyoto and Tokyo, it passed through the central mountains and linked East and West Japan. If you want to visit, August during Obon is a great time when it's a lot cooler than Tokyo but also there is the forest Bon Odori, something to be seen to be appreciated.

Karuizawa became a talking point at the end of the 19th Century when it was found by the foreign missionaries to be a pleasant retreat from the heat and humidity of Tokyo (hence it being cooler). It then became a place of notoriety when the Emperor met his "wife to be" on the tennis courts here. And from then it became a ski area, Shinakansen station and location of the only statue of Sherlock Holmes in Japan.

However, one of the reasons I enjoy the area so much is its unspoken history. In the main center you can see many photographs of days gone by that show you the town as it grew. But in some of the small little cafes, one of which is between the two Route 18's (different story), there a place where the mama-san has been looking after travellers since she must have been a girl. And on the wall is a photograph of her and John Lennon, sitting, having coffee. His wife was Japanese after all, and this was a place he could relax.