Born: 16 July 1809, Japan
Died: 1900
Country most active: Japan
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.
In Japan, Tatsu’uma Kiyo also carried on her family legacy, as the Tatsu’uma house had been making sake since 1662, becoming one of the largest brewers in the city of Nishinomiya, which became known for the industry. Nishinomiya spring water was even sold to other brewers for the value of its unique mineral properties: high in calcium, phosphorus, and magnesium, and low in iron. Born in 1809, Tatsu’uma was an only child, and so her husband assumed control of the family business when her father died in 1842. When she became a widow in 1855, Tatsu’uma took over running the brewery, Hakushika. Although she was in her mid-30s when she inherited (and indeed, had been largely managing things behind the scenes since her father’s death), she would run the business until 1897, well into her 80s. In this time, Tatsu’uma built the family brewery into a sake empire—by 1894, Hakushika was producing 22,000 koku a year (almost 4 million liters) and was three times larger than its nearest competitor.
As the power behind the proverbial throne, she also trained her eldest son and daughter-in-law as the public-facing figureheads, likely because a woman seen to be publicly succeeding in business at the time could be an embarrassment to her family. In an era when women were restricted from entering breweries, she was as knowledgeable about the industry as anyone in Nishinomiya by the time she married at age 21. Yet due to the sexism of the time, she still had to rely on a brewmaster to oversee the actual production and a male deputy for business matters like certain negotiations. She chose a boy of 13 for the latter role, elevating him from his position as kitchen boy and training him in all areas of the business. As for her own children, which numbered somewhere between six and twelve, she married them off with the strategy of Queen Victoria if she’d been a businesswoman. Some of her sons and daughters were married out to other brewing houses while others, along with grandchildren, were sent to establish branch houses, or bunke, for Hakushika. And so, she grew an empire, diversifying her holdings and embracing new technologies.
In the 1840s, she expanded into exchange and finance to protect the business from price instabilities. This section of the enterprise would allow customers to exchange Edo gold for Osaka silver, and provide a safety net in case of disaster, such as occasions when things like fire, shipwreck, or bacterial contamination destroyed large quantities of sake. She also provided money-lending services to other brew houses and those that defaulted on their loans would find their properties added to her ever-growing empire. She also built a shipping arm, exporting massive amounts of sake to Edo and beyond, as well as other products like rice, salt, and coal.
At the time, social custom allowed women to publicly manage businesses for up to three years, but Tatsu’uma’s daughter-in-law Taki was the public face of Hakushika for seven years after her husband died. Tatsu’uma’s granddaughter, Tama, became the first brewer to market sake in Taiwan in 1895, taking advantage of the Japanese occupation after the First Sino-Japanese War. Tatsu’uma herself died in 1900 only a few years after retiring in her 80s, having lived to see a new century. She had built her family’s brewing house into the largest brewer and shipper of sake, one of the country’s biggest industries.