Nabeshima Kihachirō (1859–1922) was born into the ruling family of the Saga Domain towards the end of the Tokugawa period, but came to Tokyo immediately following the Meiji Restoration, and studied at the Futsugaku-juku (French school) founded by Nakae Chōmin. Nabeshima subsequently entered the business world during the first boom in nanshin-ron, the political discourse on southward advance, founding the Tōhō-gumi in Nihonbashi. In 1891, he traveled to the Ogasawara Islands (Bonin Islands), which had just become a part of Japanese territory, aiming to pursue their development. The aim of this article is to describe Nabeshima’s experiences from childhood to adolescence, to examine various aspects of his business efforts in the Ogasawara Islands, and finally to explore a fragment of the socio-economic context of these islands during the Meiji period.

Nabeshima’s business interests were very broad, including the founding of the Ogasawara sea line, as well as trading, fishery and plantation management, especially sugar. Not every business was successful, however as an entrepreneur from a samurai-clan (shizoku), Nabeshima’s role in the economic development of the Ogasawara Islands from the Meiji to Taisho periods is a critical part of their modern history. Though Nabeshima Kihachirō passed away in 1922, he was one of the 11 individuals awarded a “Pioneers with Distinctive Service Prize” during the “50^th Anniversary of the Frontier Development” memorial ceremony which was held during the Emperor’s visit to the Ogasawara Islands in 1927. For the writing of this article, besides monographs and documents held in the Tokyo Metropolitan Archives and the Saga Prefectural Library, I relied upon the “Nabeshima Kihachirō Archives,” which were donated by the Nabeshima’s family to the Hosei University Institute for Okinawan Studies.