A widow inherited a Kobe sugar trader, her manager made it bigger than Mitsui, rioters burned it, and it failed in 1927

Suzuki Iwajirō founded a sugar trading house in Kobe in 1874. He died suddenly in 1894. His widow, Yone, born in 1852, became head of the firm and left management to her head clerks, Fujimatsu Yanagida and Kaneko Naokichi. Kaneko won the right to sell Taiwanese camphor oil and founded about 80 businesses, including Kobe Steel in 1905 and Teikoku Rayon in 1918. In 1917 Suzuki's turnover passed Mitsui's, and it became Japan's largest trading company, with sales equal to about 10 percent of Japan's GNP. In 1918 rumours that Suzuki was hoarding rice led rioters to burn its Kobe head office. Yone went into hiding under another name. After the war the firm borrowed heavily from the Bank of Taiwan. On 27 March 1927 the bank stopped new lending. Suzuki stopped trading and failed in early April 1927 with debts of about 450 million yen, about 350 million of them owed to the Bank of Taiwan. Kaneko tried to rebuild the firm until he died in 1944. Yone lived frugally after the collapse and died on 6 May 1938. The trading business passed to Nissho, now part of Sojitz. Kobe Steel and Teijin still operate.