ENThis was the world into which Teigo Iba was born and eventually became the leader of Sumitomo. As you may not know much about Teigo Iba, I would like to talk about him in some detail.
Teigo Iba was born in 1847 (4th year of the Koka era) toward the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate in the very house where Saihei Hirose had been born. Teigo’s mother Tazu was a sister of Saihei Hirose. Teigo Iba was 19 years younger than Saihei Hirose and as Saihei was already serving an apprenticeship at the Besshi Copper Mines, the two of them had no opportunity to meet during Teigo Iba’s childhood. Teigo lived at his maternal grandparents’ home until he was seven. Then, he and his mother were granted permission to return to Omi-hachiman where his father Sadataka lived. The exhibition includes the record of the monetary gifts presented to Teigo at the ceremony at which as the heir of the Iba family he was formally introduced to relatives and family acquaintances. The Iba family had been senior retainers of the Rokkaku clan, who were descendants of the Sasaki clan in Omi and once controlled the southern half of Omi. However, as a consequence of Oda Nobunaga’s destruction of the Rokkaku clan, the Iba family led an itinerant existence before finally settling in Nishijuku, Omi-hachiman.
