Furukawa Ichibei

Furukawa Ichibei (古河 市兵衛, April 16, 1832 - April 5, 1903) was a Japanese businessman who founded one of the fifteen largest industrial conglomerates in Japan, specializing in electrical goods, chemicals and metals. He bought the Ashio copper mine from the Japanese government in 1877, which he later organized, with his other holdings, into an industrial conglomerate called the Furukawa zaibatsu, one of the most important in Japan. Japanese companies today with the names "Furukawa" and "Fuji", often belong to this group.