ON JULY 25, 1916, a general meeting of the stockholders of the Dai-ichi Bank was held at the Tokyo Bankers Association. Of 2,858 stockholders, it is recorded, 165 attended and 1,415 sent letters of proxy. As the president of the bank Eiichi chaired the meeting as usual, and reported the business results for the first half (January–June) of that year along with a statement of accounts.

The shipping and munitions industries were flourishing as a result of demand generated by World War I, and other manufacturing industries too had increased their investment in plant and equipment. The country had a large trade surplus of 185 million yen and the surplus went on expanding, so the money market was sluggish. Plant and equipment investment related to silk reeling had increased due to the high price and rising export of silk, but interest rates were falling. Therefore, the Dai-ichi Bank, like other banks, had a hard time implementing effective management of money, but fortunately, the efforts of the staff had enabled the bank to achieve a net profit of 1,092,425 yen for the first half of the year. Combined with the profit carried forward from the previous half year, the profit came to 1,804,305 yen.

The general meeting unanimously approved the statementrelated documents and the profit appropriation proposal, and the proceedings came to an end. Then, Eiichi asked for permission to speak. After apologizing for talking about personal matters and breaking with the conventions of such general meetings and making those present stay longer on a hot day, he announced his decision to resign from the post of president he had held for 43 years.

For him, Eiichi said, the stockholders, especially those who had held stocks in the bank since its early days, were comrades who had given support to the totally new idea of introducing banking to Japan along with other modern ideas of business. Subsequently the bank's business had expanded; society, too, had grown more complex, and relations between the bank and its stockholders had changed, but he had endeavored to maintain sincere and close connections with the stockholders.