THIS BOOK IS an exploration of Shibusawa Eiichi's (1840–1931) private-sector diplomacy, activities in a field then far ahead of his time that dominated the last thirty years of his life. I became interested in this particular part of my great-grandfather's life back in 1970 because I wanted to understand the ideas, convictions, and way of life that lay behind the efforts that consumed him even in advanced age. Even now, forty years later, I think, Eiichi's concerns and activities are sure to shed light on the precarious position of Japan in the world in the first thirty years of the twentieth century and on what we could learn from that time in guiding our path one century later. We are now living in an era when world politics is not just about state-to-state relations, but in which an increasingly wide range of actors – corporations, non-governmental organizations, and individuals included – can and do play an active role in how different peoples and countries engage with each other. As such, Eiichi's pioneering activities are both relevant and instructive for all of us.

Many have written about the extraordinary revolution known as the Meiji Restoration and the dramatic process through which Japan's society and economy were transformed and modernized. Of the numerous able and talented leaders who contributed to the transformation, Shibusawa Eiichi is remarkable in terms of the broad scope of his activities, the diversity of his ideas, and the scale of his achievements. For example, he established the First National Bank, overcoming all sorts of difficulties to create East Asia's first Western-style financial institution. Laboring in a context still deeply influenced by the feudal institutions through which the country had been governed for centuries, he negotiated and energized the building of a modern economy based on democratic principles, involving himself in the founding and management of several hundred enterprises and establishing various industrial associations. He made core contributions to the modern infrastructure of the country, and many of his activities were well ahead of his time.

These achievements were to win Eiichi such epithets as Japan's “founder of modern capitalism” and “grand old man” of the financial world, but his concerns did not stop with business and finance. His endeavors in the cultural realm were of surprising breadth and diversity as well.