Jujiro Matsuda

was a Japanese industrialist and businessman whose company, Toyo Kogyo, led to the founding of the present-day multinational automaker Mazda Motor Corporation, in 1984. Early life The son of a fisherman, Matsuda was born in Hiroshima in 1875. He was apprenticed to a blacksmith in Osaka at the age of 14 and invented the "Matsuda-type pump" in 1906. He later took over management of the foundry at which he apprenticed and changed the name of the organization to "Matsuda Pump Partnership"; he was eventually forced out of the company, but launched an arms manufacturing company soon after: the eponymously-named Matsuda Works. Matsuda would see his fledgling company's fortunes improve when it was commissioned as a supplier to the Tsar of Russia and as the manufacturer of the Type 99 rifle for the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces. Career By 1921, Matsuda had accumulated significant wealth owing to his previous business ventures. He moved back to Hiroshima after he was asked to take over management of floundering artificial cork manufacturer , which was placed into receivership by its creditors when the market for artificial cork dried up following the end of World War I. The unprofitable cork business ceased, and Matsuda focused on tool manufacturing. 1931 oversaw the introduction of the "Mazda-Go" motorized tricycle, manufactured in what is now the city of Fuchū and the company, now known as , would concentrate on motor vehicle manufacturing. World War II and aftermath In August 1945, the Toyo Kogyo headquarters in Hiroshima sustained heavy damage in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, which was carried out by the United States against Imperial Japan in the closing stages of World War II. The Fuchū plant, located over from the epicentre of the nuclear explosion, was left relatively unscathed; Matsuda offered its usage for the Hiroshima bureau of the Japan Broadcasting Corporation.