Yamiyo no Hotaru

Chapter 34

Tachibana Hibiki, the chairman of Tachibana Trading Company, is by no means incompetent as a businessman, regardless of what he does outside his field of expertise. In fact, he is one of the most talented men in the world.

However, before the rising, the Tachibana family was defeated in the power struggle at the court and fell into the hands of the courtiers. Though the Tachibana family was supposed to decline as a failed noble family, it was rebuilt as a merchant family dealing in basic rice, marine products, and salt from the fishing village where the family was originally born, and imported goods as an extension of the family's business, with the trust and connections that came from the bloodline. In the several hundred years since then, it has established itself as one of the top ten wealthiest merchants in Fuso.

Nevertheless, as always in this world, rise and fall are the order of the day, and stagnation is always a sign of decline. The Tachibana family, which had been sitting on its throne, only striving to maintain the status quo and protect its vested privileges, was in fact in a situation where its debts exceeded its profits by the time his father died suddenly of a torn blood vessel due to the shock of business failure and Tachibana Hibiki became a young decorative head of the family, and its interests were considerably cut down by up-and-coming merchants who were competing with old powerful merchant families both in Japan and abroad. But then, the company was able to survive for a generation. Hibiki's ability to revive the situation in his own life should not be underestimated.

The first thing he did when he took office as the head of a major trading family was to change the name of the company. He changed the name of the company from Sea Salt Shop (Umishoya) to Tachibana Trading Company. This was a decision to make a fresh start in business.

Of course, simply changing the name was not enough. He was also enthusiastic about internal reforms. His restructuring of the business, changes in asset management methods, and the cleanup of internal corruption such as bribery and collusion alone proved that he was an extraordinary businessman.

In particular, his collection and training in human resources must have been remarkable. Although his main business was dealing with imported goods, he actively hired knowledgeable or skilled local people and Nanbans, and if necessary, he did not hesitate to bring them on board as executives of the trading company. Some people say that this was the reason why he changed the name from the Fuso-style "trading name" to the Nanban-style "trading company".

At the same time, the education of the same Fuso-kuni people also changed drastically. While many merchant families used to hire workers through apprenticeship, in which two out of five employees were said to be lucky if they stayed, he adopted a more advanced system of instruction and education centered on manuals, in Nanban's words, and at the same time improved the treatment of his employees.

He did this not out of consideration for his employees, but to secure talented human resources, to prevent the escape, corruption, and extraction of employees, which had been a problem for many merchant families, and to reduce training costs and shorten the period of training.

In addition, he has the ability to persuade the opposition of his father's and grandfather's generation of executives of the merchant families to his side, and the conservatives of the family who were trying to manipulate him as a puppet, and he can forcefully push through such reforms through forceful retirement, etc. Therefore, despite his radical reforms, he managed to keep the other merchant families united and not divide them. He was also able to retain the trust of his business partners, and on the contrary, he was able to expand the scale of the business... Nowadays, there are few people inside and outside of the country who doubt Tachibana Hibiki's ability as a businessman.

Of course, even if he is a first-rate businessman, there is no guarantee that he is perfect in other fields, especially as an individual. Every human being has his or her faults. He is no exception.