Sumitomo Masatomo

…in Kyōto in 1630 by Sumitomo Masatomo. His brother-in-law, Soga Riemon, had set up a small copper refinery that used a European-derived procedure for extracting the gold and silver content of copper ores. Soga’s oldest son, Tomomochi, who became Sumitomo’s son-in-law, established a copper refinery in Ōsaka that absorbed both…