Yoshisuke Aikawa was the founder and first president of the Nissan zaibatsu. He was born in 1880 in what is now part of the city of Yamaguchi. Aikawa graduated from Tokyo Imperial University in engineering and began working for Shibaura Saisakusho, the forerunner of Toshiba. He made a trip to the United States where he investigated malleable cast iron. When he returned to Japan, he established the Tobata Foundry in 1909, which is now known as the Hitachi Metals Company.

In 1928, Yoshisuke Aikawa became president of the Kuhara Mining Company, now the Nippon Mining & Metals Company. He created a holding company called Nihon Sangyo or Nissan for short. In the stock market boom that followed 1931, Aikawa bought controlling interests in more than a hundred Nissan subsidiary companies to create the Nissan Konzerne. This group included some of the most technologically advanced companies in Japan at the time.

In 1937 he moved to Manchukuo, eventually moving Nissan’s headquarters to Manchukuo, where it became part of the Manchukuo Industrial Development Company. As president and director, he guided all industrial efforts in Manchukuo and received bank loans from American steelmakers to support the Manchukuo economy.

Yoshisuke Aikawa disagreed with the political views of the Imperial Japanese Army and predicted that Nazi Germany would be defeated if a general war broke out. He also supported the Fugu Plan to settle Jewish refugees in Manchukuo. Forced by the Kwantung Army, Aikawa resigned as president in 1942 and returned to Japan. After Japan’s surrender, Yoshisuke Aikawa was arrested by the American occupation authorities and imprisoned in Sugamao Prison for twenty months on suspicion of Class A war crimes. He was released but during this time the Nissan zaibatsu had been disbanded.

After his release, Yoshisuke Aikawa played a key role in Japan’s post-war economic reconstruction, buying a commercial bank to arrange small business loans. The zaibatsu was reformed into Nichiyo-kai, Nissan Group.

Nissan Motors was a small side business for the Nissan Group compared to the core business of real estate. During the real estate crisis of the 1990s, the Nissan Group divested most of its real estate and gave Nissan Motors more independence, especially after Renault SA bought a 39% stake. Nissan’s turnaround can be attributed to CEO Carlos Ghosn, who took over in 1999. He severed Nissan Motors from Nissan keiretsu connections and debts.

Yoshisuke Aikawa died in 1967 of gallbladder inflammation and is buried in the Tama Cemetery outside Tokyo.