MUFG - The Origins of Our Bank

Above:Marunouchi during the late Meiji period.
Below:Photos of each bank at the time. From the left: Mitsubishi Bank, The Bank of Tokyo, Sanwa Bank, Tokai Bank.

Prologue

BTMU today descends from a number of illustrious predecessor banks, dating as far back as the seventeenth century, but gaining momentum after the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and accelerating rapidly in the twentieth century. Our modern history began with revolution. When the Meiji Restoration ended the Tokugawa shogunate, the shogunate’s business interests were disbanded and made available to aspiring entrepreneurs.

Modern mergers

During the late 1980s, soaring land prices in Japan and speculative property loans led to a financial bubble that burst in the early 1990s, leaving many banks with unrecoverable loans and creating chaos and recession in the nation’s economy. Mitsubishi Bank and the Bank of Tokyo had escaped the troubles relatively unscathed because of prudence and caution in their business practices.

The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ's current head office.