Tomomochi Sumitomo

Tomomochi Sumitomo was the copper merchant and industrialist credited with building the Sumitomo house into a major merchant house.

Born in a family of Riemon Soga, a copersmith who owned a copper refinery and shop called Izumiya in Kyoto, Tomomochi managed to merge the Sumitomo and Soga houses by marriage to Masatomo's daughter. Thanks to a new technique called nambanbuki that his father invented for extraction of silver from copper the businss flourished. Tomomochi established a copper refinery in Osaka that absorbed both business families' business operations and became the centre of the Japanese copper industry. The company became the foundation of the future Sumitomo enterprise.