Largest Offering

Japan's rivers no longer dash down Japan's mountains only to spray cherry trees and artists painting their delectable scrolls. The waters now swoop into flumes and pipes and against great turbine fins to light bulbs in Japan's homes and turn the machines of her factories. Japan's electrical enterprises now are surpassed only by those of the U. S. and Germany. They represent $1,834,000,000 capital.

Last week the first of those enterprises both in time and size--the Tokyo Electric Light Co.--offered to sell $121,809,250 mortgage bonds. This is the largest corporate (as distinct from governmental) bond offering and the largest power & light company issue, either foreign or domestic, ever made. And yet investment bankers sought eagerly for allotments. To Japanese bankers went approximately $30,000,000 worth, to British $21,899,250, to U. S. $70,000,000.

That $70,000,000 was the largest foreign financing offered in the U. S. this year, and it brought together 30 of the country's mightiest investment bankers. With the Guaranty Co. as head of the selling syndicate were:

Dillon, Read Union Trust, Pittsburgh

Blyth, Witter Mellon National

Halsey, Stuart First National, Boston

Lee, Higginson Illinois Merchants Trust

Bonbright Continental National

Harris, Forbes First Trust & Savings, Chicago

Brown Bros. Union Trust, Cleveland

Field, Glore Mitsui Bank

Otis Bankers Trust

W. A. Harriman J. & W. Seligman

W. C. Langley International Acceptance Bank

Hemphill, Noyes Stone & Webster & Blodgett

J. G. White Edward B. Smith

Hayden, Stone E. H. Rollins & Sons H. M. Byllesby

Although J. P. Morgan & Co. were not in this syndicate (they always lead, never follow), yet they have been closely connected with Japan's international financing and the bond salesmen who sallied out of those 30 company offices last week with Tokyo Electric Light mortgage bonds carried on their banners a legend of Japan phrased by Morgan Partner Thomas W. Lament. Said he last October, just as he was completing a visit of inspection over the country and its possessions: "We believe in Japan; we believe in her peaceful intentions; we believe in her courage, her patience, her faith and her loyal friendship for America."

Yet only 75 years ago Japan mortally feared and hated the U. S. and all the Occident. But Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry in 1853 successfully "urged Japan to join the modern comity of nations." In a flurry of trepidation and prayers the Japanese received his suggestions, sewing machines, toy trains--and a telegraph.

The telegraph set was in many ways the best gift that Commodore Perry gave in 1854. The West knew very little about electricity at the time. Scientists and mechanics were still experimenting. And the Japanese learned with the rest of the world.

Only in 1873, at Vienna, was it discovered that one electric dynamo could make another rotate. The second became a motor, and the electric transmission of power came within the possibilities of engineering. A Russian, Paul Jablochkov, invented the arc light in 1876; Thomas Edison the incandescent light in 1879. In 1881 Thomas Edison opened the first public electric supply station. And only five years later Tokyo, for more than two centuries secluded from European and U. S. science, also had its electric light system. The Tokyo Electric Light Co. was the innovation. It first served current for 75 lamps.

The native name for the Tokyo Electric Light Co. is Tokyo Dento Kabushiki Kaisha.

Although the company 42 years ago served current to only 75 lights, last year it manufactured and purchased 2,614,978,628 kilowatt hours of current. In the U. S. only three companies--Buffalo, Niagara & Eastern Power Corp. System, the Commonwealth Edison Co. and the New York Edison Co. System--surpassed it. The Tokyo company serves 11,395 sq. mi. across the most populous and highly developed midsection of Nippon, Japan's main island. In the territory are Tokyo (population 2,000,000) where the imperial government sits, Yokohama the seaport, and a great hinterland of rice fields, silkworm farms and river industries. Along Tokyo bay are shipyards, steel & iron foundries, factories for making textiles, paper, chemicals, machinery, pottery, cement, rayon. What coal those plants can get in Japan is of poor grade; what coal they can get by import is expensive. So they turn for power to electricity. And the Tokyo Electric Light Co. supplies it. No wonder, remarks Wall Street, the company has paid dividends every one of its 42 years of existence and had $45.344,701 gross revenue last year.

And yet if the 30 investment houses that were selling the $70,000,000 mortgages in the U. S. did not have confidence in the company's management, they would not touch the securities.

At the head of the Tokyo Electric Light Co. is Baron Seinosuke Goh, 63, chairman of the directorate. He was one of the young men whom the government sent to Germany and Belgium to study economics, international law and politics. Upon completion of his studies he entered the Emperor's department of Agriculture and Commerce. But he soon left government service for business. He is president of the Toyo Iron Mfg. Co., a director of the Teikoku Commercial Bank, and an adviser to Nippon Yusen Kaisha (Japanese Mail Steamship Co.).

President of Tokyo Electric Light is the very old fashioned, although comparatively young Shohachi Wakao, 45. His natal family was the Hirose. But by an intelligent Japanese custom whereby powerful families maintain succession of their primacies, he was adopted (1896) into the great Wakao family of bankers, and later reverently married Kiyono, the daughter of Tamizo Wakao. Like Chairman Baron Seinosuke Goh, President Shohachi Wakao has legal training, is a member of the Japanese house of peers, and holds several corporate directorships.

Like them both in law, business and peerage is Kengo Mori, financial adviser to the company. He is well and respectfully known as a financial genius in Wall Street, The City (London), the Place de la Bourse (Paris). He was the Japanese financial commissioner in the three countries for more than a decade.