The orgin of the Mitsubishi Trilobe symbol
Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 6:17 pm
I found this interesting historical piece on the UK club site, posted by the administrator, MDOCUK (Simon). Hope he doesn't mind my lifting it and posting it here, but it's something all Mitsu owners might like to know...
In 1854 feudal Japan, a man named Yataro Iwasaki, son of a provincial farmer whose grandfather sold the family’s samurai status to settle some debt, began his career on the wrong foot: he was called home from school at the age of 19 when his father was injured in a dispute with the village leader. Iwasaki asked a local magistrate to hear his case, and when refused, accused the man of corruption. Iwasaki was promptly jailed for seven months.
Fast forward to 1868: Iwasaki was working for the Tosa clan when the Meiji Restoration abolished Japan’s feudal clan system. He acquired Tsukumo Shokai, the Tosa clan’s shipping business and renamed it Mitsubishi in 1873.
It was a fourth-generation Iwasaki, a man named Kayota Iwasaki, who turned Mitsubishi into a giant corporate group that included an automobile manufacturing company, Mitsubishi Motors.
The name Mitsubishi was a combination of the words "mitsu" (three) and "hishi" (water chestnut, used in Japan to mean a rhombus or a diamond shape). The official translation of the name was "three diamonds."
The Mitsubishi logo was a combination of the Iwasaki family crest, three stacked diamonds, and the three-leaf crest of the Tosa Clan.
- car-logo-mitsubishi.jpg (9.39 KiB) Viewed 2853 times
Fast forward to 1868: Iwasaki was working for the Tosa clan when the Meiji Restoration abolished Japan’s feudal clan system. He acquired Tsukumo Shokai, the Tosa clan’s shipping business and renamed it Mitsubishi in 1873.
It was a fourth-generation Iwasaki, a man named Kayota Iwasaki, who turned Mitsubishi into a giant corporate group that included an automobile manufacturing company, Mitsubishi Motors.
The name Mitsubishi was a combination of the words "mitsu" (three) and "hishi" (water chestnut, used in Japan to mean a rhombus or a diamond shape). The official translation of the name was "three diamonds."
The Mitsubishi logo was a combination of the Iwasaki family crest, three stacked diamonds, and the three-leaf crest of the Tosa Clan.
