Kōjirō Matsukata

was a Japanese businessman who, in parallel to his professional activities, devoted his life and fortune to amassing a collection of Western art which, he hoped, would become the nucleus of a Japanese national museum focused particularly on masterworks of the Western art tradition. Although his plans were not realized in his lifetime, his vision is partly realized in Japan's National Museum of Western Art (NMWA) in Ueno Park, central Tokyo. where part of his collection is exhibited.

Early years Born in Satsuma, Kagoshima, Matsukata was the third son of the early Meiji period Finance Minister and genrō, Matsukata Masayoshi who was also Japan's fourth prime minister.

Business career After being educated in the United States at Rutgers Preparatory School and studying at Rutgers University (where he was a member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity and a member of the freshman football team) Kōjirō Matsukata became president of Kawasaki Shipbuilding Company (Kawasaki Shōzō) in 1896. He then went on to become head of Kawasaki Dockyards from 1916 through 1923, which was the group's main company.

As such he led the expansion of shipbuilding activities, both commercial and military, and created various other businesses, including a major shipping line, Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha also known as K Line.

These companies progressively evolved into a major global engineering and industrial conglomerate, which ultimately took the name of Kawasaki Heavy Industries in 1969.

The financial success he enjoyed in the early part of the century was later affected adversely by economic downturns in the 1920s and 1930s; but much of his art collection remained intact despite the collapse of his business interests.

Matsukata invested his significant personal fortune in the acquisition of several thousand examples of Western painting, sculpture and decorative arts. He collected these art works throughout Europe, largely in Paris. Matsukata bought the Rodin masterpiece, "Gates of Hell", which is currently to be seen at the Rodin Museum in Paris; and the sculptures on display in the NMWA entrance plaza were made from the same original molds. In the end, he hoped to see his collections in an art museum in Tokyo where visitors could come into direct contact with Western art,

Matsukata is also famous for his collection of ukiyo-e woodblock prints which had been scattered throughout the world. The 1925 exhibition of the woodblock prints Matsukata collected abroad is thought to have been the first of its kind in Japan. Today about 8,000 ukiyo-e prints from the Matsukata collection are housed in the Tokyo National Museum. They remained in France until after World War II, and, as part of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, they were briefly confiscated by France. The French government eventually decided to give back the majority of those artworks to the Japanese government as a sign of the renewed amity between the two countries, except for 14 valuable paintings by Monet, Van Gogh, Courbet, Cézanne, and others which were retained to fill in gaps in the French national collection.

The remaining objects in the Matsukata collection totaled 370 works, including 196 paintings, 80 drawings, 26 prints and 63 sculptures—including massive public statuary by Rodin which now grace the landscaped area in front of the entrance to NMWA. which is how they fell into French hands at the end of World War II. These artworks, designated as the Matsukata Collection, were returned by France to Japan in 1959, which led to the opening of the National Museum of Western Art.