Masajiro Furuya

[3] He proved an able merchant, and his Furuya Company made profits in trade related to the Sino-Japanese War and Klondike Gold Rush, and gained many customers in Seattle's growing Japanese community: this was the period in which the N.Y.K.

[6] His blue-suited "Furuya men" traveled the west, taking orders for goods from Japanese laborers throughout the region.

Besides being a major supplier of Japanese foodstuffs in the region, he opened an Oriental fine arts store[4] in 1895,[3] which eventually came to be located at 1304 Second Avenue (today, part of the site of Benaroya Hall, Seattle's symphony hall), and started the Furuya Construction Company, mainly a labor contractor, which helped build the Great Northern Railway, the Milwaukee Road and the Oregon Short Line.

[4] In 1900, a headquarters was built to his specifications at 216 South Second Avenue, mainly for his grocery and Japanese art products business, and became a focal point of Seattle's then-thriving Nihonmachi or Japantown.

[8] The company also engaged in real estate, postal service, banking, and printing, and sold rice to the Imperial Japanese Navy.

[9] Despite his austere lifestyle and strong Christian beliefs, Ronald Takaki writes that Furuya's fortune may have had significant roots in the underground economy of Seattle's Skid Road.

"[7] The Furuya Resort House was built on a 6 acres (2.4 ha) property that included 300 feet (91 m) of the Bainbridge Island shore.

The grounds had two stone lanterns, a pond and bridge, a large greenhouse and eight hothouses, with 5,000 pots of lilies, cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, geraniums, and chrysanthemums.

[4] He experimented with bamboos and was probably the first to import udo (Aralia cordata) and certain types of soybeans used in making soy sauce.

Most of the year he[4] and his family[7] lived on the upper floor of the company boarding house and he ate a simple, largely traditional Japanese diet.

[4] Furuya moved to Southern California in 1931 and tried unsuccessfully to reestablish himself, finally returning, ill, to Japan in July 1937.