Messrs Inouye and Shibusawa, then together in the Finance Department at Tokio, cordially agreed with the proposals of Ito Hirobumi, as conveyed in his reports from America, and began to take the needful steps for establishing a National Bank of Japan on a small scale. Mr Shibusawa was made Chairman of a Committee of Investigation into the system of national banks, and after careful study the Committee framed regulations which were put into force by the Government under the National Bank Act in November 1872. The Dai-Ichi Ginko, _lit._: No. 1 Bank, prospectus appeared in December 1872, the proposers—two of them members of the renowned house of Mitsui, two of the firm of Ono, and Minomura Rizayemon, five well-known men, subscribed 2,000,000 yen, and offered 1,000,000 yen for public subscription. It illustrates the change which has come over Japan in more recent years that, notwithstanding every effort, in 1873, when the list closed, only 4408 shares had been taken in the new venture, and the capital of the bank was reduced to 2,440,800 yen, equal at present rates to about £250,000 sterling. The public had not sufficient understanding of the corporation system to be able to appreciate the new enterprise. A few years later the joint-stock concerns were numbered by the hundred. The Dai-ichi Gin-ko began business on the 20th July 1873, in the picturesque block at Nihonbashi, in Tokio, which had belonged to the Mitsui Company, and had been bought from them for 128,500 yen, and it continued thenceforward to transact a general banking business, and to act as accountant of the Finance Department, for at that time every department of the Government had its own accountant and kept its own independent set of accounts. Mr Shibusawa,—as he was then,—on resigning his post of Junior Vice-Minister of Finance, was elected General Superintendent of the Dai-ichi Gin-ko, and discharged the duties of president.