The Tokai Bank (東海銀行) was a leading Japanese commercial bank based in Nagoya. In the second half of the 20th century, it was the dominant bank in the Chūkyō metropolitan area of central Japan, the home of Toyota and other manufacturing firms.
Tokai Bank was formed by merger during World War II, and eventually merged in 2000-2002 with Sanwa Bank and Toyo Trust and Banking to form UFJ Bank, a predecessor of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.[1]
History
The Tokai (lit. 'East Sea', namely the Sea of Japan) Bank was established in 1941, before Japan's entry into World War II though well into the Second Sino-Japanese War. It resulted from the merger of three smaller banks of roughly equal size, namely the Ito Bank (est. 1881), Nagoya Bank (est. 1882), and Aichi Bank (est. 1896), all three based in Nagoya. The latter was itself the continuation of the Eleventh National Bank, originally established in 1877 under the system of National Banks in Meiji Japan (not to be confused with a later bank also named Aichi Bank).[2]