People · Japanese diplomat, Municipal Council director
Funatsu Tatsuichiro
船津辰一郎1873–1947
Japanese diplomat turned cotton-industry executive who sat on the Shanghai Municipal Council in 1926-1929 and 1932-1934 and was deputy chairman from 1933.
Funatsu Tatsuichiro (船津辰一郎, Chuánjīn Chényīláng) was one of the Japanese representatives on the Shanghai Municipal Council in the years before the war.
He began as an interpreter-student at the Japanese legation in 1895 and built a diplomatic career in China, serving in Yantai, Shanghai, Newchwang, Nanjing, Beijing and, from 1919, as consul-general at Tianjin. In 1926 he left government service to run the Japanese Cotton Spinners’ Association in China, whose members operated mills in Shanghai, and moved to the city.
He sat on the Municipal Council’s board from 1926 to 1929 and again from 1932 to 1934, serving as deputy chairman from 1933. In 1940 he took the chair of a cotton-improvement association for central China and later acted as economic adviser to the Wang Jingwei government and its Shanghai municipal government. He died in 1947. The gazetteer spells his name in Latin letters as “Funasu”; “Funatsu” is the usual reading of the characters.