The bank's operations date to 1880, when Mitsubishi group founder
Yataro Iwasaki established the in Tokyo. Mitsubishi acquired the business of the Tokyo, Oita and Hakodate-based 119th National Bank in 1885, and spun this business off to an independent Mitsubishi Bank in 1919. The bank opened branches in London and New York in 1920. By 1929, Mitsubishi Bank had only 3 offices outside of Japan and its colonies, less than Mitsui bank or Sumitomo Bank and much less than the
Yokohama Specie Bank,
Bank of Chōsen and
Bank of Taiwan, for which foreign trade was part of a public-interest mandate under special legislation. During World War II, Mitsubishi Bank was a financier of Japanese interests in
Manchuria through its branch in
Dalian, opened in 1933. Its London and New York offices closed during the war, but reopened in 1953. In 1969, Mitsubishi and
Dai-Ichi Bank, Japan's oldest bank, began preparations for a merger, which would have led to a major regrouping in the bank-led
keiretsu system of the era. But the plan met opposition among Dai-Ichi's management and its customers in the Furukawa and Kawasaki groups, who feared that Mitsubishi would dominate the combined bank and that their businesses would be absorbed by the relatively strong Mitsubishi group. As a result, the merger was called off. Two years later, Dai-Ichi merged with
Nippon Kangyo Bank to form
Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank. Mitsubishi was known as a very conservative lender and was one of the few Japanese banks to emerge from the
Japanese asset price bubble relatively unscathed. It acquired the Nippon Trust Bank in 1994. File:Sawara-mitsubishikan,katori-city,japan.JPG|Former branch building in
Katori, Chiba File:Kobe familiar hall01s3200.jpg|Former branch building in
Kobe File:Kyu-Mitsubishi-Bank-Kyoto-Branch-19990926.jpg|Former branch building in
Kyoto, photographed in 1999 File:At Kyoto 2024 138.jpg|The same building in 2024 following partial reconstruction File:Former Mitsubishi Bank Otaru Branch01s3.jpg|Former branch building in
Otaru, Hokkaido File:Former Mitsubishi Bank Building Shanghai.JPG|Former branch building in
Shanghai, lately a branch of the China Postal Savings and Remittance Bureau ==Notable alumni==