Kushibiki Yumindo
, also given as Yumeto, Yumito, and Yumeno, was a Japanese impresario responsible for organizing many international exhibitions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Japanese Exhibition King Kushibiki Yumindo was born in the town of Gonohe, Aomori, either in 1859, as most Japanese sources claim, or 1865, as he stated on several occasions while in the United States. Little is known of his early life. A brief Japanese biography from the Aomori Prefectural Library states that he went to Tokyo with the intention of entering Keio Gijuku but was unsuccessful. According to a 1916 profile in California's Magazine, he "came first to America in 1884." The beginnings of his entrepreneurial career are similarly undocumented. According to the 1916 profile, "At the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893 he presented his first conception of an exploitation of Japan on the Midway, which proved highly successful, both as an instructive and popular exhibition and as a financial venture." Kushibiki's name does not, in fact, appear among the main organizers of that exposition, but within a few years he would become known as the "Japanese Exposition King." Kushibiki's success owed much to his collaboration with another Japanese organizer at the