North Bridge Road - Nippon Baiyaku Kaisha (Images from the Past)

Another street photograph from the Harrison Forman collection taken in 1941. The one that will catch most people's eye are of course the merchant shops Nippon Baiyaku Kaisha (49 and 51 North Bridge Road).

Nippon Baiaku Kaisha (49 and 51 North Bridge Road)
(source: Harrison Forman Collection, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries)

The earliest advertisement i could find about Nippon Baiyaku Kaisha was when in 1913 it was based at 32 Robinson Road and it was selling Fujisawa Camphor. The following year, the shop in their advertisements were from 494, North Bridge Road.  (From a later advertisement below, it seems that it was established in 

It was in the late 1920's a brand that i am familiar with was sold from Nippon Baiyaku Kaisha's shop at 49 and 51 North Bridge Road - Aji-no-moto  / Ajinomoto !

During the Japanese occupation, Nippon Baiyaku Kaisha moved from 49 & 51 North Bridge Road to No. 3 Malacca Street. It is from one of the advertisements, that we get insight that Nippon Baiyaku Kaisha was established in 1908 (from the advertisement you will see the word Est. 2568 which follows the Japanese Koki Calender,(so 2568 -660 is the Gregorian Year of 1908). They also opened a Kuala Lumpur branch at No. 2 Java Street.

What happened post war to the company, i am not sure at the moment. 

References

Harrison Forman Collection of the American Geographical Society Library of the University Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries
NewspaperSG. (website). National Library Board, Singapore.

About Harrison Forman and his Collection

Harrison Forman (1904-1978) was an American photographer and journalist. He wrote for The New York Times and National Geographic. During World War II he reported from China and interviewed Mao Zedong. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in Oriental Philosophy. His collection of diaries and fifty thousand photographs are now at American Geographical Society Library at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. The Harrison Forman Photo Collection contains over 3,800 prints and over 300 negatives. This is a fraction of the total Forman collection, sized at 98,000 images, most of which are in 35mm slide format. While the geographical coverage between the slides and photo collections is similar, the photo collection contains Forman’s early work including his Tibet imagery, the Sino-Japanese War, Chinese Civil War, the Henan Famine, and the Blitzkrieg of Poland.