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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 31, 1993                   TAG: 9301310188
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: C-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: TOKYO                                LENGTH: Medium

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WORLD'S RICHEST MAN DIES

Taikichiro Mori, ranked by Forbes magazine as the world's richest man, died of heart failure Saturday at a Tokyo hospital, a company official said. He was 88.

Mori, a landowner and president of Mori Building Co., was worth an estimated $13 billion, heading an empire of 83 buildings on some of the world's most expensive land.

Mori was unpretentious, often seen working at his office wearing a traditional kimono.

In an interview with The Associated Press two years ago, he acknowledged feeling uncomfortable about being labeled the world's richest man. Forbes accorded him that title in 1991 and 1992.

"I was thankful, but I felt uncomfortable. I have been living and working at my own pace all this time, and now I'm getting all this attention," he said.

Taking advantage of the rapid postwar economic growth in Japan, Mori built his empire from two buildings owned by his father.

Born in 1904 in Tokyo, Mori graduated from Tokyo Shoka University, now called Hitotsubashi University, in 1928. After World War II, he taught trade theory at Yokohama City University, where he became chief of the School of Commerce.

He left academia in his mid 50s to follow his father's footsteps in real estate. Mori Buildings was established in 1959 and gradually acquired property in the Toranomon area in downtown Tokyo.

His Forbes' ranking was partly due to Japan's spiraling land prices that intensified in the 1980s. Mori himself was critical of skyrocketing land prices and called it Japan's "most pressing problem."

"In a place like Tokyo where land is relatively sparse, land prices rise far above their use value. And now this situation is extreme," he said.

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