To the right - Junichiro Hannya, Monument to Sontuko (Kinjiro) Ninomiya, 1983 - a bronze sculpture of the "Peasant Sage of Japan," 1787-1856 (200 South San Pedro Street)

That would be this fellow -

Part farmer, part philosopher and part government administrator, Ninomiya Sontoku (1787-1856) advocated diligence, cooperation, deference to authority and thrift as ways of improving Japan's rural economy at the end of the feudal Tokugawa era. He revitalized agriculture by establishing credit associations to finance roads, aqueducts and housing, and he taught farmers to apply new methods of irrigation and to use better fertilizers. Between 1830 and 1843, Ninomiya and his disciples established the hotoku movement to promote morality, industry and economy.

The government attempted to maintain a rural social structure by encouraging hotoku after the 1905 Russo-Japanese war. During the 1930s, Ninomiya's teachings were reinterpreted as supportive of Japan's aggressive military expansion. Small statues, based on an iconographic portrayal of Ninomiya at about age 14 learning to read while carrying a load of firewood on his back, were placed in elementary schools throughout Japan. Though initially installed as reminders to children of the ideal of combining work with study, these statues became associated with the pre-war period and many were destroyed by the American Occupational forces after World War II. Located in front of the Mitsui Manufacturers Bank, the bronze memorial to Ninomiya (which should be titled Ninomiya Sontuko in recognition of the sage's official name, rather than Kinjiro, which was both his boyhood and his popular name) replicates the design but greatly enlarges the size of the pre-World War II statues. Albert Taira, the Nisei developer of the bank building, proposed the statue to Obayashi, the contractor for the project, to symbolize the Issei's hard work and self-sacrifice when establishing roots in America. Obayashi commissioned the work from a Japanese foundry that in turn hired the artist to increase the size of the monument.