The modern Texas rice industry was shaped in part by the Mayumi brothers, who came from Japan in the early twentieth century. Rice had been grown in limited quantities in Jefferson County since the 1840s, but many believed improved agricultural practices could make it successful in the region. In 1902, Japanese Consul General Sadatsuchi Uchinda attended a Beaumont meeting of the Rice Growers Association of America, which offered an open invitation to Japanese rice farmers. Yoshio Mayumi, a banker and landowner from Mie Prefecture on Honshu, visited the area in 1904 and returned in 1905 to buy more than 1700 acres near Taylor Bayou. He brought fifteen workers from his hometown, and the farming community included a three-story house for his family, another building for the workmen, and a community dance hall. Although rice was Yoshio's only crop, he also owned livestock including hogs and cattle, as well as mules and horses for farm work. The venture showed early promise, but economic difficulties and repressive immigration laws contributed to its decline; after Yoshio returned to Japan in 1915 and left the operation to his brother Yasuo, the family sold the land in 1924. The Mayumi family's importance lay in both its many contributions to the rural community and in foreshadowing the later success of the Texas rice industry, now an economic mainstay of the upper Texas Gulf Coast.