by Akio Morita
My prediction was right. Many calculator makers went bankrupt and others just got out of the market, taking a big loss. Today there are only three major makers of calculators, and in a way I have been vindicated. There was still much to be done in audio, television, and video to keep us challenged, and we were always looking for new applications.
But I must say here that, on reflection, I was probably too hasty in making the decision to get out of calculators. I confess that today I think it showed a lack of technical foresight on my part, just the thing I think we have been good at. Had we stayed with calculators, we might have developed early expertise in digital technology, for use later in personal computers and audio and video applications, and we could have had the jump on our competition. As things developed, we had to acquire this technology later, even though we once had the basis for it right in-house. So from a business viewpoint we were right in the short term, but in the long term we made a mistake. Fortunately, I haven’t made too many of those wrong short-term decisions.
In 1964, business was so good that we had to open a new television assembly plant to meet the demand for color sets because Japan was hosting the Summer Olympic Games that year and it seemed as though every family in the country had to have a color TV set on which to watch the games. The televised wedding of Crown Prince Akihito and Princess Michiko had stimulated black and white TV sales a few years before. In fact the excitement about the Olympics gave the entire nation a kind of unified national goal. The Olympics galvanized the country into making many important and needed improvements. Tokyo’s expressway system and the high-speed bullet train were needed long before the Olympic games were scheduled, but when Japan bid for the games and was awarded the honor, it was obvious that the road system could not handle the coming traffic, and the sight of Japan’s legendary traffic jams, which stretched for miles through city streets, and sometimes remained gridlocked for hours, would have been too humiliating for Japan to tolerate on international television, and so the expressway system was built in record time.
Our planners also realized that the influx of tourists during the Olympics and afterward would include thousands who were visiting Japan for the first time and would want to see the ancient capital of Kyoto, the commercial center of Osaka, and other places along the Pacific corridor west of Tokyo to Hiroshima and the southern island of Kyushu. These people would badly strain the existing rail system, which needed improvement anyway, and so the latest technology was blended to produce the computerized high-speed rail system called Shinkansen. Today the so-called bullet trains on that original line leave Tokyo Station every twenty minutes. Visitors still marvel at the smooth one-hundred-and-fifty-five-miles-per-hour ride they get on the bullet train, although that system has been in service for more than twenty years. New lines have been opened to the northern parts of the country, while the next generation of high-speed trains is being readied, a train floating magnetically and propelled by a linear motor at twice the speed of the bullet trains— and considerably faster than France’s high-speed TGV.
Also in that pre-Olympic campaign for improvements, Tokyo’s Haneda Airport was modernized and expanded, new hotels were built, new landscaping helped to beautify the city, and many private citizens and Japanese companies developed projects and new products keyed to the Olympics. The authorities recognized that the noisy blowing of automobile and truck horns was a bad pollution problem that would be embarrassing for Japan as well, and so they took this national drive for change and improvement as an opportunity to quiet the city by outlawing needless horn blowing.
This kind of modernization drive keyed to a national event is not unique to Japan, but it worked exceptionally well. In 1972 when the capital city of Sapporo in Hokkaido was host to the Olympic winter games, the city went through a similar major modernization program, including the construction of its first subway system, and visitors to the city during the Olympics marveled at the changes that had taken place. With the physical modernization also came an increased sense of civic pride in a city that had caught up with the modern era, leaving much of its provincial past behind. Sapporo citizens became more sophisticated and began to take a broader outlook toward the rest of the nation and the world outside.
For me, it was becoming more and more important to keep traveling abroad through the late sixties and visiting our growing network of production and research facilities in Japan. There didn’t seem to be enough hours in the day, and so it seemed logical for our company to have a company plane and later a helicopter. This is in itself a rarity in Japan, even today, where general aviation lags far behind that of the United States. But I soon had the advantage of being able to decide, for the sake of efficiency, whether to travel by road or air. Today I have a comfortable blue Mercedes 380 SEL in Tokyo and Sony has Aerospatiale 350 and 355 helicopters. (We are the sales agents for Aerospatiale in Japan.) Or I can take the Falcon jet, as I have, to China or elsewhere, although I almost always fly commercially overseas. (We are also the sales agents for Falcon in Japan. When I am in the States I sometimes fly a Falcon 50 or Falcon 100.)
Although I stopped counting my trips over the Pacific a long time ago, lengthy flights are not as tiring to me as to many others. I sleep wonderfully on planes; in fact, I sometimes get better rest in the air than I can in a hotel room. I bring a small box of sushi on board with me, just simple vinegared rice and raw fish, and I drink one small bottle of sake. I then wrap myself in a blanket, tell the stewardess not to wake me for meals or drinks or movies, and I go off to sleep immediately, almost like Adolph Gross at My Fair Lady.
I usually leave Tokyo in the early evening, arriving in New York the same evening (it is the same day because of the international date line, even though the flight time is about twelve hours). After I arrive in New York, I try to play about an hour and a half of tennis, then I sleep again until about 4 a.m., when I wake up and begin reading my business papers so that I will be ready for the day’s work at the opening of business. I am always partially jet-lagged, so I try to sleep as much as I can, because I can never really catch up with the lag before I must make another trip.
I thought my activities as chairman of the Electrical Industries Association of Japan (EIAJ) would slow down my travels a bit in 1985, but I still managed to cram some really rapid globe-hopping trips into the schedule. A trip, for example, from Tokyo to New York, to London, from London to Los Angeles and then to Hawaii, and from Hawaii to Los Angeles to Paris and back to Tokyo in less than two weeks is not unusual for me.
Traveling like that I had to devise ways to cope with my work load. With half our business abroad and with our own corporate style as a product innovator, there was no model I could follow, so I just had to come up with a system that suited me and with which I could live. Now with communication systems improving all the time, it is possible to be in touch wherever you are, and I have been called a phone freak because I spend so much time on the telephone. Since our business is worldwide, when I am in New York, say, awake in my hotel room at 4 A.M., it is in the midst of some Sony person’s business day somewhere in the world, and I can always call.
I am a person who loves his work, but I enjoy play also—I took up tennis at age fifty-five and downhill skiing at sixty, and at sixty-four I went back to water skiing, but I find it very hard on the thighs. I have played golf for almost forty years, and I still enjoy the game with a sixteen handicap. Every Tuesday morning we have an executive committee meeting in Tokyo, and if I am in Japan I make it a point to attend, but first I play several sets of tennis from seven to nine o’clock in the morning at the indoor courts near the office. My brother, Masaaki, who is deputy president of Sony, is also fond of the game, and so I play with him sometimes and with other Sony executives. I like to play sports with young people because I get ideas from them and they give me a fresh slant on almost everything. I think it is good for my spirit, too, to be with young people who are enthusiastic.
Since I have been playing tennis, I notice my refl
exes are improving, and this pleases me, because when you start to age, the reflexes and reactions tend to slow down. It may mean the mind is going, also, although I hope not. When I began to play I missed the ball a lot, but now I find I can return very fast serves. Of course I don’t play singles anymore. I noticed when I began to ski that my balance wasn’t too good, but it has improved also. Every executive should be aware of the need for this kind of vigorous exercise, not only for the heart but also for the mind and the sense of confidence it gives you. It is important to maintain confidence in yourself.
Flying is a case in point for me. On one of my first rides in the company helicopter, I noted that the pilot was older than I was, and it occurred to me that if anything happened to him while we were flying we would crash. It would be silly for me to sit there in the back seat and worry, I thought. So I took out a learner’s permit, climbed into the copilot’s seat, and learned how to fly a helicopter, just in case. As long as I fly with a pilot who is also a licensed instructor in helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft, I can legally handle the controls of either without having to get my pilot’s license, so all our pilots are instructor-rated. I keep my license renewed each year, not because I intend to fly the helicopter on any trips, but just in case I have to take over; I do not want to be helpless. I feel good with the confidence that comes with knowing I can land the thing.
One time when I was flying by helicopter from Geneva in an Aerospatiale 350, I said to the pilot, “This is the same helicopter as ours,” and he said, “I saw you at the airport in Paris and I thought you were a pilot as well as an executive. Here, you take it.” I didn’t want to take off from Geneva airport by myself so I asked him to take off, and then I took over for a while. I like helicopters a lot; they are more difficult to fly than a fixed-wing plane as far as balance and stability is concerned, but it’s really fun because of the maneuverability advantage the helicopter has over a fixed-wing plane.
Every day I am given homework by my secretaries. I have two fiberboard boxes with me always—one is black, the other reddish. The black one contains all the domestic material I must deal with and the reddish one is all international. I have four secretaries, two working on international and two on domestic matters. In the daytime I have no time to read any papers, because I receive and make so many phone calls and talk to visitors and have conferences—some people say the main thing Japanese executives do is hold meetings. The papers and letters keep coming whether I can keep up with them or not, so before I can go home I have to work my way through both those boxes each day. The black box may contain papers about Sony business, production, and sales reports, or queries, or have something to do with my EIAJ work, or other activities in the Keidanren, or Federation of Economic Organizations, such as the international investment and technical committees, which I chair. My international box may include invitations to speak in the United States or Europe or somewhere else, some details of problems or new plans for marketing or advertising, or tentative schedules for a new trip, and letters from friends and business associates overseas.
Also, we have a section at Sony called the Outside Liaison Section, which works almost exclusively for me. In this section, we have specialists in each of the areas I am involved in such as the EIAJ, the Keidanren, the Japan-U.S. Businessmen’s Conference, and the various councils I belong to. One is full-time in charge of my Keidanren affairs, another with EIAJ, and still another with government liaison. I also have an assistant to help me draft speeches, although I rarely speak from a text. My boxes also have memos from my staff, even newspaper clippings. My secretaries know how to reach me wherever I am anywhere in the world. My New York secretary and my Tokyo secretary can always find me. One time I was skiing in the mountains near Karuizawa in Japan, trying to take three consecutive days off, but it didn’t work out. I was paged on the slopes. (Usually my staff people try to solve problems without me; they did this only because they couldn’t answer for me.)
I sometimes get calls from the United States about congressional matters that might affect Sony, and all sorts of personal calls as well. I have five telephone lines in my home, two of them exclusively for my use. I also have my own special phones at our apartment in Hawaii, at our apartment in Museum Tower in New York, and at our country house at Lake Ashi near Mount Fuji.
The need for the special phone lines originally came about when we had a couple of teenagers at home, but we still keep the extra phones because it won’t be too long before our grandchildren will be using them. Having two lines exclusively for me is essential because I can use the second line to get information I might need while I am holding a caller on the first line. I just had a second line installed in my car. I also insist that every company executive when he takes office gets a special twenty-four-hour hot line installed in his home so that he is always reachable.
Even though I am constantly busy with work, I try to take short vacations when I can. In the winter I ski every weekend, and I play tennis on summer weekends. During the New Year holidays I usually spend seven or eight days in Hawaii playing golf and tennis. We often go to the Easter music festival at Salzburg, and the Wagner festival at Bayreuth, and I usually rent a Mercedes in Munich and drive there. It’s about one hundred and fifty-five miles, and sometimes my wife spells me at the wheel. We don’t get all that much chance to drive in Japan, and certainly no chance to drive as fast as you can in Germany, but I have a very responsive Toyota Soarer that we often use to drive to our weekend cottage in the mountains.
I like to travel fast, although I don’t consider myself a speed demon. One time when Yoshiko and I were in Bayreuth for the Wagner festival, the opera singer Peter Hoffman showed me his pride and joy, a twelve-hundred-cc Honda motorcycle. This huge and powerful machine is not available in Japan, but is much in demand in Germany where they have no speed limits on the autobahn. He invited me to drive it, but I declined, saying I would prefer to ride with him, and off we went for a spin. At one hundred and forty miles an hour I could hardly hold on, even though I had my arms locked around him, but it was exciting.
When we got back and dismounted, he asked me if I would like to ride in an aerobatic plane. Of course I said yes—it was something I had not done before. We all climbed into the car and drove out to the airport, where we met his friend who was a German aerobatics champion. He invited me to go up with him, and I of course jumped at the chance. When I was settled in the cockpit he said, “I’D watch you and if you get sick we will land.” I’ve never been sick in a plane, so I just nodded.
As soon as we took off, he handed the controls to me and told me to climb to four thousand feet, which I did. When I leveled off, he took over and without any warning went into his program—inside and outside loops, snap rolls, barrel rolls, stalls, spins, all of it. It seemed to go on for hours, and I was constantly involuntarily reaching for my seat belt to have something to hold on to. I have a very strong stomach, but I was happy when he signaled we were going down. As we turned into what I thought was our final approach, I could see Yoshiko and Peter Hoffman waiting for us on the tarmac, smiling and waving.
But just as we came over the edge of the runway, he rolled the plane upside down at about fifty feet and gunned it. We were so low I felt like my head was almost scraping the runway. My wife said she could see my hair hanging straight down as we whizzed by. I get a kick out of roller coasters and such things, which last about three minutes. Yoshiko and I both rode the stand-up roller coaster at Science Expo ’85 in Japan. But thirty minutes of aerobatics was the longest thrill I have had, a little too long. I must confess my legs were very shaky when I finally climbed out of the little stunt plane, and my thank you may have sounded a bit hollow.
I enjoy being in Europe, especially for the music and the great musicians, many of whom I have come to know very well through our products and through mutual friends in business as well as in the arts. In 1966, when Maestro Herbert von Karajan was conducting in Tokyo, we became close friends. He did not remember meeti
ng me before, but on my trip to Europe in 1953 I called on him when I visited Vienna. At that time Vienna was still under occupation by the Allied Powers, and I had to get special permission in London to go there.
I had just seen the film The Third Man, which takes place in Vienna, and I found it very thrilling to be going to that town of intrigue and mystery. I had booked a hotel through the travel agent in New York, and I arrived in the city at night and made my way to the hotel. In the morning when I came down for breakfast I saw red flags on almost all the tables in the dining room. I hadn’t realized it the night before but now it was clear that I was in the Soviet sector and this hotel was mainly for Russian officers. My friend, a Japanese composer named Shinji Toyama, was studying in Vienna at the time and he came to see me at the hotel. He had a worried expression on his face. “Why are you staying in the Russian sector?” he whispered, looking around nervously. I shrugged and stuck it out for a couple of days. My travel agent had booked the hotel and I didn’t know anything about how to go about changing it. The maitre d’hotel assigned me to a corner table in the dining room, which suited me fine at the time; I didn’t have to talk to anybody, just observe.
I went to the Vienna Philharmonic and there I met the great von Karajan, who was already a famous conductor, of course, and he asked me, “What do you do, Mr. Morita?” I told him in very broken English that I was in the electronics business and that I was making tape recorders. “Good,” he said. “Do you know Max Grundig? You should visit him.” Well, no, I told him, I didn’t know Max Grundig but I had visited the famous Grundig electronics factory in Germany before I came to Vienna, and I had had no introduction to the great man of German radio. Unfortunately I was not going back that way on my trip, but I met Grundig some years later. Von Karajan comes often and is a frequent guest in our home.