Overview

The story of Sony's postwar success does not quite follow the popular "rags to riches" pattern. In 1944, the future founding fathers, Masaru Ibuka, a civil engineering contractor, and Akio Morita, a Navy lieutenant with an engineering degree from Osaka University, met in a task force charged to develop a heat-seeking missile for the Japanese Navy. Their work was too late to change the course of war, but the duo turned out to be the perfect complement: Ibuka, an impulsive tinkerer and technical explorer, and Morita, a marketing genius with a keen business acumen and a drive for recognition and success.

Both came from well off and well connected families. Ibuka's father-in-law was governor of Niigata prefecture, and Morita as Akio Kyuzaemon Morita the 15th, was to be head of the household of a prosperous sake brewing family from Nagoya, which also produced miso (fermented soy bean paste) soup base and soy sauce. Morita grew up in affluence in pre-war Japan and throughout his life as an absentee chief (his brother managed the family business), his word was law as a traditional household head.

When Ikeda and Morita set up their Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (Tokyo telecommunications company) in the ruins of Tokyo in 1946, Morita's father contributed most of the capital, and the company's Board of Advisors was packed with influential people with good financial connections. Hence placing stock and obtaining credit was never a problem (Nathan, p. 24). The fledging company started out with radio repair and by...