Word: japanized
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Such slightly zany but practical gadgets have helped make the Matsushita Co. one of Japan's largest manufacturers of electrical goods (1957 sales: $130 million), and have given the company's founder and president, Konosuke Matsushita, 64, the highest taxable income in Japan ($500,000 last year...
...just, cheerful, correct and broadminded" to sharp reminders to "improve yourself through hard work" and exhortations to appreciate employee benefits, e.g., "Be grateful and repay kindness." Recitation over, employees break into a martial company song, The Song of National, that urges them: "For the building of the new Japan, unite your hearts, unite your efforts. Give your all. Let us send our products to the people of the world in an unending stream." Employees then tree off to their work benches, but the uplift does not end there. In their monthly pay envelopes are pictures of Founder Matsushita beaming broadly...
...patented a new type of plug (first of his 50 inventions), expanded rapidly, went into the manufacture of fighter planes during World War II. At war's end the Occupation purged him briefly, but by 1949 he was again going full blast. Today he makes 28% of Japan's radios, a high percentage of the TV sets, broadcasting equipment, a full line of kitchen appliances, motors, transformers and other electrical supplies...
...leftist's assertion that profits are wrong, that a "minus profit [i.e., a business loss] is a social crime." Like his opposite members in the U.S., Matsushita worries about taxes, frets over government interference: "Business skill cannot be deployed effectively unless businessmen have 70% to 80% freedom. In Japan there is about 50% government interference...
...harshest criticism is for other Japanese businessmen who copy foreign goods without paying royalties. Says Matsushita: "Other nations also copy, but they pay; Japan virtually steals. My company buys foreign patents or negotiates technical tie-ups with foreign companies, but the government stares coldly and says: 'Matsushita, you are causing dollars to leave Japan.' Such outmoded ideas will not make Japan progress...