Word: yoshiaki
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Seiji Tsutsumi, 61, is the dapper, soft-spoken head of the Seibu Saison Group (1987 sales: $28 billion), a conglomerate of department stores, supermarkets and service organizations. Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, 54, square jawed and hard driving, owns the Seibu Railway group, which operates $400 billion worth of railways, hotels, golf courses and ski resorts. The two are half brothers and have long been locked in intense competition. Last fall the conflict broke into the open when Seiji's Seibu Saison Group acquired the Inter-Continental hotel chain for nearly $2.2 billion, a challenge to Yoshiaki's hotel domain...
...They are as different as water and fire," says a family friend. Seiji and Yoshiaki are the sons of the late Yasujiro Tsutsumi, a cantankerous millionaire who became speaker of the lower house of the Diet after making a fortune in railroads, hotels and department stores. Nicknamed "Pistol" for his buccaneering business methods, Yasujiro bought out impoverished aristocrats who could not pay inheritance taxes during the late '40s and early '50s, put up hotels on the newly acquired land and cockily called the hotel chain Prince. The 484-room Tokyo Prince, for example, is set on the former cemetery...
...Yoshiaki's life took a less refined path. His mother was one of Yasujiro's mistresses. This illegitimate son was the favorite, and he still praises his father as "the greatest entrepreneur I've ever met." While Seiji was merely given control of a money-losing department store, Yoshiaki inherited not only the railway and real estate portions of the empire but also his father's political clout: he is close to Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, for example, and backed him in his fight for the leadership in 1987. A rugged sportsman who owns the national-champion baseball team...
Originally, Yoshiaki was thought to have more of his father's no-holds- barred business acumen, but Seiji showed prescience and boldness in leading the Seibu stores to the forefront of Japanese retailing. The increasingly astute businessman predicted that young, affluent Japanese would spend more than their parents and guessed that they would prefer high-priced, stylish goods. Seiji's rise has not been totally smooth. In the mid-1970s Yoshiaki rescued his half brother from ruin when the Seibu Kanko Kaihatsu company, a leisure, real estate and tourism group, incurred debts of $550 million. The terms of the rescue...
Seiji has been one-upped in some family matters as well. One can imagine his frustration when, in 1964, the younger, illegitimate Yoshiaki broke tradition and presided over their father's funeral as chief mourner. Twenty years later, when the funeral of Yoshiaki's mother was held at Tokyo's Zojo-Ji temple, a blimp reportedly flew overhead publicizing a newly opened store belonging to Seiji's group...