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When Akio Morita lectured in London earlier this year he ruffled the
feathers of many in business by stating what is painfully obvious to anyone
dealing with large British companies. Most are run by people, often accountants,
who understand little of the technology on which the company’s success depends.
Two years ago, Morita had upset industrialists in the US with a tract entitled
The Japan that can say no, which reminded them that US industry now relies
heavily on electronics made in Japan. Such un-Japanese frankness comes as
no surprise to anyone who has tracked Morita’s career.

Back in 1946, in war-torn Japan, Morita, a former naval officer, founded
a telecommunications engineering company, Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo. Working with
money that his father lent him, Morita employed 20 people to make specialist
electronic equipment, such as voltmeters. Over the next ten years the company
made the first Japanese tape recorders, television sets, cameras and radios.

In the mid-1950s Morita realised that the company’s name was cumbersome.
He coined a new and simple name that worked as well in the US as Japan.
He also learned to speak English. In later years Morita relieved shopkeepers
and customers of the absurd burden of remembering cumbersome model numbers.
Instead of struggling with the ‘X322467A’, people just asked for a Walkman,
Handycam or Watchman.

Morita chose ‘Sony’ as the company’s new name, and made it a household
word by travelling the world, pulling prototype gadgets from his briefcase,
like rabbits from a hat. And he spoke to the press far more frankly than
any other Japanese businessman. So journalists quoted him, and Morita became
a celebrity with something approaching pop-star status.

In the late 1970s, Japan was under attack for being much too successful
in its trade, and Morita was already commenting on the complacency and doziness
of Western industry.

‘I am amazed that in Britain and Europe you don’t have television transmissions
all day long. I cannot understand this. You have such an important industry,
the electronics industry, and you have all the facilities for television
transmissions, but no programmes. This is just like producing automobiles
without roads. I admired Germany many, many years ago – even Hitler, who
built the autobahns which were the start of the highway system. That’s why
Germany became such a strong automobile-producing country. Without highways
you can’t have a strong automobile industry. Without transmission, without
television programmes, how can you encourage people to buy television sets
and have a strong television industry?

‘You cannot stop international trade,’ asserted Morita. ‘I drive a Mercedes,
in fact three Mercedes. There is a company Mercedes, my own Mercedes and
my wife drives a Mercedes. Good European products are used by the Japanese,
like Jaguar cars. Foreign journalists all use Japanese cameras. Well I use
a Minox. A good European product will sell well in Japan.’

In the early 1980s, Morita was watching with obvious regret as Britain’s
science-based industries collapsed.

‘In school I studied physics. I knew that England and the British people
were the pioneers of physics. For instance, the world-time standard started
from Greenwich. So I thought that England was the father of modern science.
Also you invented television and many, many things. In the navy, in the
war, we didn’t know what radar was. It was invented in Britain.’

‘When I made my first trip to Europe in 1953 I couldn’t see any Japanese
industrial products being exported to Europe. ‘Made in Japan’ was regarded
as meaning very cheap, poor quality. When we started up our exports, under
the regulations we had to put, ‘Made in Japan’ on them. We were ashamed,
so we made the label as small as possible. Finally we had a problem with
the customs. They told us our label was too small and we had to make it
bigger.

‘Later, when we announced that we intended to build factories in the
US and in Britain to make televisions, we saw a very odd reaction. Our customers
preferred to buy Sony television sets labelled, ‘Made in Japan’.’

Gone, now, are the days when Japanese companies built ‘screwdriver’
factories in Europe, to assemble kits of parts shipped in from Japan. Gone
too, perhaps, are the days when Japanese companies built new factories in
Britain. Sony’s factories in Alsace, Bayonne and Dax typify the new deal,
and how the French government’s long-term investment in good communications,
power and transport is paying off.

‘When we first came to France, I was most concerned,’ recalls Morita.
‘French is not our language. We did now know anything about France. But
we have found things very good. We have found it easy to draw together an
excellent workforce and good middle management.’

‘I visited France recently with a delegation from the Keidanren (a federation
of Japanese banks and businesses). We met President Mitterrand who is inviting
Japanese investment in France. I have told others in the Keidanren that
France is a good location for our operation. They know Sony as leaders –
now they may follow us.’

Although still the titular head of Sony, Morita’s role is now as honest
broker between East and West.

‘Only Japan is making a trade surplus all the time,’ he acknowledges.
‘So maybe we are playing with different rules, and need to change. But not
only Japan must change, we must get together to find a solution – not with
people just insisting that their own system is right.

‘If Western executives take too much out of a company, then the company
has to charge too much for its products, so it is not competitive. But maybe
also we are working too long. We in Japan work 2000 hours a year. In the
West the figure is 1600. So maybe you have to work a little harder or longer.
And while you are working you must work hard.’

In Morita’s view, there is hope even for countries like Britain which
have squandered their lead in the electronics industry.

‘Technology is not everything. What is also needed is creative marketing.
Walkman was not creative technology, but it created an enormous market.
Think of Beaujolais nouveau. That’s creative marketing! Each year people
in Japan rush to the airport to be first to drink it.