“Konosuke Matsushita, Japan’s Greatest Entrepreneur of the Past 1,000 Years”

[From the newspaper series People Who Became Stars Today] April 27, 1989 — Age 95

https://www.chosun.com/culture-life/culture_general/2026/04/27/PCEBHONHWNCWRAXVXPT7LOSSGA/

 

Matsushita Konosuke (1894–1989), the founder of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (now Panasonic), is regarded in Japan as the “god of management.” In a 2000 Asahi Shimbun survey, he was chosen as the greatest Japanese business leader of the past thousand years—surpassing Honda founder Soichiro Honda, prolific entrepreneur Eiichi Shibusawa, and Sony co‑founder Masaru Ibuka.

Japanese people usually call him simply “Konosuke,” dropping the family name as a sign of familiarity. When a Chosun Ilbo correspondent heard news of his death on April 27, 1989, while riding in a Tokyo taxi, he noted how the driver kept repeating the name “Konosuke,” as if speaking of someone personally close.""

 

You can buy it by searching for it on Amazon.

 

This worn old book has been sitting on my small bookshelf since 1982, and whenever I faced hardships in life, I would return to it again and again, rereading it like a cow chewing cud.

 

Matsushita, founder of Matsushita Electric. During his lifetime, he personally practiced the following management principles. First, never evade taxes. A company earns money and contributes to the nation and society by paying its fair share of taxes. (…) Second, avoid reckless, octopus‑like expansion and instead dig deeply into one’s area of expertise. By devoting themselves fully to their specialty, business leaders can reduce production costs and provide the public with affordable, high‑quality products. (…) Third, do not engage in real‑estate speculation. When business leaders speculate in property, they deprive citizens of their basic right to live, and such behavior is both immoral and unproductive. (…) In fact, a tax investigation later confirmed that aside from his own residence, he did not own a single square meter of real estate in his personal name.” (June 20, 1990, page 5)

 

Running a restaurant may not involve hundreds of thousands of employees or more than 500 subsidiaries, as Panasonic—founded by Matsushita—does today. But his philosophy of people‑centered management offers valuable lessons that apply just as powerfully to the operation of a restaurant.

 

It was “today,” as I read the news about Matsushita’s passing in 1987, that I felt a renewed sense of reassurance that I had made the right choice in selecting the book that has accompanied me through the twists and turns of my life.