Sunday, August 25, 2013

"he commandeth even the winds and water" - Young & Poor Ko-nosuke Matsushita


Pacific Ocean Beach in August Raining, Near Tokyo Prefecture


Young & Poor Ko-nosuke Matsushita


The founder of Japan's Panasonic Ko-nosuke Matsushita (1894-1989) did not graduate from elementary school.

He accomplished the fourth grade, but he had to quit school and go to work when he was only 9 years old.  It was because his father failed in business.

Matsushita started to work in a workshop making charcoal braziers and then in a bicycle shop.  When he became 16 years old, he wanted to be involved in business handling electricity as he was impressed by tram cars he saw in a big city Osaka.  So, he moved from his hometown in Wakayama Prefecture to Osaka so as to be employed by an electric lamp company which later became a big utility called Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc.

The young man Matsushita worked so honestly and diligently that he was promoted from a shop-floor worker to an office worker when he was 21 or so.  As Japanese industry kept a kind of class society within each company in those days, it is great success for an ordinary worker without higher educational background to be promoted from a status of an operative to the one of a clerical worker.

Matushita gladly started to work at desk in an office.  He didn't have to manipulate tools and machines anymore; he just had to fill foams and copy documents by writing.

But his boss soon found that letters ambitious Ko-nosuke wrote were so badly out of shape.  In Japan traditionally it was said that letters showed personality and integrity of the writer.  So, writing poor letters was a very serious disadvantage especially 100 years ago when young Ko-nosuke Matsushita was working hard in a modern company of the era.

His boss complained, so that Matsushita got ashamed of his lack of writing training in primary school.  Eventually poor Ko-nosuke with a wound on his pride voluntarily asked his boss to demote him to an operative in a workshop again.  Management of the company accepted his sad request.
   
Matsuhista remembered that when his father had forced him to quit elementary school, he said that Ko-nosuke should learn business as early as possible since he would be able to hire any learnt man in future if Ko-nosuke had succeeded in business.

So, the legendary founder of Panasonic Ko-nosuke Matsushita could not well write letters when he was around 20 years old.

Matsushita mentioned this episode later as an example of his hard life and extreme efforts.

Now we can refer to some of writing by Ko-nouske Matsushita:

 "Be Straight forward" by Ko-nosuke Matsushita

"Co-Existence and Co-Prosperity" by Ko-nosuke Matsushita

http://blog.livedoor.jp/juncomo/archives/51076443.html


So, you can be a founder of one of top 10 companies in Japan if you stop going to school when you are just nine years old, though it is compulsory for you to accomplish the third grade of junior high school in Japan nowadays.




*** *** *** ***


Luk 8:25 And he said unto them, Where is your faith? And they being afraid wondered, saying one to another, What manner of man is this! for he commandeth even the winds and water, and they obey him.