Akio Morita died October 3, leaving a company with annual sales of over $56 billion from its electronics business alone, not counting its other media ventures. It is not just corporate propaganda to say that Sony is the world's most important electronics company. Sony invented the first trinitron television technology, the first color video cassette (although Sony's Betamax format was one of its infamous failures), the first 3.5 inch floppy disks, the first CD player, camcorder, digital VTR, and of course, Sony's signature invention, the Walkman, which introduced in 1981. Morita came up with the name "Walkman" himself, and insisted that it be used, despite complaints from his advertising team that the name was "ungrammatical."
Morita had a vision, and he did things his own way. This was a remarkable trait in post-war corporate Japan, where the "keiretsu" system of corporate groupings prevented most companies from being very independent. The keiretsu, generally defined as a large corporate grouping with a bank and lending agency at its center, had thousands of subsidiary companies that dealt largely only with its family of companies, and did not cross keiretsu lines.
The keiretsu have a long history in Japan, starting before World War II, when three large companies, Mitsubishi, Mitsui, and Sumitomo, then known as the "zaibatsu" (literally, "money clans," or "wealth combinations"), controlled virtually all major industries, together with their subsidiaries. After the war, the United States Occupation Forces led by General Douglas MacArthur shook up these organizations, but not by very much. The 1947 Anti-Monopoly Law, aimed at breaking up the holding companies at the center, was weakened by the Japanese government's desire to maintain the economic prowess of the prewar zaibatsu.
Three other keiretsu were formed (Fuyo, Dai-Ichi Kangyou, and Sanwa), and together with the three prewar giants, they comprised the engine of Japan's postwar economic growth, sharing a large percentage of industrial production. More than 50% of Japan's top 100 companies are affiliated with one of these six keiretsu, controlling over a quarter of the nation's economy. There are several corporate groupings other than the so-called "Big Six." The somewhat smaller Asahi conglomerate does large-scale business in finance, media, beverages, steel, heavy machinery, and a host of other industries. But the Big Six still comprise a large percentage of Japan's business, and a dozen or so smaller corporate groupings mop up the rest.
