Morita's Sony

businessman) refused to allow his chapters to be published in their English translation, for fear that his association with the book would hurt Sony sales abroad. From a theoretical point of view, one might wonder if the plan backfired: all that was left of the book in its English incarnation was the Ishihara sections, which, distilled of all talk of cooperation and good business sense, sounded far more extreme than the original, which was tempered by Morita's chapters. When Americans without access to Morita's chapters heard that Morita had co-authored the Japanese version, it might have made him seem far more nationalistic than he was. Whatever some Americans might have thought, Morita's fears of diminished sales did not materialize, and Sony remained strong in the English speaking world; stronger, in fact, than in the recession-bitten Japan of the early 1990s.

Akio Morita was truly one of a kind. He blended a Japanese style company with a spirit of innovation and creativity that Americans had long thought was their sole parvenu. In doing so, he transformed not just the image, but the entire substance of what a Japanese corporation was. He not only made Sony a household name worldwide, but paved the way for mass acceptance of Japanese products as high-quality. He changed "Made in Japan" from a stamp of cheap production to a symbol of quality electronics. On October 3, 1999, Japan, a country stereotyped as a realm where the individual is subsumed into the collective, lost a truly great individual.

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