Business: The View from Fuji

To most of Japan's 94 million people, the frequent mild earthquakes that rattle windows and dismay tourists are routine works of the gods. But the nearly 3,000 employees of Dentsu Advertising, Ltd. are subject to other tremors and are often heard to groan: "Oh Oni is angry again." Oh Oni—or Big Demon—is no evil spirit from the nether world, but the nickname of Dentsu's autocratic, dynamically modern-minded president, Hideo Yoshida, 57, who almost singlehanded has built Dentsu into the world's fifth largest* advertising agency with yearly billings of $148,500,000. "If I am the...