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Matsushita's business career began in a Japan that was still shaking off the effects of two centuries of political, economic and international hibernation under the autocratic Tokugawa shoguns. To preserve their nation's independence, the new rulers of Japan—an uneasy coalition of military leaders descended from the old samurai and the great financial clans known as zaibatsu—concentrated on building Japan's industrial and military power at forced draft. The policy was in part highly successful—until World War II, Japan was the only Asian nation that had never been colonized or dominated by a Western power—but it cost a grim price. Like Communist China today, prewar Japan built its strength on the sweat of its people, had no surplus to spare for decent living conditions.
Neglected Cranny. Matsushita managed to exist alongside the grasping zaibatsu by slipping into a cranny of industry they cared nothing about: consumer goods. The Osaka zaibatsu even lent him money, with no attempt to dominate him. But his success came from introducing the Japanese to a brand of imaginative. Western-style salesmanship they had never seen. When retailers refused to believe that his battery-powered bicycle lamp would run 30 hours—ten times longer than any other then on the market—he left one turned on in each store. Before long, orders came streaming in, and Matsushita Electric was on its way to becoming big business.
By 1931, Matsushita had 600 employees, was producing appliances from electric foot warmers to radio receivers. But it was not until one day in 1932 that he realized what his mission as an industrialist was. "It was a very hot summer day," he recalls. "I watched a vagrant drinking tap water outside somebody's house and noticed that no one complained about it. Even though the water was processed and distributed, it was so cheap that it didn't matter. I began to think about abundance, and I decided that the mission of the industrialist is to fill the world with products and eliminate wants." From then on he added a missionary's zeal to his driving ambition; by the time World War II broke out, he was in command of an empire of 10,000 employees.
Ships & Planes. No sooner had war begun than Matsushita and his factories were drafted for military production, churned out everything from radios to 200-ton wooden transport ships. Toward the end of the war, Matsushita was even called on to build wooden training planes.