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In the past year Matsushita has stepped up to the chairmanship of Matsushita Electric and, though he still watches overall policy, is making a manful effort to turn day-by-day operation over to his son-in-law—and adopted son—Masaharu Matsushita, 49. (Matsushita's own son died when he was two years old.) The younger Matsushita, who lacks the contagious zeal of his self-made father-in-law, is intensifying the company's research efforts and stressing computers.
Tea & Flower Petals. As he gradually cuts himself free from his business duties.
Matsushita nonetheless adheres to a rigid schedule that brings him home only on weekends to his wife Mumeno. But in their 45 years of marriage, she has played a vital part in his business life, accompanying him on factory visits and often doing the final tests on home appliances that Matsushita is about to market. Currently, they live in a company-owned, 27-room Japanese-style home on a country estate between Osaka and Kobe, but will soon move to a six-room house on the same grounds, which is being westernized for comfort.
Most weeks, Matsushita goes to his Osaka office only for Monday business conferences. From there he is driven in his long black Cadillac (his only bit of ostentation) to a modest Kyoto town house where he occupies himself until Friday with his "old man's toy": the PHP, or Peace and Happiness through Prosperity Institute, which he set up in the desperate days after the war. In the monastic atmosphere of the institute's serene gardens, he sips tea, eats flower-petal cakes, and holds seminars with his three young research fellows, discussing how best to use abundance to bring prosperity and happiness to all. "First," explains Matsushita, "we must really know what a human being is. If one wants to raise sheep, one must learn the nature of sheep. So with humble heart, I want to study human nature." A Special Necessity. To more mundane American businessmen, Matsushita's philosophic quest may sound naive. But it has a special necessity in a Japan whose society has undergone such radical change in so short a time. Along with the once stabilizing ties of the Japanese family, the paternalistic relationship between master and man in Japanese industry is breaking down.
For the first time in its history. Japan is facing a labor shortage. Last November, available jobs outnumbered junior high school graduates seeking work by better than 3 to 1. Job scouts from cabarets, electronic plants and weaving mills virtually shanghai girl caddies off the golf courses. In the future, the labor pool can be expected to dry up still more, since Japan, alone among Asian nations, appears to have beaten the population explosion. Japan's present birth rate (17.1 per 1,000) is lower than that of most European nations, and with the continuing spread of contraception and legalized abortion, it should fall even lower.
For a while to come, the steady migration of young Japanese from the farm to the city will help keep factories staffed.