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Buyer's Market. Tough-minded Konosuke Matsushita will have none of the gloom boom. Any stumble in the Japanese economy, he declares confidently, will only help Matsushita Electric. Says he: "In a declining situation, you get a buyer's market. The customer becomes more selective and looks for better quality. That's when the good companies make themselves felt." More important, Matsushita remains confident that, given a modicum of good management, the continued growth of Japan's economy is assured. He has long criticized Premier Ikeda's heady "double the income" talk as a stimulus to ill-conceived and excessively rapid expansion. "There is such a thing as the most economical speed of operation whether for an engine or a national economy," says he. "What the Japanese economy has to do now is slow down its growth to the most economical speed." As far as the Common Market is concerned, says Matsushita, "it is shortsighted to think that a progressive development in one part of the world will hurt us. After all, the more America developed, the more Japan benefited. So long as there is a relationship between the Common Market and the rest of the free world, then Japan's economy in ten years will be incredibly good."
And while he readily admits that "prosperity does not automatically bring a happier, more enriching life," Konosuke Matsushita remains convinced that abundance for the many provides a far better base for peace and happiness than do poverty and deprivation.
* Largely cut off in 1952, though U.S. procurement for the Korean war brought another cornucopia of dollars into Japan.