quotes Archives - understand-culture

People Before Products

Mono o tsukuru mae ni hito o tsukuru. Make people before making things. Panasonic attributes these words to its founder, Matsushita Kōnosuke. The company gives no date or place for them.

In February 2022, Panasonic’s newsroom reprinted a message by its group CEO, Kusumi Yūki. He wrote that the company should make the fullest use of the talent that society has entrusted to it, and so strengthen its competitiveness. This, he wrote, is what he believes the founder meant by making people before making things.

It Is My Responsibility

On February 24, 2010, Toyota president Toyoda Akio testified before a committee of the United States House of Representatives about the company’s recalls. He said: “My name is on every car.”

In the Japanese rendering of his statement published by the auto news site Response, he apologized deeply for every accident that Toyota drivers had experienced and said: Sore wa hitoe ni watakushi no sekinin de arimasu. “That is entirely my responsibility.”

Learn the Pine from the Pine

Matsu no koto wa matsu ni narae, take no koto wa take ni narae. “Learn about the pine from the pine, and about the bamboo from the bamboo.” The words come from the haiku poet Matsuo Bashō. His disciple Hattori Dohō recorded them in Sanzōshi (Three Booklets).

Dohō explains what the master meant: shii o hanare yo, leave personal intent behind.

Inamori’s Equation

Inamori Kazuo, the founder of Kyocera, described it with a formula: way of thinking times enthusiasm times ability. Ability and enthusiasm each run from 0 to 100 points. Way of thinking runs from minus 100 to plus 100.

A book of his sayings, quoted in President, draws the conclusion: Sainō wa netsui de kabā dekiru. Talent can be made up for with enthusiasm.

The Value of Words

The baseball manager Nomura Katsuya told the sports magazine Number: Kantoku to iu no wa yatara to homemakuccha ikan. Yasuppoku naru. Kotoba no neuchi ga sagarimasu. A manager must not praise all the time. It becomes cheap, and the value of his words goes down.

Entrust, but Do Not Abandon

Makasete makasazu: entrust, but do not leave it entirely. A Gentōsha article calls it a well-known saying of Matsushita Kōnosuke, the founder of Matsushita Electric, the company now called Panasonic. The article explains the meaning: a leader should not hand over work and forget it, but should keep watching and support the person.

No original document for the saying was found.

All the Responsibility

In 1962, Tanaka Kakuei became minister of finance. On his first day at the ministry, he spoke to its officials. According to President Online, which draws on the memoir of Hayasaka Shigezō, he began: “I am Tanaka Kakuei. I finished higher elementary school. You are the best talents in all of Japan, all experts in finance.”

An account of the speech in Bunshun gives this line: Dekiru koto wa yaru. Dekinai koto wa yaranai. Shikashi, subete no sekinin wa kono Tanaka Kakuei ga seou. “I will do what can be done, and not what cannot. But all the responsibility will be carried by me, Tanaka Kakuei.”

The Incident Is Not in the Conference Room

The film Odoru daisōsasen the Movie (Bayside Shakedown) opened in Japan on October 31, 1998. It earned 10.1 billion yen. In it, the hero, a police detective, shouts: Jiken wa kaigishitsu de okiteru n ja nai! Genba de okiteru n da! “The incident is not happening in the conference room. It is happening at the scene!”

The Wisdom of All

Panasonic quotes its founder, Matsushita Kōnosuke: Shūchi o atsumeta zen’in keiei, kore wa watakushi ga keieisha to shite shūshi ikkan kokorogake, jikkō shite kita koto de aru. “Management by everyone, gathering the wisdom of all, is what I kept in mind and put into practice as a manager from beginning to end.”

He also said that the more the wisdom of all employees is used in management, the more a company develops. At a policy meeting in 1957, he said: “Matsushita Electric is managed by the wisdom of all.”

Super-Kamiokande Group

On the evening of October 6, 2015, Kajita Takaaki of the University of Tokyo spoke to the press after being named for the Nobel Prize in Physics. He said: Watashi no namae wa dashite itadaita ga, Sūpā Kamiokande, soshite Kamiokande no kenkyū gurūpu ga mitomerareta no da to omou. “My name was put forward, but I think it is the research groups of Super-Kamiokande and Kamiokande that were recognized.”