The rise and fall of Sony

Here is a Japanese fairy tale for Christmas. An allegory of insight, opportunism and a fall from favour. It is 1945. Japan is devastated and disgraced, but two bright young men, Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka, the first a salesman, the second an engineer, have a plan to turn toxic ashes into precious metal.

They have discovered a curious typewritten document published by the Civil Information and Education division of the US Occupation Forces. It is called ‘999 Uses for a Tape-Recorder’. In those days, people needed to be told these things. Inspired, they form a company called TTK and Ibuka writes in its Purposes of Incorporation that it will make ‘imaginative use of technology …to help restore national culture’.

By 1950, Morita and Ibuka have designed and manufactured their own G-Type tape-recorder. As plastic is unavailable, its recording medium is magnetised paper, which they call Soni-Tape. This paper is so fragile that the tape-transport mechanism must be made to very high tolerances, a technical advantage that TTK will in future exploit.

In 1953, wearing a dashing white suit, Morita travels to the United States. Here he discovers that the sleepy cheese-smelling gaijin have patented something called a transistor, but have decided it has no commercial applications. Wisely, Morita-san sees things rather differently.

Back in Tokyo, Morita briefs his technicians to create a transistor radio. Light, efficient, tiny, inexpensive and portable, the TR-55 appears in 1955. At this point, one of the friendly Japanese gods, perhaps the jovial Hotei, guardian of barmen — Morita comes from a sake-brewing family — intervenes decisively and inspires Morita to his best ever decision.

Guessing that Anglophone export markets will struggle to say Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha (or TTK, Tokyo Telecommunications Company), Morita decides to rename his company Sony.