“Everything Starts from Here” and “Always Beside the Customer”

The year 2011, the beginning of our approach to “golden 2013,” turned out to be an unprecedentedly turbulent 12 months and, it can be said, created a massive current of changing values. I’m sure that in their financial settlements in March 2011, the end of fiscal 2010, most companies wiped away the negative components since the Lehman shock and planned an upward change of course from April.

At our monthly morning gathering on March 1, I also specified a direction for our company from then on. But I also continued, “Over the last several decades, it has been my constant wish that no big earthquake will hit us. A huge earthquake and tsunami would destroy everything. If that happened to the place that houses our business, it would be the end of everything. So I really don’t want an earthquake to strike.”

One line of a poem by Paul Verlaine reads, “Ecstasy and terror, both are within me.” The novelist Osamu Dazai quoted this line and wrote, “So great delight and great misery, I always avoid them both.” When I was a student, I loved this poetry, which was the prologue to a novel. Over time, that feeling became the basis of my own thoughts, and this has not changed even now.

I learned the answer in another verse: “Be steady in good times, be calm in bad times.” In other words, when things are going well, keep your feet on the ground and definitely do not get carried away. And when things are not going well and you can’t move forward, keep your composure. Don’t become pessimistic.

Why did I talk about a big earthquake at that morning assembly on the first day of March? It was because of my fear that at a time when some light was beginning to appear following the Lehman shock, a man-made disaster that brought suffering to the whole world, a large natural disaster would destroy the calm completely.

And then came March 11. It was a massive earthquake and tsunami, the kind that occur only once every thousand years. And that was followed by the major accidents at the nuclear power plant, a man-made disaster. I had not imagined a great calamity involving radiation. The situation there has not yet been brought under control and is still causing alarm around the world. Moreover, because of the ineptness of our politicians, recovery from the earthquake and tsunami is not making much headway either. It has become a cold winter indeed.

What happened? With the eco-point system and the end of analog broadcasting, the economic conditions for our industry were excellent, but now we are entering a new year without having wiped away those negative effects. On the national level, I wish for recovery as quickly as possible and, in that sense, for a bright 2012.

By the end of 2013, our industry should have taken on a completely new shape and be moving forward to 2015 and a new era. Energy conservation and environmental awareness will be central, and related industries will grow. TV sets will remain the principal actor in household electric appliances, and the challenge of super-high-resolution screens will intensify. We should see a shift from existing TV sets to sets that bring information and entertainment into the home from around the world.

Difficult conditions are going to continue in 2012, but we can definitely create new solutions as well. The key phrases will be “Everything starts from here” and “Always beside the customer.” It will be a year for changing gears toward “golden 2013.”