Last week Morita, 72, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage that will, at best, put his spectacular career on hold. It comes at a bad time for Sony, which is already struggling with a slump in earnings, while it debates which way to go and whether Morita’s handpicked successor can really lead the company.
But the bigger blow may be to Japan itself. Morita is the epitome of the transnational executive, or, as General Electric chairman Jack Welch calls him, “spiritually global.” After years as a maverick who was more beloved abroad than at home, Morita has lately been acknowledged even in Japan as the country’s most powerful and persuasive voice, a consummate “gaijin handler,” or foreign fixer, and a leading candidate to head Keidanren, the influential business organization. With much at stake in U.S.-Japanese relations, “we have lost a very important player,” says Sugiyama Katsuhiko of Merrill Lynch Japan,
When Morita and a navy buddy started a company in 1946 in a bombed-out department store, they named it Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo. But Morita renamed it Sony 12 years later in a typically farsighted move, finding a Western root for the name in sonus, the Latin word for sound. That was a natural for Morita, who, as the son of wealthy sake makers, fed a curiosity that extended from musical mechanics to the wider world. His family had one of the first RCA Victrolas in Japan, and the young Morita built his own ham radio.
From the start, Sony had an uncanny ability to do what U.S. critics often belittle: find new applications for American technology. Its first inspiration was to take the transistor, manufactured by Western Electric and used in hearing aids, to make the first mass-market transistor radio. Sony went on to introduce the sleek Trinitron TV, the Walkman and–with Philips–the compact-disc player. Sony has set such a standard for quality and design that it has been successful with a line for kids called My First Sony. That’s not just clever commercial indoctrination, it’s the sign of a powerful brand. How many My First Zeniths could you sell? asks Sidney Harman, chairman of Harman International, a stereo-components maker. Sony’s strength has helped dim the memory of some major flubs, most notably its Betamax VCR format.
Now Sony must pick the right route on the multimedia superhighway. Morita’s strategy, and that of his successor, Norio Ohga, is to combine “software,” such as Columbia Pictures, with “hardware” such as the Handicam to create a single entertainment business. But some Sony insiders think the two-pronged strategy is a mistake and that Ohga, without morita’s active support, may not be able to carry it off.
It’s the larger arena, though, where Morita has the most to give. His international reputation was shaken in the late ’80s when he coauthored “The Japan That Can Say ‘No’” with extreme nationalist Shintaro Ishihara. But when the book came out in English, Morita’s half was excised. With his rare ability to keep the dialogue moving, he has continued to prod Japan to liberalize trade. “He is the face of Japan Inc.,” says Robert Orr Jr, of Nippon Motorola Ltd. in Tokyo. Japan Inc. will search hard for another face as friendly.
