New Keidanren chairman shows that nice guys can finish first
Yoshinobu Tsutsui's humble beginnings and the social norms he learned during childhood helped to propel him to the top of Keidanren (Japan Business Federation), the most powerful business lobby in the country.
The 71-year-old on May 29 became the first Keidanren chairman from a financial institution.
Tsutsui took over as president of Nippon Life Insurance Co. in April 2011, three weeks after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami disaster.
He immediately set a policy of quickly paying insurance money to victims, thereby setting an overall direction for the insurance industry.
'Whatever headwind we may face, we must fulfill our corporate mission of protecting our customers and supporting people's livelihoods,' he said in an address to employees at the time.
Tsutsui grew up in a plebeian neighborhood along the Hanshin Electric Railway Co. line in Kobe. He was the youngest of five brothers under a factory worker father and a full-time homemaker mother.
'I wore hand-me-downs,' Tsutsui said. 'Food was supposed to be divided equally, but it was, in fact, allocated with more weight to my older brothers.'
He said there was a solemn sense of hierarchy in his family.
'I acquired this habit of studying the faces of my older brothers and carefully assessing the mood at all times,' Tsutsui said.
His mother would take him to a nearby street day after day to go shopping. He would listen to the casual conversations that she exchanged with storekeepers.
'Those days nurtured my social sensibilities,' Tsutsui said.
Masakazu Tokura, Tsutsui's predecessor as Keidanren chairman, also attached importance to keeping tabs on social issues, such as widening disparities and collapsing ecosystems.
Tokura said he named Tsutsui as his successor based largely on his 'social' viewpoint.
'Tsutsui begins by listening to the accounts of others and respects their decisions, no matter how much younger they are,' a former subordinate of Tsutsui said. 'He is consistent in that stance.'
Tsutsui also believes that 'a company embodies people.'
'It sums up the behaviors of individuals,' he said. 'People matter more than anything else. And they become big powers only through cohesion.'
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