January 10 was the saddest day for your Mobile Ojisan. Because his namesake outfit, Matsushita Denki (Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd) of Osaka, announced it would drop its venerable but unpronunciable (at least, for non-Japanese speakers) name, Matsushita, and replace it with mock-GrecoRoman mishmash, "Panasonic".

Matsushita Denki's first shack in 1918, and its only products, attachment plugs.

Matsushita Denki was started by Matsushita Konosuke in 1918. Konosuke was then 23-years-old, having freshly resigned from a utility company in Osaka. Full of oversized venture spirit but short of everything else, his first joint was located somewhere in the back alley of Osaka, a nondescript wooden hovel.

The infant Matsushita Denki's only product, an attachment plug to insert into the ceiling lamp socket. Personnel? Konosuke, his wife and his brother-in-law, just three.

Ah well, 90 years have passed. Matsushita Denki survived wars, bombing raids, frequent near-bankruptcy and hundreds of competition, somehow. It grew and grew and grew. The rest is history.

Young Matsushita Konosuke. His Matsushita Denki did not have color digital cameras on its product list then.

Konosuke had been at the helm firmly all those times until 1973. Soon, his family vacated all company day-to-day business to professional managers. But Konosuke's personality and name lingered on somehow in Matsushita Denki.

Ah well, as you know very well, brand image is a bitch. These days of consumer society, brand is everything. If you had a brand image on your side, you could produce junks and lemons and garbages at will, and push them easily into the pocket of eager Johns... sorry, customers.

There is another story on brands. Once, there used to be a tiny outfit, Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo Kabushiki-kaisha, also known as To-Tsu-Ko. Rather a decent company with decent technology, innovative spirit and workmanship. Your Mobile Ojisan found one of the To-Tsu-Ko's fine products, a clockwork taperecorder, at an Akiba junk shop eons ago. With virtually undestructable heavyweight mechanism and miniature valve circuit, it used to be the standard equipment of Japanese radio broadcasting. It worked fine with my interviews, too, for some years.

This Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo unknowingly caught the wave of brandism when it changed its lengthy unpronunciable name to simple and easy-to-shout Sony! You know the rest of story.

Matsushita Denki guys obviously thought Matsushita could not become a favorable brand name in this brand-crazy time. That was why this stupid motion of dropping Matsushita handle in favor of ridiculous Panasonic.

Your Mobile Ojisan feels an irrational affection for Matsushita handle, as you can easily understand why. Anyway, the motion of management has to be approved at the general meeting of shareholders next June. I hope majority of Matsushita Denki shareholders will firmly oppose this useless name change, and keep my name intact on the company title.

Imagine. What should I do if Matsushita Denki vanished from this world? Everywhere outside of Japan, this name helped me quite a lot in many crucial situations. At least, I thought so...

Next, your name, please?

Matsushita.

Mmm... ma... mat... Mac? Or Machupichu?

No, Matsushita. Oh, it would be very easy to pronounce. Same as Matsushita, of "Matsushita Electric".

Ma... Muc... What electric, again?

I guess not many people recognize the existence of the largest electric manufacturer in Japan. The brand image seems important after all.

 

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kaisei1
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