Amps in the Pants

For Japanese women, upset over a wave of purse snatchings, Japan's Matsushita Industrial Electric Co. fortnight ago brought out a portable burglar alarm that is carried in the purse. A wire around the owner's arm sets off the alarm when the handbag is grabbed. Last week the company came out with something for the boys: electrified pants. The hot pants, which have heating wires woven into the fabric, are designed for desk workers in unheated plants; the pants are simply plugged into an electrical outlet. At $14 a pair, the pants went over so well that the company plans to bring out walking hot pants heated with batteries.

Such slightly zany but practical gadgets have helped make the Matsushita Co. one of Japan's largest manufacturers of electrical goods (1957 sales: $130 million), and have given the company's founder and president, Konosuke Matsushita, 64, the highest taxable income in Japan ($500,000 last year).

Seven Commandments. Scholarly Konosuke Matsushita combines the inventiveness of an Edison with the uplift of an evangelist. In the 32 Matsushita factories that turn out his "National" products, the 12,150 employees all start the day by lining up and reciting the Seven Commandments of Matsushita. They range from "Be just, cheerful, correct and broadminded" to sharp reminders to "improve yourself through hard work" and exhortations to appreciate employee benefits, e.g., "Be grateful and repay kindness." Recitation over, employees break into a martial company song, The Song of National, that urges them: "For the building of the new Japan, unite your hearts, unite your efforts. Give your all. Let us send our products to the people of the world in an unending stream." Employees then tree off to their work benches, but the uplift does not end there. In their monthly pay envelopes are pictures of Founder Matsushita beaming broadly over additional mottoes such as: "Be frugal; save."

Matsushita himself came up by frugality and work that was hard even by Japanese standards. Born in Osaka, son of a merchant who lost his kimono selling rice, Konosuke quit school in the fourth grade to go to work in a bicycle shop. At 17 he saw the electric streetcars come in. concluded the future lay in electricity, got a job with the Osaka Electric Light Co. His lack of education blocked promotion, so he saved and borrowed $98 to open a factory in his home.

There he and helpers turned out parts for a large manufacturer of fans. On the side he invented and patented a new type of plug (first of his 50 inventions), expanded rapidly, went into the manufacture of fighter planes during World War II. At war's end the Occupation purged him briefly, but by 1949 he was again going full blast. Today he makes 28% of Japan's radios, a high percentage of the TV sets, broadcasting equipment, a full line of kitchen appliances, motors, transformers and other electrical supplies.

Loss Is a Crime. Matsushita has few, if any, equals in vigorous defense of free enterprise. He once declared, to a leftist's assertion that profits are wrong, that a "minus profit [i.e., a business loss] is a social crime." Like his opposite members in the U.S., Matsushita worries about taxes, frets over government interference: "Business skill cannot be deployed effectively unless businessmen have 70% to 80% freedom. In Japan there is about 50% government interference."

His harshest criticism is for other Japanese businessmen who copy foreign goods without paying royalties. Says Matsushita: "Other nations also copy, but they pay; Japan virtually steals. My company buys foreign patents or negotiates technical tie-ups with foreign companies, but the government stares coldly and says: 'Matsushita, you are causing dollars to leave Japan.' Such outmoded ideas will not make Japan progress."

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