Joust of The Half Brothers

By Seiichi Kanise/Tokyo

"Cruel is the strife of brothers," wrote Aristotle. The observation, it seems, applies even in the normally bland and polite world of Japanese business, specifically in the case of the Tsutsumi brothers, whose quiet rivalry has led not only to strife but also to success and enormous wealth. If that is not enough to inspire a crackling TV mini-series, add the fact that at least one of their fortunes rests on the graves of shoguns.

Seiji Tsutsumi, 61, is the dapper, soft-spoken head of the Seibu Saison Group (1987 sales: $28 billion), a conglomerate of department stores, supermarkets and service organizations. Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, 54, square jawed and hard driving, owns the Seibu Railway group, which operates $400 billion worth of railways, hotels, golf courses and ski resorts. The two are half brothers and have long been locked in intense competition. Last fall the conflict broke into the open when Seiji's Seibu Saison Group acquired the Inter-Continental hotel chain for nearly $2.2 billion, a challenge to Yoshiaki's hotel domain.

"They are as different as water and fire," says a family friend. Seiji and Yoshiaki are the sons of the late Yasujiro Tsutsumi, a cantankerous millionaire who became speaker of the lower house of the Diet after making a fortune in railroads, hotels and department stores. Nicknamed "Pistol" for his buccaneering business methods, Yasujiro bought out impoverished aristocrats who could not pay inheritance taxes during the late '40s and early '50s, put up hotels on the newly acquired land and cockily called the hotel chain Prince. The 484-room Tokyo Prince, for example, is set on the former cemetery of the Tokugawas, the shoguns who ruled Japan for 265 years before the Meiji Restoration began in 1868.

When the elder Tsutsumi died in 1964, the two brothers inherited dramatically different amounts and parts of their father's empire, parts that fit their sharply divergent personalities and amounts that apparently reflected the feelings between father and sons. The cultured and mild-mannered Seiji, the son of Yasujiro's wife Misao, has established himself as a novelist and an award-winning poet whose early literary work sometimes suggested filial embarrassment and even enmity.

Yoshiaki's life took a less refined path. His mother was one of Yasujiro's mistresses. This illegitimate son was the favorite, and he still praises his father as "the greatest entrepreneur I've ever met." While Seiji was merely given control of a money-losing department store, Yoshiaki inherited not only the railway and real estate portions of the empire but also his father's political clout: he is close to Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, for example, and backed him in his fight for the leadership in 1987. A rugged sportsman who owns the national-champion baseball team, the Seibu Lions, Yoshiaki flies around the country aboard his jet helicopter to visit his properties and shows up on lists of the world's wealthiest people. He has an estimated net worth of $18.9 billion, compared with Seiji's $1.8 billion.

Originally, Yoshiaki was thought to have more of his father's no-holds- barred business acumen, but Seiji showed prescience and boldness in leading the Seibu stores to the forefront of Japanese retailing. The increasingly astute businessman predicted that young, affluent Japanese would spend more than their parents and guessed that they would prefer high-priced, stylish goods. Seiji's rise has not been totally smooth. In the mid-1970s Yoshiaki rescued his half brother from ruin when the Seibu Kanko Kaihatsu company, a leisure, real estate and tourism group, incurred debts of $550 million. The terms of the rescue were never disclosed, and it is not known whether the help was appreciated or resented.

Seiji has been one-upped in some family matters as well. One can imagine his frustration when, in 1964, the younger, illegitimate Yoshiaki broke tradition and presided over their father's funeral as chief mourner. Twenty years later, when the funeral of Yoshiaki's mother was held at Tokyo's Zojo-Ji temple, a blimp reportedly flew overhead publicizing a newly opened store belonging to Seiji's group.

Of the two, Yoshiaki "seems less concerned about the family past," says a leading Tokyo business writer. He may not see his brother's steps onto his turf as significant. "It's no use comparing us. Our philosophies are different, and we are in different lines of business," Yoshiaki has said.

But the brothers do seem to see their futures in the same arena: the rapidly expanding leisure industry. Seiji's Seibu Saison Group is branching out into hotels and what he calls the "comprehensive life-style" business. He wants customers at his stores to be able to buy a traveling bag, put it to use by booking a package tour, and take out a loan to pay for the journey. Yoshiaki has his own growth plans: he is looking at the expanding market in cable television and optical-fiber communications, in addition to more familiar resort-development projects at home and abroad. As they cross each ^ other's lines, will one brother decline to book tours to the other's hotels or choose to contract with a different cable or communications company? Tune in for future episodes on the brothers Tsutsumi.