A leader in Japan’s postwar economy
I SAO NAKAU C H I
Isao Nakauchi, founder and former chairman and president of Daiei Inc., once Japan’s largest retailer, has died. He was 83.
Nakauchi died yesterday at a hospital in the port city of Kobe, where he had been under treatment since Aug. 26, after a stroke, according to a statement from Japan’s University of Marketing and Distribution Sciences, which he helped found.
Nakauchi was chairman of the board of trustees of the Nakauchi Gakuen Education Foundation, which created the university.
Nakauchi started the forerunner Shufu no Mise (Housewives Store) Daiei in Osaka in 1957, using the slogan “ From apples to diamonds.” He later expanded the stores with supermarkets to resemble the shopping malls he first saw while visiting the United States in the early 1960s.
Daiei’s founder led the company to become Japan’s biggest retailer by 1972, and the first to reach 1 trillion yen (US$8.9-billion) in annual sales. In the process, he expanded into hotels and property, a stake in a Hawaiian shopping centre and a baseball team.
Nakauchi resigned his executive positions in 2001, transferring the presidency to Kunio Takagi, who had been with Daiei since 1966. He sold his holdings in Daiei-group companies in March, as well as residences and other properties, to pay personal debts. He also took responsibility for leading the retailer into governmentrehabilitation under the Industrial Revitalization Corporation of Japan.
Widely credited as one of Japan’s greatest post-Second World War entrepreneurs, Nakauchi was co- author, with Peter F. Drucker, of the two-part
published in 1997.
Nakauchi led the rapid expansion of Daiei to a size that enabled it to buy merchandise in quantity and cut costs, selling it at prices below those of rival Japanese retailers.
An infantryman in the Philippines during the Second World War, Nakauchi was characterized in Japanese media as the leader of his own “30-year war” with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., the biggest maker of home appliances, over selling Matsushita’s colour television sets and refrigerators at prices below the manufacturer’s recommended margins.
Nakauchi was vice chairman of the Japan Business Federation, the country’s biggest business lobby, from 1990 to 1995.
Aiko Wakao, Bloomberg News