Okuma Koichi’s resignation and Okuma Takeo’s “glass-walled management” (1978)

A president’s head in exchange for a wage cut

What draws the eye in this succession is not the reason for the resignation but its date. President Okuma Koichi left office on the same day the union accepted wage cuts and a freeze on increases. On the other side of the bargain in which employees cut their own pay sat the head of the manager. That president Okuma Takeo disposed of six company cars on his first day, and had the parking-lot markings in front of head office — untouched for three years — repainted in two hours, can be seen as the work of rendering that bargain into visible form.

The bargain held, however, because management had nowhere to run either. Despite unrealised reserves, the main bank had demanded a restructuring plan, and most of the four million bank shares the company held were sold off. Takeo said later that when a manager arrives from a bank, money comes with him and a sense of crisis never permeates either side. That labour and management could strip themselves bare at the same time rested on the premise of family ownership. A method of forging unity by cutting off the escape routes can only be used while the party being cut off is one’s own. That 1994 — when the company sought a lower retirement age with nothing of its own to offer — drew criticism from the labour commission and from public opinion shows the same thing from the other side.