Orie Kitajima
Profile
Performance in office
Tenure
Tenure
Background
After graduating from the Department of Law in the Faculty of Law at Tokyo Imperial University in 1929, he joined Shueisha. He became Managing Director in 1943 and Senior Managing Director in 1945, and from 1948 also served as Representative Director and President of Kyoiku Shuppan. The third son of Hiroshi Aoki, then Senior Managing Director, he had hoped to join the Industrial Bank of Japan but failed, entered the printing company instead and rose from the sales front line. In June 1951, before becoming President, he announced a five-year reconstruction plan to the whole company as Senior Managing Director and won the support of all employees in a vote.
Selection
In January 1955 he became Representative Director and President of Dai Nippon Printing. He took the helm after postwar labor disputes had shaken management, and the five-year reconstruction plan he had laid out as Senior Managing Director served directly as the basis for his appointment. Dai Nippon Printing was formed in February 1935 through an equal merger of Shueisha and Nisshin Printing, with Giichi Masuda as its first President. Twenty years later the presidency passed to the third son of Hiroshi Aoki, the Shueisha Senior Managing Director who had signed the merger. In the fiscal year ended May 1954, just before he took office, non-consolidated sales were ¥3.3 billion.
Initiatives
He set a policy of building multiple sources of revenue to avoid the risk of relying on a single core business, and using the Osaki plant opened in 1951 as a foothold, moved into paper containers and packaging printing, which had caught his attention on a trip to the United States. In 1957 the company joined the MITI-led effort to produce color televisions domestically with shadow masks, achieving Japan's first mass production in 1958, and in 1959 extended into photomasks for semiconductors. In 1966 it completed its Central Research Laboratory, systematizing applied research. Non-consolidated sales grew from ¥3.7 billion in the fiscal year ended May 1955, his first year, to ¥373.9 billion in the FY ended May 1979.
Career
Career
Dai Nippon Printing
| Date | Position |
|---|---|
| 1929 | Joined |
| 1943 | Managing Director |
| 1945 | Senior Managing Director |
| Jan 1955 | Representative Director, President |
Education Publishing
| Date | Position |
|---|---|
| 1948 | Representative Director, President |
References 4
References (Japanese primary sources)
- 日本企業要覧 1962年版
- 日本企業要覧 1976年版
- 大日本印刷：世界最大の総合印刷企業（朝日ソノラマ・1980年）
- 企業の歴史 : 明治百年（経済春秋社編, 1968）