An American-style chain-store vision — and its “romance” (1972)

The track the “romance” laid — and what it rested on

The heart of this decision was that a tiny furniture shop, hounded by its day-to-day cash flow, translated an idea picked up on a trip to America into a half-century goal — to “catch up with America in sixty years.” Its three elements — many stores, low prices, overseas sourcing — were all drawn from a single sight taken in on the 1972 U.S. tour, and Nitori has run along that track ever since. The method of framing a numerical target, hanging it on the wall, and working backward from it to act was handed on to Akio Nitori’s successors as well.

And yet the vision of “catching up with America” rested on premises of currency and cost — a strong yen and cheap Asian wages. Prices at a third of Japan’s were a goal that could be reached only when the conditions aligned: make it cheaply abroad, and bring it in cheaply on a strong yen. When the weak yen of the 2020s knocked those premises away, thirty-six straight years of rising sales and profit came to an end. The romance that ran through half a century leaves the next generation a question — how much of an era’s tailwind can be converted into a strength of one’s own.