YAZAKI: Past, present, future. We are connected.

The Yazaki Group’s founder, Sadami Yazaki, had two faces, that of a driven professional and that of an emotional and warmhearted individual.

Here is a story that illustrates Sadami’s personality. A woman who we’ll call “Teeko” was born near Yazaki’s Washizu Factory. Her parents died when she was still small. After graduating from junior high school, she worked for several years as a domestic helper in Sadami’s home. Sadami and his wife felt great affection for Teeko, and it is said that they helped her impoverished family in various ways, and even occasionally invited her adoptive mother to Tokyo. When Teeko finished her service, she spent some two years working in the fields of her birthplace before marrying a farmer who lived in the same town. One day, after Sadami had heard this news, he drove out on his own to pay a visit to Teeko’s new home. He warmly greeted her husband and her new family. He asked how she was doing and then offered some friendly words of encouragement, expressing his hope that she would continue to live happily, before returning to Tokyo. Teeko was not a relative or a client. Nor was she an employee who had done some great deed for the company. Yet Sadami was the kind of person who would do everything he could to express his affection, even to a former domestic helper who had left his service two years before.

On the other hand, nobody was stricter than Sadami when it came to work. But even so, this was just one side of him. Even when hounded by clients and burdened with a company running huge debts, he still paid his employees properly and on time. And when he built a factory in a new area, he put greater priority on the construction of rank-and-file employee housing than executive officer housing. He provided kindergartens, sports grounds, pools and other welfare facilities for employees, and made them available to people in the local community.

Then again, there was a time when, after seeing a worker kick a box of parts, he gave his executives a red-faced chewing out.

“Hey! Don’t let them step over the parts. We have no use for people who treat parts recklessly. Teach them correctly!”

“Don’t leave anything on your desk. The only thing that should be on the desk is a telephone.”

“In sales, always deal with customers with a smile. Bow politely at the beginning and the end of a meeting.”

He was warm to rank-and-file employees, providing them with patient guidance concerning their attitudes as individuals. But he was relentlessly strict with upper-level employees who did not take charge of their subordinates.

During a business trip to Sendai in June of 1964, Sadami felt a strong earthquake at the hotel. Upon learning that Niigata had suffered great damage, he immediately issued an order.

“Load whatever food you can get your hands on into trucks and deliver it to our clients. The first thing people need at a time like this is food.”

Sadami left Sendai at once for a small branch office in the Tohoku region. When the wife of the branch manager came out to greet him, he said, “Thank you, ma’am, for your service. Please give some hot miso soup to the young men and women.” He then left the astonished woman and headed straight to the purchasing center in Hamamatsu to see if the earthquake had affected procurement. Next, he went to the development center in Susono.

“So then, how is everybody getting along?”

He got straight to the point. It is said that everyone from the center’s head on down was touched by Sadami’s thoughtfulness in making an appearance during the emergency, and impressed by his superhuman dynamism at that important time.

Sadami’s constant consideration for his employees and their families, as well as his way of always keeping gratitude in mind, live on in Yazaki in the form of the long-service award program and other welfare schemes.