Tokuji Hayakawa｜Born November 3, 1893 (Meiji 26)
A 3-page feature based on public historical records
Later success does not erase an earlier loss.
Before reading Tokuji Hayakawa's life, I would like to stop calling him a ``successful person who overcame adversity.'' This is because the magnitude of what has been lost will not diminish with subsequent growth of the company.
Born in 1893, Tokuji acquired metal processing skills and after becoming independent, he developed metal retractable pencils and other products.[1] However, in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, he lost his factory, lost his two children, and lost his wife as well. The company history describes how he settled his debts, closed his business, and moved to Osaka to work teaching technology.[2]
The job of passing on remaining technology is different from the spectacular founding of a new large company. Rebuild your life, fulfill your promise, and move on to the next place you can work. It was a concrete job along the way.
Even if we lost our factories and products, we didn't lose the hand jobs we learned in the same way. Counting what's left doesn't mean forgetting what we lost. It means looking for clues to survive the next day.
Military Flashlight / Wikimedia Commons/Image source / CC BY 4.0(No modification of photo content)
伝Interpreting YAMATO DENSHI
Do not turn grief into a device for telling a comeback story.
Others cannot decide that you were successful because you suffered. What YAMATO DENSHI wants to look at is not to impose meaning on loss, but what supported you afterward. Technology, job requests, connections with people. The scaffolding to move again has a concrete form.