Japan is a country that goes in many ways side by side with bigger countries as the US. Its 40 wealthiest businesspeople share 89.9 billion dollars. He are the first five.
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No.1 of Japan's businessmen is former Nintendo chairman Mr. Hiroshi Yamauchi with net worth of 7.8 billion dollars. That wealth puts him on 226th position on the list of the richest persons in the world. He was born on November 7, 1927 in Kyoto and studied law as his first and last love. Considering that love appears in many shapes one of them appeared as love for his grandfather's playing card company called Nintendo. That was in 1949 but very soon he has changed its name to Nintendo Company, Limited (NCL).
It seemed that the world just got one of the new companies at the time, but children of the world (and some adults) got much more. Nintendo became the synonym for the most wanted console and name of Mr. Yamauchi became respected in the circles of a videogame industry. He guided Nintendo Company, Limited successfully during 1980s and early 1990s and retired as the president in 2005.
The second place of the richest Japan's businessman belongs to Mr. Akira Mori, the owner of Mori Trust and one of Japan's most biggest landlords with net worth of 7.7 billion dollars. His life story is very interesting. As he said in an interview, he has a large family and everyone in the family are always prepared to debate, but when the time comes for him to say something there was nothing left to say. Many people would become depressive in his shoes, but he decided to search for things on his own. He started his own career but after some time he joined family company Mori Building on father's call. He and his brother Minoru splitted Mori Building empire to Akira's Mori Trust and Minoru's Mori Building.
And while Minoru lefts impression of fast-minded person with lucrative character, Akira's character is more of a steady person. Mr. Akira Mori's second position among wealthy businessmen of the East speaks to its behalf.
Mr. Kunio Busujima holds the third place with net worth of 5.4 billion dollars. He founded Sankyo Co., Ltd., in 1966 and it is the second-largest maker of pachinko pinball machines. Before founding Sankyo, Mr. Busujima worked for rival pachinko manufacturer Heiwa. Mr. Kunio Busujima holds Bachelor of Arts and Science and he finished Kiryu Commerce & Technical School.
He resigned from position of Chairman on April 1, 2008. Sankyo Co., Ltd. appointed Mr. Hideyuki Busujima as the new Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Company, and Mr. Akihiko Sawai as the new President. Sankyo Co. follows the motto: "Good luck, good life".
Generally, there are very little personal or company data, there is only one more and that is that Mr. Busujima owns an 18-hole golf course where his company sponsors a female professionals golf tournament every year.
The fourth place of the wealthiest people in Japan holds Mr. Nobuta Saji with net worth of 5.3 billion dollars. Mr. Saji has Master of Business Administration from University of California, Los Angeles. He runs fourth largest Japan's brewer and food manufacture group Suntory. The company is established in 1899 by his grandfather who was selling the first Western liquor in Japan. Yamazaki Valley and Hakushu distilleries are the company's strongest area of whiskey production. The company produces a range of alcohol varieties and it is active as a distributor of around 150 brands in Japan as Campari, Courvoisier and Jack Daniels.
Suntory company is the third largest mineral water distributor. Suntory group also includes restaurants, health food and publishing. It is less known that Suntory created the first blue rose in the world.
A very interesting person holds the fifth place - Mr. Masayoshi Son, founder and CEO of SoftBank, Japan's leading internet company. His concept is "We don't control, we just influence." Mr. Son graduated in economics at the University of California. His first brave move in life was to sell a language translation computer he had invented to Japan's Sharp Electronics. Some people would say: "One small step for him, one big for humanity." More or less it was just like that. He “has a nose†which was best visible when he invested 100 million dollars in Yahoo! at the time when it had only 17 employees. Three years later the investment brought some 14 billion dollars.
Mr. Son likes to play with numbers and he calculated that he owns 7.5 percent of the entire internet. From translation computer to partnership with News Corp. to connections with Vodafone and China Mobile, Son's concept "We don't control, we just influence" sounds more like "Yeah, maybe we have a good hunch.â€, with a smiley on the end. ■