Introduction

This will be the first biography on Kazuo Inamori in Taiwan and the only one that reveals how Kazuo Inamori built two Fortune Global 500 companies with Buddhism. The book shall be the Asian version of The Diamond Cutter: The Buddha on Managing Your Business and Your Life. Kazuo Inamori was the son of a printing shop owner. When he was 12, he almost died of tuberculosis. The near-death experience led him to exploring Buddhism. Since then, whenever he encountered difficulties, Inamori would try to resolve them with Buddha’s wisdom. Inamori started selling paper bags to support his family when he was a high school student. Soon, he took over the entire paper-bag industry in Kagoshima and helped declining factories become profitable again. Just four years after university graduation, he founded Kyoto Ceramic, later known as Kyocera. In 2001, Kyocera’s global sales reached US$ 10.2 billion. In fact, during the founding period, nearly half of the employees at Kyoto Ceramic threatened to resign if they couldn’t get a pay raise. Just when his company was about to collapse, Inamori thought of “compassion” in Buddhism and tried his best to feel the employees’ pain. With sincerity, Inamori finally talked all of the staff members into staying with him, and together they made Kyoto Ceramic a Fortune Global 500 company later on. After retiring at 65, Inamori became a monk at Empuku Temple in Kyoto. At age 78, he was assigned by the Japanese government to be the CEO of Japan Airlines to revive the company. In the next year, Japan Airlines made a record-high profit of US$1.6 billion. Kazuo Inamori is hailed as a “business saint” in Japan, just like Matsushita Konosuke. He emphasizes that “a company’s goal is to bring its employees happiness.” Inamori has used Buddhism wisely to run businesses.