"First come, first served" is a principle I learned during my army career. You should ascertain whether you can do something or not and if you feel you can do it, do it thoroughly.

It was my first trip to the island of Kyushu to sell accessories. Early one morning, I arrived in Kokura and walked the streets, narrowing the list of important shops down to two or three. Luckily I was able to see the owner of the first shop. However, when I tried to discuss business with him, he left with a visitor saying, "Just a moment, please." He did not come back until afternoon. His wife began worrying about me, saying, "He is a forgetful man. Please finish the job you have to do." But I said, "Since he asked me to wait, I'll wait." I continued waiting for seven hours. Though I saw I was being obstinate, I wanted to succeed in my business by any means.

As soon as the proprietor returned, he said curtly, "If I buy some of your stock, will you be satisfied?" The remark really got my goat. "If you don't like my goods, I don't want you to buy them. I'm now in the middle of a business trip, and I have wasted seven hours because of you," I told him frankly. It turned out he wasn't a knave at all. He admired my tenacious spirit and became a good client from then on.

In October 1947 when accessories and crystal wares were selling well, a small crisis occurred. I had gone to see an influential client in Shijo-Kawaramachi in Kyoto to deliver some of my goods, only to be told, "Look at these new products I have here. Your goods can hardly compare!" He had some innovatively designed brooches made of pearls, shaped like birds and flowers. They were many times more eye-catching than my smooth, expressionless products which were made by a Buddhist altar fittings artisan and a tinsmith in their spare time. They were as different as chalk and cheese or an infantry-man's rifle and a heavy machine gun. Indeed, I was convinced that my products were no match for these. I managed to get the name of the supplier, a Mr Hirano who lived in Urawa, from the front desk clerk at the Sanjo Hotel. When Mr Hirano returned at 10 p.m., I ambushed him. "Please allow me to sell your goods," I pleaded. "In the Kansai region, I'm sure to move a lot of stock." He said, "I have already distributed the last of fifteen-thousand yen's worth of products, and I am returning to Urawa tomorrow." I gave him three-thousand yen (all I had with me) as a deposit, and told him I wanted to negotiate an agreement with him the following evening.

"I raised funds by selling off all the antiques my father had collected."

The next day, I ran about selling as much of my existing stock as possible since I was confident that it would be worth the effort. Taking advantage of the circumstances, I approached him, asking for exclusive sales rights in Kansai. However, he didn't give me a favorable answer, to the contrary he began to find me bothersome (he already had many large clients). I called at his hotel once more, but was turned away. Yet I refused to give up so easily. I made the rounds and in the process learned about one of his salesmen. When his salesmen visited Kyoto for pleasure, even if Mr Hirano was absent, they were allowed to drink and dine at his expense. So I got a good idea; I disguised myself as a bearded man and masqueraded as one of his salesmen who worked in Kobe. I called at the office, and as I expected, the receptionist said, "Mr Hirano went out for a moment, but please make yourself at home," and she brought me something to eat. Later that evening, he finally returned, saying, "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting." I took off the fake mustache in a fluster, and said, "As you wouldn't agree to see me, I decided to resort to this little trick," and bowed my head. Listening to my words, Mr Hirano changed his mind and gave me a chance. He entrusted me with one-hundred-thousand yen worth of products, and I entered into earnest business relations with Hirano-Shoukai. By April the following year (1948) my monthly turnover had shot up to five hundred thousand yen.

I seemed to be very lucky at first. However, I had to face some obstacles. I gradually became exhausted from working too hard. I consulted a doctor, and was told I needed to take time off and rest as I had acute jaundice.

I had also found that, though the goods Mr Hirano gave me at first were of high quality, later deliveries were not as good. In spite of my poor health, I traveled around Kyushu trying to sell my products, but all my effort was in vain. I was very distressed and pondered again and again what I should do. Finally I made up my mind to stop dealing with Mr Hirano.

In June 1948 sales of brooches, which were our main line of products, fell to zero. When I went looking for a substitute, I found that hair clips were beginning to come into style. I decided to deal in them at once since I could produce them in Kyoto, but I came to feel the limitations of dealing in accessories around 1949 because of the enormous fluctuations in the fashion business.

At that time I was introduced to a man named Mr Takeo Yasuda by a client at Shijo-Dori. He had worked in the outerwear division of a department store before the war and now he brought me a curious thing which looked like a small cake made of cloth. On the top of a spiral spring made of aluminum was some cotton stuffing and the whole was covered with cloth. When it was put on a woman's bust, it made it look glamorous. He said that the principal of a clothing school had named it a "brapad". Mr Yasuda explained, "From now on Japanese women will definitely be wearing Western clothes. Although proportionality is very important, the bust line of Japanese women needs enhancing for Western clothing. Why not accentuate a woman's figure in the way the shoulders of men's suits enhance a man's physique?" I thought intuitively, "Brapads will sell well." No woman ignores her shape. They also met my desire to be involved with textiles. I thought they would gain acceptance in both the Kanto and Kansai areas. As our sales area only went as far as Nagoya, brapads would also offer an opportunity to expand our territory.

I got on an overcrowded night train to the Kanto area, managing to get in the train through a window, but I couldn't find any room to stand. There were people sleeping on the racks and under the seats. I put my feet on an armrest, sat on a seat back, and held on to the luggage rack with my right hand while carrying brapads under my left arm for more than ten hours. That I could endure the ordeal I owed to my army experiences.

Whenever people talk about Tokyo, they mainly talk about Ginza. I visited a remarkable shop there and got an unexpected response: "These are interesting. I'll buy one dozen." One brapad was going for 100 yen. At a crossing, I bumped into the sales manager of a rival company, Aoyama Shouten. Even though I knew Mr Yasuda sold brapads to Aoyama Shouten, I did not expect the rival company to also come to Tokyo. I sold out the rest of the brapads and returned to Kyoto by night train. I ended up with an exclusive sales contract with Mr Yasuda, the brapad designer. But in order to expand sales brapads were not enough.

I tried putting the pad in a cloth bag that would be held against the breast with straps. (I had seen brassieres in an American magazine.) There was no one making bras in Japan at that time so I tried to devise a paper pattern in the shape of a bowl by fitting it to the bust of my wife. I bought high quality remnants of export grade cotton cloth by weight and asked a subcontractor to sew them. Unfortunately, I was not a sewing expert and the paper patterns I made had no margins for seams. The bras were too small and no better than clothing for toy dolls. The first batch of product proved to be useless.

I next added a margin for the seams and had a workable prototype at last. I named it "No. 101", as it was my first original product. This time I had a winner; my bra started to sell well as the convenience of combining the brapad and bra were favorably accepted by the public.

Next I tried to make a garterbelt by imitating samples I had obtained. At this time, many women who were socks used rubber bands to keep them from falling, but they complained that the rubber bands cut off blood circulation, making their legs sore. I thought women should hang strings from their waists and attach them to the top of the socks. By and by I began to gain confidence doing business in women's underwear.