In 1972 the name of our company changed from Denshi Shimbunsha to Ongen Publishing. Let me describe a little incident from those times.
“I came to this company because I wanted to join a publishing firm,” I said to President Iwama one day. “Surely you have the same desire, don’t you? Let’s make a fresh start as a publishing company.” “I see,” he replied, and accepted my proposal. In 1972, together with the launch of Audio Senka, we made a new start as Ongen Publishing. We also moved our office from Yushima to Sotokanda.
In 1975 we held a party at the Tokyo Prince Hotel to mark the thirtieth anniversary of our company’s founding. As a commemorative event, the recipients of the Audio Excellence Award were announced. Accuphase’s C200S and P300S received prizes from Tereon’s Shichinojo Suzuki, chair of the sales screening committee, and Isamu Asano, chair of the audio critics’ screening committee. Amazingly, Accuphase has continued to take the gold consecutively to this very day.
At the party President Iwama declared that “Kohsei Wada will be our president in 10 years’ time.” In a loud voice I addressed the participants, saying that “I’m still only a novice, but I look forward to your cooperation.” There was thunderous applause. I was 30 years of age at the time and had just become a director.
In April 1976 the inaugural issue of Audio Accessory came out. At that time a little divergence began to appear in the views of President Iwama and myself. While the president thought that a magazine of around 120 pages would be sufficient, I had the vision of becoming number one in the field of specialist audio magazines, so I personally carried out a thorough survey of what would be possible. I believed that since we had taken the step of becoming a publishing company, we should not ride in the back seat but be the top runner. I was 32 then.
The proposal for Audio Accessory came from the president. I myself thought that since the audio diffusion rate was now about 50%, pursuit of the quality improvement of accessories and the like was correct in terms of marketing. At the same time, I believed that to become number one, we needed to issue a magazine with as many pages as our other strong rivals. Otherwise, we would lose. We would not be able to win unless we issued a magazine that was at the very least 60% as thick as others. I persistently discussed the matter with our president, who was for 120 pages, and eventually we agreed on 250 pages.
Since we could not sell the new magazine in bookstores, we asked audio retailers to purchase 10,000 copies. I was responsible for 70% of those sales. But President Iwama probably felt a sense of crisis about my method of doing things, which entailed increased costs. He announced personnel changes, and I was fired.
About a week later, the incident that I wanted to tell you about occurred. President Iwama’s beautiful and quiet wife stood in front of him and declared in a loud voice, “I’m against you forcing Mr. Wada to resign. If you really want to do that, then I resign with him! He joined us at a time when we didn’t know what would happen to the company, and he has worked really hard for us all on his own. Getting rid of such a person is inexcusable.”
President Iwama did not have a leg to stand on. Turning to me, he snapped, “Well, what should we do?” “Rest assured,” I replied clearly, “it will definitely be a success. Audio Senka has a bright future too. Leave it to me.” President Iwama then said, “If you’re so sure of yourself then, go ahead and try!” and left the room. I expressed my heartfelt gratitude to his wife and silently vowed to do my best for her forever.
The second issue of Audio Accessory contained an extremely popular feature by the audio critic Saburo Egawa. It sold out instantly.