53 - Saba Shoichi (1919–2012): Japanese Industrialist and Friend of Britain

Summary

INTRODUCTION

SABA SHŌICHI WAS one of the pioneers of post-war Japanese manufacturing. From May 1972 to July 1987 he was managing director, president and then chairman of the Toshiba Corporation.

Following the ‘COCOM affair’ in 1987 when an affiliate of Toshiba was revealed to have sold submarine components to the Soviet Union, Saba resigned his executive position and became adviser to the board at Toshiba, where in view of his wide experience and international contacts he continued to exert considerable influence both inside and outside the company. The consensus of opinion of colleagues in Japanese industry was that Saba's voluntary resignation during the COCOM scandal was a characteristically honourable gesture on his part, not an obligatory response to Toshiba’s involvement.

In Britain, Saba's reputation as a quietly charming unofficial ambassador for Japanese industry, led the chairman of a major British company to describe him as representing ‘the best of Japanese management’. Saba developed friendly relations with many senior British industrialists, ministers and leading figures in the arts.

CAREER

Saba was born in Tokyo in 1919. He was the son and grandson of Presbyterian Ministers (his father had been pastor of the Omori Presbyterian church) and remained a practising Christian until his death in 2012.

As a boy one of his hobbies was making models using mechano pieces and finding ways of using the models he had made. He was good at mathematics and science. His ability in these subjects provided a sound basis for his university studies. He was admitted to Tokyo Imperial University where, as he was fascinated by the nature of electricity, he chose to study electrical engineering, which was far less developed as a subject at that time than it is today.

In July and August 1941 he did a two-month apprenticeship at the government electro-technical laboratory where he observed the ionosphere by utilizing the electro-magnetic pulse. In September that year the Japanese ministry of education sent groups of students to parts of China and Taiwan to observe the sonar eclipse taking place that summer. While in Taiwan he was summoned back to Tokyo by a letter, which told him that the university year was being shortened and that students in his year would graduate in December 1941 instead of March 1942. He had to submit quickly his graduating thesis, which was on the behaviour of the arc generated by switching.