Mitsunori

"Watching his father, the young Masa would have learnt several things: the terrifying fear of destitution, the outsider’s relentless struggle for survival, the bitter truth that no one will help you but yourself, as well as the endless corner-cutting, hustle and re-invention required of an entrepreneur operating on the margins of society. By contrast, his mother Tamako is a more distant figure, absent in the literal sense (she is said to have found Mitsunori’s misogyny difficult and sometimes left the family home to stay with relatives), but also in the emotional sense. Grandma Lee, ever present, always worrying about money, left an enduring impression."

"By the time Masa was in his early teens, Mitsunori was supporting up to 20 members of the extended Son family. Every weekend they would pitch up on the outskirts of Tosu in their flashy foreign cars to visit the grandparents still content to live in the Korean ghetto. This picture is far removed from later accounts of Son family poverty. On the contrary, the Son family’s wealth provided the security for Masa’s future career as an entrepreneur in Japan."

"Mitsunori advised Masa to enter politics and become president of South Korea."

"The Son family’s path out of poverty was breeding and selling hogs. Because pigs reproduce faster than cattle or sheep, and Mitsunori was working 18 hours a day selling the animals for slaughter, the family’s finances rapidly transformed. Masa’s father had free family labour, free feed from restaurant scraps, and no rent because his family were squatters. It was all income, no expenses. Having set himself a target of ¥5m ($14,000) in five years, Mitsunori ended up making ¥40m ($111,000).[fn2](private://read/01jg9b8njt7zc5haz30afb9n29/#ch2_2f)"

"Mitsunori didn’t want Masa to follow him into business. At night, exhausted from working 18-hour days, he reached for the bottle. Then he’d start weeping. ‘Money is something I can make, or you can make, but that’s not something you should chase. I support the family and this is enough. To make money is sacrificing our [Yangban] pride,’ he told Masa. ‘When you grow up, you don’t need money. We don’t need money.’"

"‘He [Masa] would keep staring at me, with those eyes, as if they were telling me to keep calling him a genius,’ Mitsunori remembered, ‘and so I ended up having to call him a genius.’ Just in case the foreign visitor failed to absorb the message, the doting father added: ‘Because Masa is convinced that he’s a genius, the good ideas follow. If you truly believe you’re strong, you’re a genius, then failure just bounces off you, you drive failure away through sheer will-power.’"

"The level of his personal indebtedness was reckless, his financial targets insanely ambitious. After two weeks, he’d fallen well short. The gambler improvised, ordering his pachinko engineer to rearrange the pins so every customer won $100 to $200. After a month, he’d lost ¥50m ($350,000 on contemporary exchange rates), but Lions was the most popular gambling joint in town. ‘I was down to my last ¥50m,’ Mitsunori recalled. ‘I was prepared to go bankrupt and make a run for it.’[24](private://read/01jg9b8njt7zc5haz30afb9n29/#ch02_24)"

"In the third month, Mitsunori readjusted the pinball machines so he made ¥50m and then he went back to losing another ¥50m in his fourth month. Mitsunori was prepared to lose everything to make a fortune. His son would be no different. Pachinko culture was embedded in his DNA."