Their love for plums knows no bounds.

This series follows Dentsu Inc.'s 'Company Design' team as they uncover the secrets behind 'vibrant companies' with 'originality.' In the 12th installment, we delve into the astonishing survival tactics of Kishu Hosokawa, a pickled plum shop founded nearly 100 years ago.

President Hosokawa, slightly younger than me, is a friend from my student days. I gave him a little advice when he went abroad to study, and after he returned, I offered a bit of guidance for his job hunt. He started his career at a major apparel company. After working there for several years, he took over the family business in Wakayama and became a "new manager." Even after that, whenever he came to Tokyo, we never stopped meeting. Each time, I was always drawn in by the stories about his work he brought along, like souvenirs. Operating more by field experience than management theory, and by intuition rather than established rules, he launched a new business using products created from materials discarded by every other company in the industry during production.
In job postings targeting women wanting to work while raising children, he listed "Fully Remote Work Possible" (though it actually said "Office Work Possible"), surprising everyone around him. This was back in 2014, when the world hadn't even heard the word "COVID." New business development, circular economy, work-style reform, regional revitalization... His perspective, which somehow solved challenges many businesspeople now face, must hold secrets we should know. That's why we requested this interview.

Written by: Hajime Yakushiji (Dentsu Inc. BXCC)

Kishu Hosokawa:
A plum pickling company with nearly 100 years of plum cultivation, located right in the heart of Kishu's plum-growing region. The previous generation, a plum researcher, focused on the beneficial components of plums and continued research, resulting in a specialization in developing new applications for plums. Examples include infertility treatments made from plum extracts and feed that improves livestock meat quality. In recent years, they've also researched, developed, and sold products utilizing the beneficial components of ginger and adzuki beans. They take pride in being a "manufacturer creating new uses for traditional ingredients," continuously proposing new products to the world.

When you think of Kishu, you think of plums. But that common knowledge is actually quite recent.

"Kishu's plum industry began 50 years ago with the accidental discovery of the Nanko plum." I was honestly surprised by President Hosokawa's statement at the start of the interview. The common perception is that Kishu has been a plum-producing region since the time of Tokugawa Yoshimune. "The truth is, a Nanko plum tree was discovered by chance in a field. It was delicious, with thin skin making it easy to eat. That tree was grafted and grafted again, leading to where we are today. That single Nanko plum tree sparked a shift. Suddenly, Wakayama Prefecture overtook Gunma Prefecture, which had been the nation's top producer, and became recognized as the plum-producing region."

So the story goes: Nanko plums are all siblings? That's a lie, right? This unbelievable tale is where our investigation begins. Though, to be honest, we don't really live lives that depend on plums that much to begin with.

Tatsuya Hosokawa
Born in 1985. After graduating from Xiamen University in the People's Republic of China in 2009, he joined Fast Retailing. In 2013, he joined his family's pickled plum business, Kishu Hosokawa Co., Ltd. That same year, he spun off the research department to establish Wano Miraika (now Kishu Hosokawa Pharmaceutical) with the goal of developing products based on years of research data. He currently serves as president of both companies. He boldly proclaims that sheer luck is his only true specialty, and he's a cheerful soul who survives by the skin of his teeth, relying heavily on his employees' strengths.

"Kishu Hosokawa has been in business for about 100 years. The founder was a plum farmer. The second generation was a plum merchant. My father, the third generation, was a researcher who studied biological resources at university – you could call him a plum enthusiast. And I am the fourth generation. Over this time, we have steadily grown as a business. That's our strength, if you will." President Hosokawa explains. He particularly admires his father, the plum enthusiast, calling him remarkable even as his own parent. "He just believed in the potential of plums and acted on it. All he ever said was 'What a waste, what a waste!' That was his constant refrain. For a while, he even washed his hair with leftover plum pulp. That's a true story. Well, he stopped after about a year—plum pulp shampoo was a bit much."

Everyone intuitively knows the benefits of plums. They seem good for you, right? But while everyone says they seem good, the plum vinegar produced during the umeboshi-making process is discarded as waste, even by producers. And since it's industrial waste, disposing of it costs money. It's just a difference between solid and liquid, yet plum vinegar retains all the same beneficial properties as umeboshi, yet it has absolutely no market value. That's crazy, right? The third-generation president apparently talked about this everywhere he went. "He tried everything. If people were hard to convince, he'd try plum vinegar feed on cows, pigs, chickens, fish—anything. As a kid, I thought, 'This guy is amazing. Where does that passion even come from?'"

Investing in tomorrow is essential, especially when things are going strong

"The peak for the umeboshi manufacturing industry was 2000. Since then, demand has fallen, and sales have continued to decline by about 1% annually. It's only natural, right? The younger the generation, the less they need umeboshi. Actually, in terms of product unit price, 1997 was the peak. In other words, the gross sales growth over the following three years was purely inertia."

That's when the previous generation took action. "He bought incredibly expensive machinery for desalting. And he did it in 1998, spending hundreds of millions of yen. For our company, that was a huge deal. He did it right when umeboshi sales were still booming, when things were going great. Everyone else around us was buying expensive cars or dabbling in unrelated businesses. But my father didn't give any of that a second glance. He couldn't stand that the appeal of umeboshi wasn't getting through."

"Deeply Reduced Salt" Umeboshi. A unique umeboshi where the standard desalting process using water was completely replaced with "fruit juice." The "Deeply Reduced Salt" method was developed out of a single-minded determination not to wash away and discard the beneficial components. It took ten years to bring the product to market.

"First, the effects showed in pigs. We got pigs with delicious meat. Next came chickens. Chicken eggs. The parent hens became healthier. Consequently, they laid high-quality eggs, and they kept laying them for a long time. Of course, there were many failures too. Cattle were a complete failure. The power of the plum vinegar did make them healthy, but they became too healthy, turning into macho cows. In other words, that delicious marbling diminished. I got scolded, 'What are you going to do about this?'"

This might seem abrupt, but let's talk about bōsōzoku (street bikers).

Ume vinegar, produced during pickling plums. Originally an industrial waste problem, we removed the salt. This extract isn't just used for feed. Completely desalted, it becomes plum juice packed with plum juice (since plum juice contains almost no sugar, it's not sweet at all. So it might not be the sweet juice you imagine). At Kishu Hosokawa, we soak the plums in this juice. "The salt concentration when plums are salt-cured and sun-dried is about 20%. As is, they're too salty to eat. So, we soak them in water to reduce the salt content by about half. But doing that leaches out not just the salt, but also nutrients and umami components. That's when we realized we could use the plum juice. The umami stays intact."

It's a logic anyone can understand once explained. Yet no one noticed it, and even if they did, no one acted on it. I take my hat off to the unshakable conviction and drive that pulled off this revolution. "Take motorcycle gangs, for example. 'We don't follow society's rules!' kind of thing. But if you really think about it, delinquents ride bikes, make weird noises, and race around town – they're following a rule someone else made. That's not revolution or challenge." Just being different from the norm doesn't create anything new.

Desalination equipment. A device born 20 years ago that turns seawater into drinking water, repurposed specifically for pickling plums. I doubt any other company was the first to introduce this equipment, requiring hundreds of millions in initial investment and tens of millions in maintenance costs, and still operates it at 100% capacity today.

What brings no benefit will inevitably be discarded

"Umeboshi is part of Japan's food culture. So, let's make sure to eat at least three every day." President Hosokawa says he's always found such statements intolerable. "I think that kind of thing is cultural depletion, cultural parasitism."

The most crucial thing for creators and providers is whether they can deliver the value demanded by the times. To do that, something must change. Whether something gains societal recognition or endures as culture isn't for us to decide. That's ultimately for society, and for future generations, to determine.

"Things that offer no benefit will inevitably be discarded and forgotten by the times. That's why we keep challenging ourselves." With that resolve, President Hosokawa took on the challenge of utilizing plum vinegar for human health – a venture the previous president had attempted and failed at. Believing plum vinegar must be beneficial to humans, persistent joint research with a local medical university revealed its usefulness in infertility treatment. He established a separate company, launched a fertility supplement business from scratch, got it on track, and is now charging ahead with the next business development.

"Drug development is no simple task. It takes an enormous amount of time and effort to get approval. But if we didn't challenge ourselves just because it seems difficult, we wouldn't create anything."

Twenty years ago, when a specific plum extract component was administered to chickens, their egg-laying rate dramatically improved. This discovery led to the start of a joint research project between the Prefectural Medical University and a specialized clinic. Today, its applications are expanding, including being utilized in treatments at fertility clinics nationwide.

The Tale of the Forest and the Acorn

President Hosokawa has implemented remote work for years and created systems allowing employees to bring their children to the office. Next to the office desks, a play zone for children is set up. "In management, in how I interact with people, whenever I'm uncertain about a choice, I ask myself: 'Would this be a choice that could survive in the forest?'" says President Hosokawa. If you were thrown alone into the forest, a human would perish in no time. It's easy to talk about environmental conservation and other noble-sounding causes, but if you consider how the forest gods might judge it, the right course of action becomes simple.

"Bringing children to the workplace was long considered unthinkable, right? But mothers in the Jomon period surely gathered acorns while holding their children. That's actually quite natural. That's what boosting productivity in work means."

The recent trend of strictly separating work and personal life is nonsense, according to President Hosokawa. "We live to live happily with our beloved families, right? So there shouldn't be any distinction between work and personal life." He adds that this applies equally to employees and customers.

"To me, employees and customers are just at slightly different distances from the company. For example, some customers just want to buy our products, while others actively give advice like 'You should do this better' or 'You should try that'. Some even recommend our products to others. What they do is essentially no different from what our employees do. Incidentally, I call customers who truly love our company 'Dear Friends.' Just 'friends' would be too familiar, so 'Dear Friends'."

For President Hosokawa, who has returned to contemplating survival in the forest, terms like work-style reform or fan marketing are probably just buzzwords some people use these days. Or perhaps he's never even consciously considered them. Truly new things, or the way things should be, might only be reached by passing through that forest of essential values. Within the story of the forest and the acorns, I found an unexpected insight.

Kishu Hosokawa Pharmaceutical was originally named Wano Miraika when it spun off. The name meant "harmonizing the future," embodying the desire to proactively transform Japanese traditions for the future. It was also a rebellion against the industry's attitude of complacency—accepting market contraction and cultural erosion without challenging new value creation. I believe that when a company makes new proposals and they are accepted by the market, that becomes the continuation of culture.

Kishu Hosokawa's website is here.

Season 2 of the serialized series where Dentsu Inc.'s 'Company Design' team explores the secrets of 'vibrant companies' possessing 'originality.' Episode 12 introduced Kishu Hosokawa, a pickled plum maker that doesn't rest on its century-old tradition.

Season 1 of the series can be found here:
The "Company Design" project site is here.

[Editor's Note]

At the end of our interview, I posed a question to President Hosokawa that I simply had to ask: "Personally, I can't help but feel that the plum is a prime example of something underappreciated in the world. After all, it's the lowest rank in the pine-bamboo-plum symbolism. When it comes to flowers celebrated in waka poetry, it's been the cherry blossom since the Heian period. But if my hazy memory serves me right, in the Manyoshu, the flower referred to was the plum blossom. President Hosokawa, you must love plums, right? Could you tell me why you're so enamored with them?"

Even I thought it was a mean question. But President Hosokawa immediately countered: "Have you ever eaten a raw plum fruit? Imagine a plum." Ah, so that's it. Just as I hastily concluded they must be delicious like plums, he continued: "Well, they're like plums with all the sweetness completely drained out. Just sour and bitter. That's the plum for you." President Hosokawa went on. "And this incredibly bitter thing has been eaten continuously for 1,500 years. Don't you think that's amazing? Amazing, or rather, endearing. How adorable is this little thing?"

But it's not just cute. The plum holds immense potential, beyond human comprehension. Otherwise, there's no explanation for why it's been treasured from the Nara period to the present day. I want to unravel that mystery. Whether I can do it in my lifetime, I don't know. But the plum, which inspires such feelings, is simply too precious not to cherish.

Hearing President Hosokawa say this with a smile, I felt a bittersweet emotion well up inside me, along with a deep sense of gratitude for being born in this country. Plums possess power. There isn't a single person in this country who wouldn't agree with that statement. At least, there shouldn't be.