Haruo Tsuji was born in 1932 in Higashi-Sumiyoshi-Ku, Osaka. His father was engaged in the printing and paper business. Even today Tsuji is known as a good tennis player, thanks to his father who coached his lively young son in tennis in his primary school years.
In August 1945, air raids forced his family to evacuate from Ashiya, where they lived, to Toyonaka, Osaka, where he entered Toyonaka Junior High School. In 1951, he entered Kwansei Gakuin University and studied accounting under Professor Rintaro Aoki, known as the "Father of Accounting in Japan."
In 1955, he joined Hayakawa Denki Kogyo Co., Ltd. (the current Sharp Corporation) as its first non-technical graduate employee, and was assigned first to its accounting section and then to the planning section, where he was involved in the sales planning of black-and-white TV sets, then the company's "star" product. In those days, since demand often exceeded production, he made frequent changes in manufacturing plans, for which he was reprimanded by the factory manager, as being inconsiderate toward the manufacturing department. From that time on he adopted a style of marketing in which he gathered information extensively from retail shops which he used to predict market (= field) trends. The field-oriented approach that Tsuji applied in all areas of business is well known, and has been the basis of his business activity. In 1962, Tsuji was put in charge of marketing and sales promotion, etc., as the manager of commercial activities at the sales division. In 1965, he was promoted to manager of sales planning, followed by appointment to a corporate directorship in 1977. During this period, he accumulated business experience as president of a sales company and by being always in the front line of sales.
In 1978, Tsuji was appointed to the deputy division manager of the TV business division at the Tochigi Factory. In 1979, when the TV business unit was renamed Electronic Equipment Division, he was promoted to the post of Division Manager. Through a series of unprecedented reforms he succeeded in restructuring the company's TV business, which had plummeted due to the export restrictions on TVs to the U.S. He also successfully established a video recorder business, and by 1984 the sales of this product had risen from approximately 70 billion yen to more than 300 billion yen, during his successful career of 6.5 years as Division Manager. During this period, he had the foresight to predict the arrival of an era of new audio-visual equipment that would enable users to enjoy "shooting and creating" motion pictures, in a departure from the conventional mode of just "viewing" them, and set his sights on the creation of an integrated audio-visual equipment business. The "Visual Integration Strategy" he invented greatly invigorated the company's product planning and technology functions.
A new initiative introduced by Tsuji while he was in the post of Division Manager of the Electronic Equipment Division was that he personally headed product planning meetings and directed the whole process of product development from decisions on product concepts, designs, and functions to cost management and development schedules. The product planning meetings, production control and planning ("production sales") meetings, management meetings and monthly regular meetings were all held in a positive atmosphere full of tension, and many current Sharp executives learned business management in that environment. After returning to the company's headquarters, Tsuji, as Senior Executive Director and President, spread throughout the entire company various practical management practices and systems he had developed when he was Division Manager.
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