In a country where family conflict is usually kept under wraps, the boardroom fight at Otsuka Kagu was as titillating as reality TV.
The company's 71-year-old founder tried to fire his daughter five years after naming her president of the high-end furniture retailer, which is a household name in Japan. It was dramatic, garish, and ugly — and it got everyone's attention the moment Katsuhisa Otsuka used a February news conference to call his daughter, Kumiko, one of Japan's few female business leaders, a "bad child."
The Otsuka family drama illustrates the difficulties posed by the retirement of the baby-boomer entrepreneurs, some of whom, like Katsuhisa, are towering figures in Japan. These business founders are leaving their children a country that is sliding into a comfortable decline. A big reason for this is low the birthrate, which also explains why two-thirds of Japan's small businesses don't have successors. For those who do succeed their parents, tough choices await.
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