A Farm Boy Who's Going to Town

Tokyo's besieged commuters daily battle what they call kotsu jigoku -- literally, traffic hell -- but they are about to get welcome relief from at least one of its irritations. At a particularly nasty intersection, where queues of buses now snarl traffic, a group of entrepreneurs plans to build the city's first indoor bus terminal. The moving force behind the new, $25 million station is a man who has a special interest in the comfort of Japanese bus riders: Kenji Osano, a burly, self-made millionaire who owns most of the buses that will use the new terminal. Last week, with his eye on lengthier travel as well, Osano asked the Japanese government for permission to start a bus line from Tokyo to a moun tain resort 140 miles away; he hopes that it will be the first link in a Greyhound-like system for Japan.

Wartime Profits. Osano's ambitious ventures in travel and tourism have made him, at 47, one of Japan's most remarkable postwar millionaires. He operates through his Tokyo-based company, Kokusai Kogyo, whose sales last year rose to $61 million. Among other things, the firm owns and operates Japan's biggest bus and taxi fleets, seven Japanese hotels and a string of driving schools, travel agencies and sporting-goods shops. It is also Japan's largest distributor of Chrysler Corp. autos and its sole distributor of International Harvester farm and construction equipment. As if all this were not enough, Osano last year bought three of the Sheraton Corp.'s Hawaiian hotels (the SurfRider, Moana, and Princess Kaiulani), thus becoming the largest individual Japanese investor in the U.S. He figures that, after the Japanese government this month lifts its postwar ban on foreign pleasure travel, the travel-loving Japanese will head "like a flood tide" for Hawaii, which, says Osano, "is far enough away for them to forget their worries, but not so far that they will get homesick."

A farmer's son with only a sixth-grade education, Osano has shown an uncanny ability to foresee and exploit opportunities. Wounded in China and discharged from the Japanese army before Pearl Harbor, he piled up a fortune by supplying spare auto parts to the Imperial Navy. At war's end, expecting an eventual travel boom, he used his profits to start buying hotels, also began acquiring bus and taxi companies. After the Korean war, as prospering Japanese businessmen began buying more foreign goods, he started importing U.S. autos and golf clubs. As sole owner of his many-sided business empire, Osano has amassed a personal fortune of about $140 million.

Rough-Edged Manners. Despite his great wealth and his marriage 14 years ago to the daughter of a Japanese aristocrat, Osano has retained the rough-edged manners of a country boy. He shuns the traditional tea and palaver that play such a big part in Japanese business etiquette, and operates as a brash loner. He makes all his own decisions, does not even have a board of directors. He drives his 11,800 employees hard, yet has earned their admiration by providing above-average salaries and benefits. Osano is admired in other circles, too. The Japanese Treasury, whose chief Minister happens to be a friend of his, is especially happy about his Hawaiian venture. Osano's hotels there will catch many of the dollars spent by Japanese tourists, send them back to Japan to ease the country's balance-of-payments problem.

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