A Puzzling Toll at the Top

By Janice M. Horowitz

Running a large corporation in the hard-driving Japanese economy has always been a tough job, but these days it may be a fatal one as well. The chief executives of at least twelve major companies, including Seiko Epson, Kawasaki Steel and All Nippon Airways, have all died suddenly this year. The unusually high toll in executive suites -- there were only a third as many comparable deaths in all of 1986 -- is as mysterious as it is macabre. Most victims have been in their 50s and 60s, too young to die in a country where the average male life expectancy is 75.

The immediate causes of death ranged widely, from pneumonia to heart attacks. But many Japanese are convinced that the real killer was endaka, which means a strong yen. The 40% rise in the value of the Japanese currency since September 1985 has made the country's products more expensive abroad and stalled its vaunted export machine. As companies have increasingly suffered slipping sales and profits, corporate leadership has become more stressful -- and possibly deadlier -- than ever.

The unexpected death toll has heightened the anxiety in the business community and given the Japanese press a cause celebre. Story after story has likened the fallen business leaders to martyred warriors. Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's largest daily newspaper, ran a feature under these scary headlines: SUDDEN DEATHS OF CORPORATE HEADS; DISEASE-FREE SOLDIERS UNDER HEAVY STRESS FROM RECESSION AND THE STRONG YEN. The Sunday Mainichi referred to the trend as "death in combat."

Though no cause-and-effect relationship between economic and physical ills ^ can be proved, Japanese medical experts do not consider the notion as farfetched as it sounds. Almost any disease can be exacerbated by tension. Observes Dr. Ryozo Okada, a professor of medicine at Tokyo's Juntendo University: "When faced with a sudden change in the business climate, those who are not capable of dealing with a new situation internalize stress, push themselves beyond limits and die suddenly."

Several of the corporate deaths indeed seem to fit that pattern. A partial listing of recent victims:

-- Ichiro Hattori, 55, the president of Seiko Epson, died on a golf course in May after suffering a heart attack. In eight years as chief executive, he had built Seiko from a watchmaking company into an electronics giant. But last year profits plummeted nearly 80% because of the high yen.

-- Toshiyuki Nakamura, who was president of Japan's third largest paintmaker, Dai Nippon Toryo, was meeting in March with other executives in his office when he suddenly put his hand to his chest and fell from his chair, dead of a heart attack at 62. Nakamura had been trying to engineer a recovery for the company, which had plunged heavily into debt.

-- Kosuke Asano, 63, president of Nippon Light Metal, felt fit enough to walk 20 minutes to his office each morning from a train station. But after returning home from work one day in March, he died of a stroke. His company, Japan's largest aluminum producer, had been battered by cheap imports and was desperately trying to diversify into consumer products like ice cream-making machines.

-- Shinzaburo Kato, 59, managing director of Kawasaki Steel, was a top executive in an industry that lost $2 billion last year. A frequent overseas traveler, he died of a stroke in June while on a business trip to the U.S.

-- Yoshio Ohno, who was president of Shiseido, Japan's largest cosmetics maker, used to swim regularly before he discovered earlier this year that he had a stomach ulcer. After undergoing surgery, he died of pneumonia in July. He was 65. He had been directing a major campaign by his company to expand into the U.S. and other foreign markets.

-- Takeo Kondo died at 64 in November of a liver ailment, only six months after becoming the president of Mitsubishi Corp., Japan's largest trading company. Even though Mitsubishi was expanding into new areas like telecommunications, the company's sales dropped by more than 10% during Kondo's tenure.

-- Taizo Nakamura, president of All Nippon Airways, died in May at 66 of ^ pneumonia after battling hepatitis for two years. He had overseen the difficult task of converting All Nippon from a largely domestic operation to an international carrier.

Of course, businessmen in every country face economic downturns. So why should the stress affect Japanese executives to any extraordinary degree? One answer may lie in the especially competitive business culture. Japanese managers, most of whom work for a single company during their entire careers, have an extremely close personal identification with the fate of that firm. Says Dr. Tomio Hirai, a psychiatry professor at the University of Tokyo: "A Japanese obsession with perfectionism puts pressure on executives. As a result, they tend to overstrain themselves." Such strain peaks during times of economic hardship, according to a study by Dr. Okada. He found that the incidence of heart attacks among Japanese managers was nearly four times as high during the oil crises of 1974 and 1979 as in the high-growth period of 1966-68.

The unhealthy effects of job stress are made worse by the workaholic life- style of typical Japanese executives. They have relatively little time for their families, and even their after-hours social encounters are usually work related. Says Dr. Yasuo Matsuki, director of Tokyo's Shin Akasaka Clinic: "Top executives have to attend a party or two after work almost day in and day out. As a result, they end up eating high-calorie food and drinking a lot." Dr. Matsuki and other physicians counsel managers to relax more at home and watch their diets. But for many of Japan's corporate elite, the best preventive medicine might be a lower yen and a resurgent economy.

With reporting by Yukinori Ishikawa/Tokyo