Tokuji’s Conviction: There Will Soon Be “One Television Set Per Household”

In the period shortly after television broadcasting began in Japan, TVs were still expensive, and looking toward commercial uses such as hotels and coffee shops, the industry had settled on 17-inch sets as their mainstream models. In contrast, Tokuji decided to focus on the smaller 14-inch screen size, and boldly took the lead in the industry by building a mass production system. He had the confidence that, as TV became increasingly popular, the era of “one set per household” would eventually arrive. His idea was that a 14-inch model would better fit the size of the rooms in which Japanese people lived, and there was also a price advantage. In addition, he worked to bring down costs by gradually increasing production volumes at his mass-production plant, and took the lead in the industry by achieving a series of price reductions—from “10,000 yen per inch” and then “TVs for less than 100,000 yen.” Demand skyrocketed, and as he thought they would, TVs made their way into ordinary households and dramatically changed people’s lives.