Markets Magazine
Japan Can’t Look Away From This Wrenching Succession Dispute
The father who couldn’t let go
At venerable furniture seller Otsuka Kagu, tension between a father and his daughter has transfixed a nation.
Illustrator: Tatsuro KiuchiThis article is for subscribers only.
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.”