The Idemitsus are the founding family and approximately 30 per cent shareholders of Idemitsu Kosan Co., one of Japan’s leading oil refiners. In 1911, Sazo Idemitsu founded Idemitsu Shokai, the predecessor of Idemitsu Kosan, and began its oil business legacy in Kitakyushu, Japan. Today, the Tokyo-based Petroleum and Petrochemical Products producer boast 8,749 employees and annual revenue of over $30 billion.
With the success of his company and its surpassing 1000 employees in 1940, founder Sazo Idemitsu produced a treatise that would be distributed to all employees, outlining his five business philosophies. The basic principals ranged from respect in fellow human beings and producing value for society to the family environment he hoped to maintain with his company’s employees.
In 1950, Sazo’s son, Shosuke Idemitsu, became CEO of Idemitsu Kosan, until advancing to the position of chairman of the board from 1998 to 2001. Shosuke’s cousin, Akira Idemitsu, held the position briefly before retiring and establishing the first time since 1940 that an Idemitsu family member did not sit on the company’s board.
In 2016, the family played a now infamous corporate gambit that threatened a $1.7 billion refinery merger with Idemitsu Kosan competitors and defied government regulators. The well-publicised event spawned a bestselling novel in Japan.
