英語難民と英語貴族
2020.1.28
バナナ王の苦労を英語で！
昨日のバナナ王の話を英語にしてみました。
This time, I would like to share the story of a Japanese entrepreneur who is know as a king of banana in Brazil. How come he got this nickname and how the philosophy has helped him to succeed in his agricultural business.
Q: Who is the king of Banana?
A: It is Mr. Yuji Yamada, former mayor of Janauba in Minas State, Brazil.
Q: How come he started Banana business?
A: He moved to Brazil in 1960. First he dealt with passion fruits plantation and achieved a success by improving its quality. However, after experiencing natural disaster and inefficient logistic system, he got the idea of banana plantation by implementing the irrigation system.
Q: Was that challenging?
A: Yes it was. People called Yuji as an idiot since people can cultivate banana with warm climate and enough water. No one at that time wanted to invest such system to grow banana, as they had been abundant under the natural environment. It was no point, from local people’s view point, to artificially create water supply system.
Q: So what was Yuji’s point ?
A: at that time, due to the whole sale system and inefficient supply chain, the banana price sometimes had got very expensive especially after the natural disasters. Yuji wanted to create banana at cheap price and maintain the supply under any conditions.
Q: Was that easy? This sounds time-consuming and a lot of work required.
A: Yes, it was a really tough work for Yuji. He had to overcome intervenes raised by competitors, to fight with local authorities, and to convince his people to keep endeavor to create good quality banana at cheap price.
Q: What happened to Yuji? He got finally deserved?
A: Finally, he got enough return, say over ten percent profit. It took almost ten years to produce such results. Quite recently, he got the mayor of the city and dedicated his efforts to help local people and improve the infrastructure in the local community.
Q: What is the key to success of Yuji?
A: He said that he just simply followed the principles that Mr. Inamori instructed to business leaders. For instance, be innovative, strive yourself much harder than anyone else, and maintain strong desire. All of those mottos were translated into Portuguese and shared with Yuji’s staffs.
Q: So what is the message that we can have from Yuji’s story?
A: The business philosophy that Mr. Inamori has been sharing with Japanese leaders actually worked regardless of countries, people’s cultural background and the nature of the business..
