Kikkoman Foods Marks its 50th Anniversary and Strives for the Next Half Century

Chairman Mogi Donates $5 Million for Sustainable Natural Resources and Business

Chairman Yuzaburo Mogi of the Kikkoman Co. greets about 700 guests at the celebration gala on June 9, 2023

Kikkoman Foods, Inc. in Walworth, Wisconsin, celebrated the 50th anniversary at the neighboring Grand Geneva Resort & Spa in Lake Geneva with its 700 guests and friends. To commemorate its huge milestone, the 7th Wisconsin-U.S.-Japan Economic Development Conference was also held with the theme “Achieving Sustainable Global Economic Growth in an Era of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity.”

Chairman Mogi and guests break sake barrels wishing Kikkoman Foods good fortune for the next half-century.

The attendees were Yuzaburo Mogi, Honorary CEO and Chairman of the Board, Kikkoman Corporation; Noriaki Horikiri, Chairman of Kikkoman; Shozaburo Nakano, President and CEO of Kikkoman; Ryohei Tsuji, President & COO of Kikkoman Foods; and as special guests, Koji Tomita, Japanese Ambassador to the U.S.; Shinsuke Sugiyama, former Japanese Ambassador to the U.S.; Hirosi Tajima, Consul General of Japan in Chicago; Toshihiko Fukui, former Governor of the Bank of Japan; Takeo Inokuchi, Chairman of the Midwest U.S.-Japan Association attended.

Remarkable guests from the Wisconsin side were Tony Evers, Governor of Wisconsin; Scott Walker, Tomy Thompson, and Martin James Schreiber, former Governors of Wisconsin; Bryan Steil, U.S. House Representative; Jennifer L. Mnookin, Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Mark Mone, Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; and Missy Hughes, Secretary and CEO of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation.

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and U.S. Senators from Wisconsin, Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin also send congratulatory messages to the Kikkoman Foods.

Welcome Remarks by Chairman Yuzaburo Mogi

In his welcome remarks, Chairman Mogi said, “We couldn’t be here today without support of dependable business partners and regionally governmental leaders,” and said, “A half century ago, we made a huge investment here to establish our company, Kikkoman Foods, and that investment was bigger than our paid-in capital. It was a risk, but the risk was paid off. Kikkoman Foods has been a driving force for our success in the U.S., and it paved a way for global success.”

Presently, Kikkoman has expanded its manufacturing facilities in California, Netherlands, Singapore, Taiwan, and China, and Kikkoman soy sauce is available in more than 100 countries.

Chairman Mogi obtained an MBA degree in 1961 from Columbia University, and then he was only 38 years old when Kikkoman Foods opened.

He said, “We couldn’t come this far without wonderful people in our local communities in the state of Wisconsin. As local communities have grown, Kikkoman Foods has grown, too. This soy sauce, the number one brand in America, is the source of great pride to our employees, our communities, and our business partners. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to everyone who played a part in this success. Thank you very much.”

The Ninth Day of June is Kikkoman Day

Governor Tony Evers congratulated the 50th anniversary of Kikkoman Foods and proclaimed, “Today is Kikkoman Day,” as of the 9th day of June.

He said, “On behalf of the State of Wisconsin, thank you for your supports. We got proud to have such a great partner like all you are here today. I look forward to continuing to build this relationship to ensure this great organization can continue years of success here in Wisconsin for the next 50 years and beyond.”

$5million Donation for Sustainability

Chairman Mogi thanked Governor Evers and said, “As we look forward to the next half century, we renew our pledge to honor the values of our founders and we’ll always remain committed to the highest standards of quality and safety. We’ll work tirelessly to advance sustainability and human rights and constantly innovate to deliver products that meet Americans’ changing needs and taste.”

From left, Chancellor Jennifer L. Mnookin of the UW-Madison, Chairman Mogi, and Chancellor Mark Mone of the UW-Milwaukee

To realize Kikkoman’s future commitment to maintain the highest quality of its products, Chairman Mogi announced a total amount of five-million-dollar-investment to universities in Wisconsin.

He said, “One reason we chose Walworth for the first U.S. plant out of 200 potential locations was that it gives us to access those key ingredients, freshwater, soybeans, wheat and salt. And we have committed to use these natural resources responsibly and sustainably, so we are giving a total of five million dollars to two leading schools in the industrial Wisconsin system.”

Chairman Mogi welcomed Chancellor Jennifer L. Mnookin of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Chancellor Mark Mone of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to the podium. And then he donated $3 million to the College of Agricultural and Life Science at UW-Madison to support two important studies of sustainable agronomy and agricultural protection including soybeans and wheat.

He also donated $2 million to the School of Freshwater Science at UW-Milwaukee to support the construction and operation of the most advanced research vessel in the Great Lakes.

Congratulatory Message from Prime Minister Fumio Kishida

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida sends a message to congratulate the 50th anniversary of Kikkoman Foods.

In his congratulatory message, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said, “Kikkoman was one of the first Japanese companies who established a manufacturing plant in the U.S. With strong pioneer spirits and concentrate on pursuing innovation, Kikkoman has achieved great success in the U.S. market. Today Kikkoman soy sauce has been found as an important part of the American diet.”

He also applauded Kikkoman to build a bridge between Japan and U.S. for years of international exchanges of food cultures that should be highly evaluated. “We commend Kikkoman carrying global business operations consistently and worked with the community as a good corporate citizen for the past half century establishing Kikkoman Foods, Inc.,” Kishida said.

Congratulatory Speech by Ambassador Koji Tomita

Koji Tomita, Ambassador to the United States

Koji Tomita, Ambassador to the U.S., talked about the good old days when Kikkoman Foods opened an operation in 1973. According to him, a gallon of gas price was 40 cents, and a cost of buying a new car was $3,200. However, the dollar was devalued against the Japanese yen due to the Nixon Shock in 1971, and then the Oil Crises occurred just four months after Kikkoman Foods had opened that resulted in soaring prices.

Ambassador Tomita said, “Yet at least in this nation, Kikkoman saw the future of itself and the U.S. Thanks to Kikkoman’s vision, the plant production capacity is now 20 times larger than its first production. With hiring local management and local employees, it became part of the community. I think Japan’s export industry has much to learn from Kikkoman.”

Ambassador Tomita, then talk about the Hiroshima G-7 Summit in May. He said the summit was the most consequential meeting of the world leaders when the national communities were facing stormy crisis and undermining the foundation of global orders, and success is to be contributions from all the participating leaders. He said, “What dragging G-7 effort forward is partnership between Japan and the U.S.,” and the effectiveness of the partnership was built on the alliance, layers of connections the two countries have made for years. He also said the wide range of exchanges such as business, culture and sport are the important source for stronger Japan-U.S. partnership and resilience of the alliance.

Ambassador Tomita said, “But things were quite different 50 years ago. Our partnership was much more tenuous.” In that circumstance, people like Chairman Mogi accomplished his goal by working together with the local communities and developed strong partnership.

At the closing of his speech, Ambassador Tomita thanked Kikkoman and the state of Wisconsin for the long-term commitment and support for strengthening economic ties between Japan and Wisconsin that would be deeper than the Japan-U.S. economy partnership.

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The 7th Wisconsin-U.S.-Japan Economic Development Conference “Achieving Sustainable Global Economic Growth in an Era of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity”

Chairman Mogi welcomes the audience to the 7th Wisconsin-U.S.-Japan Economic Development Conference

Kikkoman has held Wisconsin-U.S.-Japan Economic Development Conference every five years when it has an anniversary celebration. This year’s theme was “Achieving Sustainable Global Economic Growth in an Era of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity” hosted by the Kikkoman Foods, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation.

The 7th conference was emceed and moderated by Toya Washington, award-winning journalist and former WISN news anchor, and speakers were Mark Mone, Chancellor of UW-Milwaukee; Missy Hughes, Secretary and CEO of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation; Tony Evers, Governor of Wisconsin; Shinsuke Sugiyama, former Japanese Ambassador to the U.S.; Masako Iino, Professor Emeritus & Former President of the Tsuda University; Takeo Inokuchi, Honorary Advisor, former Chairman & CEO of the Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance and Chairman of the Japan-Midwest U.S. Association; Jeff Yabuki, former Chairman & CEO of the Fiserv; Toshihiko Fukui, President of the Cannon Institute for Global Studies and former Governor of the Bank of Japan; and David Weinstein, Carl S. Shoup Professor of Japanese Economy and Director of the Center on Japanese Economy & Business, Columbia University.

Toya Washington

Toya Washington said, “Fifty years ago, when other major Japanese companies were just beginning to consider manufacturing in North America, Kikkoman opened its Walworth facility which has become the highest-producing soy sauce facility in the world. This is a huge realization of forward-thinking business, and Kikkoman made history, one of the major production plants built by a Japanese company in the U.S.”

She said discussing on this year’s theme, Achieving Sustainable Global Economic Growth in an Era of VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) would be critical tools for sustainable growth and reducing risks.

Yuzaburo Mogi

In his opening remarks, Chairman Yuzaburo Mogi said, “Kikkoman understands the importance of sustainable growth from our experiences here in Wisconsin. Kikkoman Foods has been a driving force for our success in the U.S., and it paved the way for global success. Many businesses today want to ask the panelists how they can view the progress they’ve made and keep moving forward on an uncertain road. Today’s speakers will help us to understand how we can all succeed on the path of mitigating risk and promoting growth.”

Mark Mone

Mark Mone talked about UW-Milwaukee’s over 30 years of relationship with Kikkoman. He said UW-Milwaukee established healthy water environmental laboratories with Kikkoman 10 years ago. “Chairman Mogi has been essential for the research success as well as development and generational framing for the future in our region,” he said.

Mone said business success requires transformation across many dimensions with innovating and reinventing vision, and Kikkoman was one of the quite rare companies that achieved it.

Mone introduced what Chairman Mogi said 10 years ago and said, “All strategies no longer bring success what he did, and in the new economy, if you do not change innovation, you’ll be behind. How true it is even today.”

Mone also emphasized the importance of education, learning about local and global perspectives, durability, global thinking, problem-solving, and having partnerships at all levels.

Mone said the audience of the conference could hear useful philosophy, insights and accomplishments from government leaders, private business executives, and academics, who were making a difference.

Missy Hughes

Missy Hughes, CEO of WEDC talked about the importance of building partnerships.

She said, “In many respects, Wisconsin experienced that Japan and Kikkoman offered primary examples of how critical relationship building is in an era of VUCA.” Although no one could predict how the Kikkoman’s investment was going to turn out 50 years ago, she said it was a testament that Chairman Mogi’s vision was right to choose Walworth in Wisconsin where Kikkoman, host state and communities shared benefits and values such as creativity, hard work and commitment to improve the communities.

Kikkoman and Wisconsin have natured a groundbreaking relationship for the past 50 years, and the relationship has stood many changes and uncertainties. Hughes said, “Our relationship was rooted in mutual respects shared by and collaborative experience. We developed deep understanding of each other’s culture and strengthened our capabilities. We had made sure to devote time and effort to sustain our partnership.”

The partnership with Kikkoman is proof of mutual benefit, she said. It brought so many jobs, strengthened local economies, supported universities, and opened doors for cultural exchanges and understanding.

Hughes said, “We look back a journey of the past 50 years, proud of what Kikkoman and Wisconsin had achieved together. We are excited about the future of our partnership and will continue to grow to create new opportunities and contribute to more prospers and connect to the world.”

Tony Evers

Governor Tony Evers visited Japan with Chairman Mogi in 2019 to lead the first international trade mission as a governor. He said, “The first-hand relationship that Wisconsin and Japan have developed, now 4 years later, that relationship is just stronger and stronger. Japan is a key trade partner for Wisconsin.”

According to Governor Evers, Wisconsin is the 11th-largest source of imports; and the seventh-largest export destination. Wisconsin exports to Japan average about $700 million every year. He said Japan had trade values and was one of the top sources of foreign investment in Wisconsin. And more than 50 Japanese companies employed thousands of Wisconsin residents, and 11 Wisconsin companies had operations in Japan.

Governor Evers said, “Wisconsin and Japan are separated by large oceans, but the essence of the two sides were close such in businesses, cultural relations and rather provide thousands of local jobs, boosting our economy, providing safe, phenomenal soy sauce.”

Shinsuke Sugiyama

Shinsuke Sugiyama, Ambassador to the U.S., spoke about Japan’s role in the world, which was symbolized by Chairman Mogi’s extreme endeavor 50 years ago.

Ambassador Sugiyama had seen a headline, “It Is Time for Japan to Step Up Tones,” written by a major U.S. paper just before the G-7 Hiroshima Summit started.

As the Presidency of the G7 this year, Japan not only invited G-7 leaders, but also welcomed major G-20 leaders such as India, New Zealand, Indonesia, Brazil, South Korea, and more.

The agenda of the G-7 Hiroshima Summit consisted of 66 paragraphs in the 40-pages-joint communiqué, which had a wide range of issues such as condemnation against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, evading use of nuclear weapons, free and open Indo-Pacific region, the South China Sea, North Korea, world economy, global health, gender, human rights, and so on.

Sugiyama said the center of the Summit was solidarity among these issues to get together to confront to cope with the difficult issues. To show solidarity, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida successfully included G-7 leaders, major leaders from G-20 countries, and most significantly Ukrainian President Zelensky.

Although every leader didn’t come to a full agreement due to differences between G-7 and G-20, “Non-the-less, they came to Hiroshima to have face-to-face discussions on international concerns. Moreover, G-7 leaders became unanimously devoted to support President Zelensky in the case of the Russian brutal invasion of his country.”

One of the G-20 leaders, Indian Prime Minister Modi attended the Summit; on the other hand, Chinese President Xi Jinping didn’t appear although he was invited.

G-7 leaders, however, come to the conclusion to show the guiding principles of G-7 that the leaders were not decoupling, but welcoming China’s cooperation to build constructive and stable regions through respecting the world role that will bring benefits to the world. The conclusions are written in the paragraph 51 and 52. The entire communiqué is available at https://www.mofa.go.jp/files/100506878.pdf.

Delivering this conclusion from Hiroshima was one of Prime Minister Kishida’s intents. Sugiyama said, “This shows Japan still has the power of sending messages, power of diplomacies, and then something that Japan is stepping up to cope with the situation together.”

He also said, “I’d like to mention that the centerpiece of these diplomatic efforts must be based upon our alliance mechanism. Japan-U.S. relationship said to be something couldn’t better nations which I totally agree.”

At the end of his speech, while Ambassador Sugiyama was thinking of the hardship that Chairman Mogi went through, he said, “Kikkoman achieved its success because they were trying to be part of the U.S., part of American society, part of the U.S. family, part of the U.S. social mechanism, and they worked for sake of Japan, for sake of the U.S., for sake of U.S.-Japan, and for sake of the international commitment.”

Masako Iino

Masako Iino, Professor Emerita & Former President of Tsuda University talked about a VUCA era from the late 19th century to the early 20 century.

Umeko Tuda, who was sent to the U.S. at the age of six and educated in the country, founded Tsuda University in 1900 to give opportunities to Japanese women to be independent, enable them to advance in Japanese society, and contribute to the world.

Umeko Tsuda’s entire story is available in the Chicago Shimpo’s article which was published in the 2022 New Year’s Special Issue.

Takeo Inokuchi

Takeo Inokuchi, Chairman of the Japan-Midwest U.S. Association, introduced words from a Japanese Professor at Harvard Business School which were necessary to understand the sustainable growth of business in an era of VUCA.

The professor’s keywords are agility, speed, and creativity, and Inokuchi said there were a lot of American companies successfully advanced to grow and have contributed to the U.S. economy.

According to the Professor, to materialize creativity, you should stop over analysis, overtime and over compliance, and then move to innovation. Inokuchi said today’s good was not necessarily good for tomorrow in the era of VUCA.

He talked about Kikkoman’s circumstances and its decision more than 50 years ago. Six years before Kikkoman Foods opened in Walworth, Kikkoman’s export amount was only 1.9% of its total shipment volume. A few Americans knew about the taste of soy sauce; thus, there was no established market. Besides, there were many incidents such as end of the Vietnam War and the Oil Crisis happened and impacted on the world economy in the 1970s. Even though in an era of VUCA, Kikkoman created soy sauce market in the U.S. and continued to grow. Inokuchi said it was a surprising success and a business model of the success in a VUCA era.

Inokuchi pointed out collaborative actions from governments and private sectors were necessary for companies’ growth to contribute to the entire economic growth. Averting frequent natural disasters cause by greenhouse gas emissions and preventing conflicts between nations are some examples of government-private collaborative efforts.

Inokuchi said people should understand the importance of free and open Indo-Pacific region, promoting and stabilizing world trade and investments, those tasks will contribute to the stable world economy and its growth. To work on those tasks, he said, U.S. leadership with consistent EU and Japan’s collaboration were necessary to realize sustainable world economic growth.

Jeff Yabuki

Jeff Yabuki, former Chairman & CEO of Fiserv, said, “Today I believe the most important thing is about leadership, and tools to achieve growth in a volatile time.” One of his favorite sayings is, “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm,” by Winston Churchill.

Yabuki is Nisei, a second generation of Japanese American, whose father experienced incarceration camp during WWII. He became CEO of Fiserv from a non-founder family in 2005 and ran the company until 2020. He said he was good fortune to run a $13 billion to $15 billion company with 40,000 people navigating networks, payments, and digital technology. He also had an opportunity to work with Kikkoman.

During the first year in Fiserv, Yabuki began transformational changes to refine and accelerate the company’s business performance. The first step was to determine, “who we absolutely wanted to be.” The second was to become an integrated operating company from a holding company. The third was to allocate capital to drive excellent business performance.

Yabuki said, “Our leadership philosophy was a fundamental brief that people want to be something larger than what they do every day.”

This transformation brought honor to his company. Fiserv was recognized as the Fortune World’s Most Admired Company in 2009. Afterward, Fiserv received the same honor nine times in his last 10-year tenure. Fiserv’s shareholder turnout was 969% over 14 year period. This success made a dramatic impact on his employees and shareholders to make their living better.

Yabuki also faced challenges in the middle of his term. “We were extremely close to going to over the edge,” he recalls. The leaders in his company had a choice and took very well-planned business and capital risks to try growth for the future. He said, “We tried a lot of approaches and paid off tremendously. Clearly, it was not easy, struggle, difficult decisions, but we achieved a level of more than 1,400% of the turnout.”

Yabuki said, “You actually know where you are going, absolutely clear strategy for success. You have to execute your strategy and tactics that support desired outcomes. I believe strategy is the allocation of scarce resources to accomplish set goals and objectives over time. The more challenging times, the more important to ensure clearly on what, where, when, how for your organization.”

About innovational opportunities, Yabuki said they were everywhere across people, across technology platforms, “We should be sure that we think about that problem, not just about technology.”

He also said, “Innovation distinguishes between leader and follower, and that’s going to be more important as we move forward, and highlight novel ways that leaders have an impact on your organizations.”

The flux of time is faster than ever. ChatGPT, for example, took only two months to get 100 million users globally; on the other hand, Facebook took four and a half years and mobile phones took 16 years to get 100 million users.

In an era of VUCA, changes are required to win, and magic happens with the right combination of people, processes, and technology.

Yabuki said, “Now is a time of diversity, inclusion, balance, and more importantly ability. Leadership serves to unlock the true potential of a growing workforce. If you change the way you look at things, things will look change. We as leaders have to change.”

Toshihiko Fukui

Toshihiko Fukui, President of Cannon Institute for Global Studies and Former Governor of the Bank of Japan, foresees the world economy will not return to the normal condition even after the two big issues, the outbreak of COVID-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, would be eliminated. He said more fundamental issues behind the two have to be resolved to return to the pre-pandemic era.

One of the major issues is emerging signs of degradation in the mechanism for maintaining world order. These signs are represented by aggressive Russian behaviors and more broadly the intensified U.S.-China conflict. If the United Nations’ mechanism deteriorated, the global economy ceases to function smoothly, and then stock-market distortion and disabled-supply-chain will occur.

For example, energy and goods are not attributable to consumer demand, but originated from global supply. Fukui said, “Therefore the interest rates increase, adapted by central banks in response, did not yield the desired result.”

Another issue is price equalization in economic globalization. For example, wages for homogeneous labor move to lower when the labor quality is similar in the world. That leads to widening income inequality and eventually to distortion of social division.

Fukui said, “In designing the future, it has become an urgent task for the people of the world to find ways to reconstruct mechanism for maintaining the world order that incorporates U.S.-China relations.”

Japan achieved high economic growth after long economic stagnation due to declining birth rate and aging population. Thus, Japan has to avoid the return of economic stagnation and must fortify the power of innovation which is not only doing digitalization, but also encompassing the creation of new innovations by uncovering dreams to explore their challenging sign of values.

Fukui said, “The most important thing is that younger generations reset their mindset and that we make every effort to reform the social system as a hope to support younger generations, younger people.”

David Weinstein

David Weinstein, Carl S. Shoup Professor of Japanese Economy at Columbia University, spoke about the impact of uncertainty on the world economy and its factors.

Uncertainty matters for business and affects production, investment, financing, and hiring. Uncertainty also affects demand by making firms and consumers more cautious about purchasing goods. Uncertainty can disrupt global supply chains.

Eight years ago, some economists began to collect data to measure sources of uncertainty. The study was to take a look at published articles in newspapers and media and count keywords such as “policy + uncertainty” or “tariffs + uncertainty” to see if any surge is found.

In Japan, a surge is seen in a financial crisis after the collapse of the bubble economy and a series of spikes related to the Lehman Fail.

In the U.S., a big spike appeared around 9/11 and came down pretty flat until the Lehman crisis, and then a spike appeared at President Trump’s tariff tax policy, and another spike followed around COVID-19.

In China, there was a spike prior to joining WTO because Chinese people were uncertain if China complied with WTO rules. Other spikes are seen during the Lehman Crisis, and then a skyrocketing spike came at the U.S.-China trade war around 2018.

In Russia, spikes are seen in aggression to Crimea.

The U.S.-China trade war had two impacts on the U.S. economy.

One is small direct costs on U.S. consumers. Imports from China are only a couple percent of the U.S. GDP, and cost to consumers is only around a few tenths of a percent of GDP.

Large impacts are on stock prices, and Trump tariffs marketed a major change in U.S. trade policy away from the rules-based WTO system and towards unilateralism.

The WTO system has been increasingly at risk. Trade policy has become increasingly weaponized, and trade sanctions are seen as the solution to not only national and economic security concerns, but also environmental, labor, and moral concerns as well.

So far, there is no attempt to make this situation consistent with WTO. The U.S. has blocked new appointments to the WTO Appellate Body, which adjudicated disputes.

When Chairman Mogi was an MBA student in 1960, there were only 20 ongoing sanction cases globally, but there were 170 cases in 2014.

The U.S. sanctions grew from affecting less than 1% of U.S. trade to 13% between 1960 and 2020. The EU introduced more than 40% different sanctions against 27 countries and states. China tripled the use of sanctions in the last decade relative to the previous one. Russia is also extensively using sanctions.

Weinstein said, “The recent years, we are living in very uncertainty, at least in terms of economic policy which we haven’t seen this before.”

He also said, “We are clearly living in an increasingly uncertain complex world in terms of policy experiences. There is an argument if sanctions are necessary or we should not use them, but we need to recognize that’s trend, that’s a world that we moving into, and need the fact, that in making business decisions.”

Kikkoman Foods Marks its 50th Anniversary and Strives for the Next Half Century

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