[kvcc01]

I read the whole letter and loved the tone of it! It jumps at you right away that: (1) Here's a guy who really cares about his business, its future, his employees. (2) He talks candidly about the reasons for closing up: his declining health, sales volumes, even including awkward sentences like "So chalk is more environmentally friendly, I think." I am now a fan of Hagoromo.

It was rather refreshing at a time when I can't stand reading more than a paragraph of a typical press release of a BigCo written by lawyers or PR specialists. Unlike this essay, those are intended to obfuscate, not to inform.

[wpietri]

Yes. There's none of this maximize-shareholder-value, church-of-the-mba religion that pervades Western business culture right now.

He wanted to serve people sustainably. He did it for decades, and when that became untenable, he responsibly searched for a way to minimize the waste and harm caused by him exiting the business.

I especially love that he treats his machines almost as people, people intrinsically valuable to him. Whereas here, we often treat our people as machines, machines that are eternally disposable.

[etep]

Not awkward, the sentence you call out. Beautiful, rather, and whether it is an artifact of translation or not, no matter. You didn't mean awkward in a pejorative sense; this is just an affirmation.

[kvcc01]

Of course! What makes this letter effective and relatable are all those little things that wouldn't have passed the ordinary editorial, legal, or PR filters, if it were written by a typical corporate CEO. If I was teaching at business school, I'd have my students read this as a model of effective stakeholder communications. I think Mr. Watanabe is a shokunin (you know, in the Jiro Ono sense) of the chalk business.