Sony Stories

Paul du Gay’s Book, Doing Cul­tural Stud­ies: The Story of the Sony Walkman

1978 — Akio Morita wanted to lis­ten to clas­si­cal music while trav­el­ing » Nob­u­toshi Kihara (aka Mr. Walk­man) designed

1978 — Masaru Ibuka wanted to lis­ten to opera dur­ing his fre­quent trans-Pacific plane flights » Nob­u­toshi Kihara designed

1978 — Masaru Ibuka wanted to lis­ten to opera dur­ing his fre­quent trans-Pacific plane flights » asked Norio Ohga (Exec­u­tive Deputy Pres­i­dent) to design

1978 — Masaru Ibuka wanted to lis­ten to opera dur­ing his fre­quent trans-Pacific plane flights » Norio Ohga

1978 — Masaru Ibuka wanted to lis­ten to opera dur­ing his fre­quent trans-Pacific plane flights » Kozo Ohsone designed

Kozo Ohsone gave Masaru Ibuka a ver­sion who then took it to Morita

1978 — Masaru Ibuka respon­si­ble » asked Norio Ohga » Nob­u­toshi Kihara designed

Arti­cle: “Iron­i­cally, once it became clear that Sony’s huge, pow­er­ful portable radios had become noisy blights, Akio Morita, Sony’s CEO, had the Walk­man devel­oped as an alter­na­tive. But the Walk­man didn’t dis­place the boom box, sell­ing like hot­cakes instead to mid­dle-class jog­gers. Morita had missed the cul­tural impli­ca­tions of the boom box, often used to attract atten­tion or stake out territory.”

Con­flict­ing story of Kozo Ohsone hav­ing doubts about Walk­man that he sup­pos­edly designed in other ver­sions of the story.

Offi­cial Sony Version
1978 — Masaru Ibuka (Hon­orary Chair­man) » Norio Ohga (Exec­u­tive Deputy Pres­i­dent) » Kozo Ohsone (GM of Tape Recorder Busi­ness Divi­sion) » Masaru Ibuka then went to Akio Morita » Feb 1979 meet­ing to develop Walk­man by June 21st. No men­tion of Nobu­tushi Kihara as the designer known as Mr. Walkman