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I am Shigenori (Shig) Matsushita (1936-), a businessman with computer science background.
I worked for Toshiba Corporation
for 37 years and a half, to reach the VP standing in the Headquarters, and Executive VP in the 3,000-employee Toshiba
Information Systems Corporation. Then I worked for an American
start-up company, "Wink Communications", for 5 years
as President of Wink Japan. Next I worked for 3 years for a venture capital company, Seibu Shinkin Capital (西武しんきんキャピタル). After I retired from the full time job in 2004, I worked as a director of the boards of several start-up companies and as a visiting professor of a business school at Chubu University. I am currently a board director for DDS Corp and a volunteer chairman of a committee in an NPO,Friends of UTokyo, located in New York City.
Born in Tokyo and brought up in a seaside town in Yamaguchi Prefecture, the west end of Honshu, I graduated from University of Tokyo with BS in Electrical Engineering in '59 to join Toshiba as a computer design engineer. As a Fulbright exchange student, I studied for a year in University of Illinois in '62-'63 to get MS and later I was bestowed with Doctor of Engineering degree from University of Tokyo in '74 for a thesis on a crosstalk theory of digital signals.
I feel very much obliged to American people who made it possible for me to study in the States when Japan was still poor. In return, I tried to play an interpreter between two countries and established about a dozen business relationships between American corporations and Toshiba.
I have rather diversified interests in; travel, walking in the nature, "haiku" poems, oil painting, photos, composing songs, astronomy, and surfing the Internet, of course.
Information Processing Society of Japan introduces me as one of the 70 pioneers of computers in Japan, in English and in Japanese. 情報処理学会による紹介 I had the privilege of being nominated as one of the distinguished alumni of University of Illinois, in Electrical Engineering Department in 2015 and Computer Science Department in 2019.
I am Sumie (Sue) Matsushita, a mother of two sons. The elder son, Koshi, is working in San Diedo and the younger son, Aiki, is working in Berkeley, both in California, in the IT engineering fields. Hence we, devoted happy couple, are alone in Hachioji, Tokyo. I and Shig made friends with each other in 1957 when we were
students, and we celebrated the 50th wedding anniversary in 2014 and I got a gold medal.
I and Shig enjoyed a 67-day 2/3 world cruise, except the Pacific, in 2002, extended by a 48-day cruise over the Pacific in 2006, and a 65-day cruise around Latin America in 2010, all on American ships, where we were almost the only Japanese.
I majored in English literature and had worked in The Imperial Hotel of Tokyo before we got married. I associate with many international friends resident here and abroad.
From time to time since '86, we spend time in a mountain cottage in a larch wood at the halfway up Mt. Yatsugatake at Mitsui-no-Mori (三井の森八ヶ岳中央高原), 200 km west of Tokyo, at the altitude of 1,400 m. The temperature there is about the same as in Sapporo, Hokkaido or Berlin, or in average 7 deg C (13 deg F) cooler and colder than in Tokyo. There bloom many wild flowers, unique to highlands, in the summer. It is my pleasure each year to find flower plants as early as possible in the spring and cut weeds around them many times to wait for the flowers.
In December '00, another resort house of ours was completed at Izu Kogen (伊東市伊豆高原), 100 km south-west of Tokyo downtown, on the east seashore of Izu Peninsula. Brought up in the mountain country, I have strong aspiration for the sea, and I appreciate changing colors and appearance of the sea as watched from the house. I like warmer winter and early spring there.
At my home at Hachioji, I am raising many floriculture flowers like orchids. I like to have my cooking appreciated and, as a kind of hobby, I have an English class in Tokyo.
