Akio Morita, Founder of Sony, was born on January 26, 1921, in the city of Nagoya, to a family of sake brewers. The Morita family has been brewing sake for nearly 400 years in the city of Tokoname, near Nagoya. Under the strict eyes of his father, Kyuzaemon, Akio was groomed to become the heir to the family business. As a student, Akio often sat in on company meetings with his father and he would help with the family business even on school holidays.

The Morita family had in those days already embraced the latest in Western culture, like the automobile and the electric phonograph. Whenever he was relieved from his household duties, the young Akio would become engrossed in taking apart the phonograph and putting it back together.

From an early age, Akio was fond of tinkering with electronic appliances, and mathematics and physics were his favorite subjects during his elementary and junior high school days. After graduating from High School Number Eight, he entered the Physics Department at Osaka Imperial University.

During that time, Japan was in midst of the Pacific War. In 1944, Akio, who had become a Navy lieutenant upon graduation from university that year, met the late Masaru Ibuka for the first time in the Navy's Wartime Research Committee.

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