Kōnosuke Matsushita, who made his name with attachment plugs and twin sockets, was a thorough rationalist.
These devices freed households from the physical limit of one light per home by allowing multiple appliances from one socket. Cheaper and better than rivals, they spread quickly.
He calculated costs, organized mass production, and refined distribution with relentless logic.
Yet every morning the same man stood before a shrine he called Kon-sama, the Source, joined his hands, and began his day. A Buddhist priest served inside the company as “officiant,” offering prayers to the source of the universe.
Why did an engineer making cutting-edge appliances devote himself to an invisible world? What looks like a deep gulf held no contradiction for him.
Technology and spirit were inseparable forces on the same plane. Seen from today, when advanced technology raises questions of control, this integration is especially instructive.
“Absence” Created a Capacity to Receive
Matsushita’s spiritual world did not begin with mystical experience or sudden conversion, but with hardship beyond his control.
Born the youngest child of an old Wakayama family in 1894, he saw his father lose everything speculating in rice. At nine he left elementary school and went alone to Osaka as an apprentice.
Later he deliberately named three “absences” behind his success: little schooling, poverty, and weak health.
He reinterpreted apparent fatal disadvantages as propulsion. Lacking school freed him from convention and gave him humility to learn eagerly from people and books.
Poverty taught the weight of resources and economy. Ill health made him stop carrying everything alone and develop management based on trusting others.
These absences taught him intellectual, physical, and material limits. Facing an insurmountable wall forces people to rely on something larger than themselves.
That humility became his capacity to absorb diverse religions and philosophies without prejudice and place them at the root of a technology company.
Translating Learning into the Language of Management
Matsushita encountered more than one religion. Remarkably, he avoided fanaticism, extracted universal elements, and translated them into practical management.
A decisive turn came in 1932, aged thirty-seven, when a business partner urged him to visit Tenrikyo headquarters. He saw believers energetically performing unpaid service called hinokishin.
Compared with dissatisfied paid labor, work motivated by faith produced such joy and energy that it shocked him.
He concluded that, as religion saves hearts, industry has a sacred mission to supply necessities and eliminate poverty.
This realization led that May to his “Tap-Water Philosophy”: deliver abundant, inexpensive goods like tap water and eradicate poverty. Mass production changed from a profit tool into a means of ending want.
His devotion to Buddhism, especially the Daigo school of Shingon, was also deep. He made priest Taikan Katō an adviser and later Matsushita Electric’s first officiant—unusual for a private technology company.
Daigo priests continued the role for generations, and headquarters built Taikandō in Katō’s name. His connection to Sensōji is also well known.
After prayer reportedly cured leg pain, he repaid the blessing by personally funding the 1960 reconstruction of Kaminarimon, unreconstructed for over ninety years—an anecdote showing his ethic of returning favors socially.
He also respected Shinto, enshrining Hakuryū Daimyōjin at headquarters, donating to shrines, and supporting publication of a major collection of Shinto classics halted by war.
Ultimately he was himself enshrined at Matsushita Shrine, a subsidiary of Tsubaki Grand Shrine in Mie. The belief that divinity inhabits everything matched his respect for natural law “vividly filling every tree and blade of grass.” Even electronic-component production inspired awe toward nature and cosmic law.
Yoga practitioner and thinker Tempū Nakamura directly influenced his views of success and destiny. Tempū’s mind-body unification taught that the mind connects with the universe’s fundamental life energy.
Concentrated thought takes real form, while fear attracts negative results.
Matsushita translated this as: “Business develops when it follows the universe’s generation and development, because that is cosmic truth.”
Following generation and development meant serving society rather than selfish profit; useful business naturally succeeds. Deeply influenced by Tempū, Matsushita applied the teaching to management more than anyone.
A God Consistent with Science: Inventing the “Source”
After moving through many teachings and refining them, Matsushita created an object of faith outside any one religion.
This was Kon-sama, or the Shrine of the Source—his answer bridging technology and spirit.
The Source is the fundamental cosmic force generating and developing all things. He did not personify it; as physical law and life energy rather than a personal deity, it did not conflict with technological causality.
Its return of all phenomena to one cause is monotheistic and rational, while resembling Mahayana truth or inherent human potential. Its prototype dates to enshrining Tensō Daijin at his Kōun-sō residence in 1939.
Later, finding Daijin too religious, he removed particular Shinto color and dogma and refined it into the universal truth “Source.”
After becoming chairman, he bought a Kyoto garden named Shinshin-an as a PHP research base. In 1962 the first Shrine of the Source was built there, using the design of Ise Jingū’s Inner Shrine.
He prayed before beginning daily work and sometimes meditated on a round cushion. Asked what he prayed for, he answered rationally.
He expressed gratitude to the Source for being here and reflected on whether his actions followed nature’s law.
There was no request for prosperity or healing, only gratitude for life’s great chain and reflection on whether decisions aligned with cosmic development.
This survives physically at Matsushita Electric headquarters. The 1981 Founding Forest enshrines the Source alongside statues of Matsushita and his wife.
Separately, in 1968 for the fiftieth anniversary, statues of eleven “pioneers of science and industry,” centered on Edison with Faraday and Marconi, were erected before the central laboratory.
Placing both technological heroes and the cosmic Source on company grounds shows that science and spirit were continuous for him.
Establish a Spiritual Form Before Technology
A 1923 toilet-cleaning episode symbolizes how spirituality reached daily management.
During year-end cleaning, the factory was tidy but the employee toilet remained dirty. Workplace conflict made everyone reluctant, and supervisors gave no orders.
Twenty-nine-year-old Matsushita took a bucket and broom and scrubbed the floorboards. Apart from one person helping carry water, employees watched.
He concluded that technical skill meant little without the spirit to clean a shared place, and that teaching such a spirit was his responsibility as owner.
Humble labor removed pride and planted service, the origin of his later phrase, “Before making things, make people.”
For Matsushita, labor was neither wages nor selling labor power but almost religious. Giving the means of technology the soul of mission turned a profit organization into a spiritual community.
Principles as an Unshakable Anchor
Matsushita recalled that developing people, not technology or finance, was management’s hardest task.
People think and interpret differently; employees cannot act exactly like owners. At tens of thousands of people, manuals and pure logic cannot unite an organization’s heart.
He therefore spent immense time embedding principles: why the work exists, how it serves society, and where it is going.
Shared principles naturally guide action. Products become obsolete and technology continually changes.
But the spiritual truth of serving society from the cosmic Source never ages. Cutting-edge technology requires an unshakable foundation; prayer provided it.
When making decisions amid short-term profit, market-share battles, and pressure, he went to the shrine and asked whether his conduct matched natural law.
He judged at the higher level of benefit to society and cosmic order, not short-term company gain.
This prevented ethical deviation and sustained social support. For someone who accepted Tempū’s teaching that fear attracts harm, confidence in right action dispelled fear and supported bold investment and development.
“Spiritual Maturity” Reconsidered in the AI Era
Had Matsushita imposed his family’s Jōdo Shinshū faith or admired Tenrikyo as company religion, employees valuing freedom of thought might have rebelled and the organization collapsed.
His wisdom was to understand religion’s useful functions—motivation, altruism, gratitude, reflection—and reconstruct them as a universal philosophy without doctrine or commandments.
Employees could share dedication through the Tap-Water Philosophy and generation and development without resistance to worshiping a particular god.
Today’s giant technology companies also attract employees and customers through forceful missions and visions. Matsushita instead placed cosmic and natural law above personal charisma, building a more enduring foundation.
He believed true prosperity and happiness arise only by integrating material wealth from technology with inner wealth from spirit.
His spiritual inquiry was neither escape nor an executive’s hobby.
It was a resilient, rational management foundation for restraining ego, overcoming fear, uniting a huge organization through principles, and continually making socially useful products.
Now that AI and biotechnology have become extremely advanced and their use is questioned, his prayer quietly but powerfully asks whether human spiritual maturity is needed to guide technology correctly.
