Yanai opened the first Uniqlo store in 1984.
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Tadashi Yanai is the richest person in Japan, worth an estimated $31.3 billion.He’s the chairman and biggest shareholder of Fast Retailing, the largest clothing retailer in Asia and parent company of Uniqlo.The Japanese billionaire lives in a $50 million house in the woods outside of Tokyo and owns two golf courses in Hawaii.Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.Tadashi Yanai is the richest person in Japan.The Japanese businessman is worth an estimated $31.3 billion, according to Bloomberg. His fortune comes from his position as chairman and the biggest shareholder of Fast Retailing, the largest clothing retailer in Asia and the parent company of Uniqlo.Yanai opened the first Uniqlo store in 1984 and has expanded the brand to more than 2,000 stores in at least 20 countries.Uniqlo’s clothing is “geared to all types of people: whether they are billionaires, the middle class, the lower end,” Yanai told Vault Magazine in 2011. “We need to cater to all, just like Marks and Spencer or Gap or the current H&M and Zara. Unless we cater to all segments of life and segments of people, we cannot be successful.”The Japanese billionaire lives in a $50 million house in the woods outside of Tokyo and owns another home in a ritzy, exclusive neighborhood in the city. He also owns two golf courses in Hawaii, where he spends a few weeks each summer, according to Bloomberg.Here’s a look at the life of Japan’s richest person.
Meet Tadashi Yanai, the richest person in Japan. He’s worth an estimated $31.3 billion.
Fast Retailing
The Japanese businessman’s wealth comes from his position as president, chairman, and the largest shareholder of Fast Retailing, the largest clothing retailer in Asia. The 70-year-old billionaire holds a 46% stake in the company.Yanai is more than $10 billion richer than the second-richest person in Japan, Takemitsu Takizaki, according to Bloomberg.
Yanai was born in southern Japan in 1949, the son of a clothing seller.
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Yanai’s father owned a men’s clothing shop called Men’s Shop Ogori Shoji. The store was on the first floor and the family lived above it. By the 1970s, the business had several locations.
After graduating from college in 1971, Yanai started selling men’s clothing and kitchenware at a Jusco supermarket, but he quit after one year and started working for his father.
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Yanai graduated from Waseda University with a degree in economics and politics.
Yanai said he didn’t start out being very motivated to work.
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“My preference was not to work my entire life, that’s how I was,” he told ABS-CBN. “My father demanded that I need to find work at Jusco. So regretfully I got a job.”He said he joined his father’s business because he had nowhere else to go, but he actually ended up finding it fun.
The company grew quickly over the next several years. By 1996, Yanai had more than 200 stores across Japan.
A Uniqlo store in Tokyo in 2001.
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Uniqlo’s $15 fleece jacket was the brand’s most popular product, with an estimated one in four Japanese people having bought one by 1998.
Yanai also has a home – worth an estimated $74 million — in the ritzy Shibuya neighborhood of Tokyo.
Shibuya at night.
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Shibuya is an exclusive Tokyo neighborhood that government officials and CEOs call home, according to the Japan Times. Living there is “a symbol of status,” Yukiko Takano of Sotheby’s told the Times in 2014.
The billionaire is reportedly an avid golf player. He spends three weeks every summer playing in Hawaii, where he owns two golf courses that he bought for a combined $74.1 million.
A view of the Kapalua Plantation Golf Course in Hawaii.
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Yanai bought the Plantation Golf Course in Hawaii from Maui Land & Pineapple for $50 million in 2009, according to Bloomberg. In 2010, he bought another course, Kapalua Bay, for $24.1 million.
Between 2013 and 2018, the expansion of Yanai’s company meant that his net worth grew from $15.5 billion to $24 billion in just five years.
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Fast Retailing is now the third-largest global clothing retailer, after H&M and Inditex, the parent company of Zara, according to MoneyWeek.
Yanai’s two sons are both on Fast Retailing’s board of directors.
Kazumi Yanai at an event in New York City in 2012.
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“This means that corporate governance will function even when I’m absent,” Yanai said when he announced their promotions in October 2018. “It does not mean that they will take charge of the company.”Yanai’s sons, Kazumi Yanai and Koji Yanai, were both senior vice presidents at Fast Retailing before being promoted to the board, according to Nikkei Asian Review.
In 2017, Yanai told the Nikkei Asian Review that he would step down as president of Fast Retailing when he turned 70, but stay on as chairman.
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Yanai turned 70 in February 2019 and so far has made no official announcement about leaving his role as president or about who will take his place, although he did recently tell Bloomberg Japan that his CEO role is “more suitable for a woman” because women “are persevering, detail-oriented and have an aesthetic sense.”Despite the lingering question of his succession plan, Yanai continues to grow richer as his companies expand. Since the beginning of 2019, he’s added almost $5 billion to his fortune, according to Bloomberg.
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