The Yoshida Sauce Story

This dramatized biography of Junki Yoshida, creator of the popular Mr. Yoshida Sauce brand in America, appeared on Japanese TV a few days ago. It’s a pretty cool story:

Summary

• Growing up as a Zainichi Korean in Kyoto, Yoshida was constantly the target of bullies, so he studied karate to defend himself.
• After failing to enter a university in Japan, his mother suggested that he go to South Korea for an education. She gave him a large sum of money she had managed to save from the profits of her yakiniku restaurant for this purpose. However, instead of going to South Korea, Yoshida decided to use the money and move to America. He had admired America since he had witnessed the strength of its athletes at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, so he flew to America and eventually found a college in Seattle that would admit him. Life was hard for Yoshida, but he was able to scrape by earning money as a karate instructor.
• Around this time Yoshida met Linda, a fellow student at the college he was attending. He would eventually marry her, but they faced opposition from Linda’s father, a veteran of the Pacific war who didn’t like Japanese people and didn’t like the idea of her daughter meeting a young Japanese guy with no stable future.
• They soon married and had a child, making it very important for Yoshida to earn more money. He continued to teach karate lessons, but he also took various odd jobs. A year after their marriage, their baby daughter came down with a serious case of neonatal jaundice, requiring 24-hour intensive care. The treatment went well, but they expected a huge medical bill. The program lets viewers know that the medical system in America can be especially harsh for people like Yoshida who had no health insurance, but in this case, the hospital took pity on Yoshida and his wife and they were only charged $250. This experience gave Yoshida a strong desire to work hard and give back to the society that helped him.
• In 1977, Yoshida took American citizenship. He continued to teach karate and things were going pretty well for his family. There was one exception, though: his father-in-law still hated him.
• The economic downturn of the late 1970′s eventually took it’s toll on Yoshida’s business, and the number of students attending his karate school dwindled to a third of what it had been before. His financial situation became so bad in 1981 that he was unable to buy Christmas presents for his students. At his wife’s suggestion he made a big batch of BBQ sauce using his family’s secret yakiniku recipes.
• I’ll let the official biography on his site continue the story from this point:
  

  Revisiting Junki’s youthful lifestyle, he and his family had no money for frugal spending, let alone for buying presents to exchange for the holiday presents received from many of his karate students. What Junki did have, however, was his family’s 60-year-old “secret recipe” for a teriyaki-based cooking sauce. The Yoshidas cooked up batches of sauce in the basement of his karate school and gave them away as gifts.

  What a surprise it was to Junki and Linda when the students began insisting on refills only a few weeks later. As word-of-mouth spread and demand grew, the Yoshidas decided to follow their friends” advice and market their unique product in 1982. With very little help from banks, Junki managed to raise $150,000 from relatives, friends and his father-in-law’s pension [note: his father-in-law's decision to do this is dramatized in the video]. Despite two near-bankruptcies, Junki refused to accept failure with the hopes of so many loved ones relying on the outcome of his future. He continued to work out of the karate school basement, buying empty syrup bottles t o fill by hand with sauce made in a ten-gallon pot.

  Despite the incredible financial struggles he faced, Junki never lost faith in the product he based his family’s entire future upon Yoshida’s Gourmet Sauce. With persistence and humor, he eventually convinced the food buyer of a large grocery store chain to accept his product. Junki, himself, kept busy cooking samples for in-store demonstrations, using wild humor and crazy tactics to sell his sauce to passing shoppers. It was not long before his Gourmet Sauce was being sold in grocery retailers and club stores throughout the world.

• The video ends with Yoshida visiting kids at the Doernbecher Children’s Hospital. Yoshida is a board member of the hospital, and sees it as a way of thanking society for the kindness and compassion that he received over his lifetime.