Kenichiro Matsuoka


Kenichiro Matsuoka was a Japanese media executive. He founded and served as the first President of Japan Cable Television, and as a Vice President of Asahi Broadcasting Company.

Biography

The eldest son of Japanese foreign minister Yōsuke Matsuoka, Kenichiro attended Tokyo Imperial University, majoring in Political Science. While his father served as the president of Mantetsu in 1939, Kenichiro would meet the Manchurian born Japanese actress Yoshiko Yamaguchi, whom Yamaguchi would write in her biography "Ri Kōran: My Half Life", to be her first love. They would meet again after the war, at which time Kenichiro attempted to rekindle the relationship, but by then, Yamaguchi was already involved with the noted designer Isamu Noguchi.
Upon graduation in 1941, Kenichiro joined the state run news agency Dōmei Tsushin, that would be broken up by Allied forces during the Occupation of Japan. Matsuoka joined its successor Sun News Photo agency following the breakup, then go on to join the fledgling Nippon Educational Television Board television network upon its founding in 1957.
NET had courted Matsuoka for his knowledge of foreign culture, having been born in the United States while his father was First Secretary of the Japanese Embassy in Washington D.C., and was fluent in English and French. He was able to watch foreign programing in its original format and was responsible for licensing Rawhide and Laramie, gaining high ratings for the new network, and giving them an advantage over rivals NHK and Fuji TV.
By the time NET parent company Asahi Shimbun would rebrand the network as Asahi Broadcasting Corporation in 1977, Matsuoka would be promoted to Executive Vice President at Asahi Broadcasting Co, serve as a founder of Japan Cable Television, and act as its first president, a position he held until his retirement in 1986.

Family

Kenichiro's father Yōsuke, was a prominent diplomat in pre-war Japan. Kenichiro's mother Ryuko, was the daughter of an influential kuge judge, a former retainer of the Chōshū clan, and a beneficiary of their outsized influence in the Meiji Restoration that helped shaped the modern Japanese Government. Yōsuke's sister Fujie was widowed in 1911 with two young girls, whom Yosuke supported as if his own. One of those nieces, Hiroko, married future Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Satō, and ties Kenichiro to the current Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the Abe political dynasy through Abe's maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, Eisaku's older brother.