October 9, 2013: Nagoya, Japan – Hoso Kyokai, Jr. inherited ownership of the Kawaguchi Transmitters in early June upon the untimely death of his father.  That month was a dark period for both the family and the team, made darker by public commentary suggesting the junior Kyokai was perhaps not yet ready to hold such a position.

Where the elder Kyokai had made his fortune through hard work and intelligent investment, Kyokai, Jr. was still seen through the lens of his time as a young and attractive Olympic-quality swimmer and carefree playboy of the party circuit.  Where Senior was seen as a quiet pillar of the community, Junior has more flash and has found himself occasionally on the wrong side of a paparazzi’s camera.  His pop-song “You’re My Manga Girl” made him a one-hit wonder.  His tryst with actress Yiko Maatsura was a front-page drama that played out over three disastrous months and ended in rumors of drugs, parties and a cover-up that may never be fully understood by those outside the family’s inner-circle.

So the buzz on Hoso Kyokai Jr. was that of skin-thin exuberance and carefree excess rather than that of a cerebral leader of a highly competitive business venture.

But things change.  Despite the fact that he’s a tall, lanky man who still holds his 225 pounds like the athlete he once was, time has moved on.  The once youthful Kyokai (who is now 44 years of age) faded from the forefront of the press to the point that his arrival at the podium to speak about his search for a new Transmitters general manager was his first public appearance in over five years.

“My father was a great man,” Kyokai said in a recent interview with BusinessJapan.com.  “I knew that even when I was a kid.  But I also knew we were different people.  I knew I needed to be my own person.”  And as the tabloids documented, he accomplished just that.  “I was never as wild as I was made out to be,” Kyotai said, now with a sparkle to his grin.  “But I knew even twenty years ago that my days as an athlete were coming to an end and that I needed to be able to do something else.”  He went to business school in his early thirties and used seed money from his father to create several small ventures of various levels of successes, the most successful of which is the fashion boutique “バイオレットリリー“, which translates to “Violet Lily“.

The success of the boutique shows the difference in the younger Kyokai’s style verses his father’s – whereas his father was about clear thought and direct lines of control, Hoso Kyokai, Jr. is more about finding talent and letting it go.  “I want to find people who know what they’re doing and have great passion for the field they are in.  I want them to be successful, and to take great joy in the art of finding themselves so.  Sometimes I make mistakes in supporting these kinds of people, but usually it works out in ways that are impossible to predict and are wondrous to behold.”

It’s no surprise, then, that Violet Lily has won its accolades by attracting a wide-range of designers running from brash performance artists to unknown upstarts.  In this light, it’s also no surprise that he replaced the Kawaguchi Transmitter general manager with longtime family friend and American corporate magnate Ron Collins – a man with a wide range of baseball and business experiences, but one without any real time in the world of Japanese baseball.  “Ron is a fast learner,” he said.  “We have spoken many times and I have confidence in him.”

Whether this decision will bear fruit or not is still to be seen, but Kyokai is clearly comfortable with his selection.  The team made five trades in the first three months of Collins’s tenure and has been acquiring and releasing players in bulk.  In addition, Collins has turned on-field management over considerably up and down the entire chain of the organization to the point where it finally seems to be stable going into next year.  Now the team is rumored to be looking at 2014 budgets and discussing levels of performance that might be expected.  At no time has Kyokai appeared to stay the hand of his new general manager, nor has he appeared to insert himself into any of these decisions.

“It’s a heady time to be in the front office,” a lower-level team employee said.  “You can say that Ron brought that kind of capacity for change with him, but I’ve been around long enough to know that the freedom to operate like this comes from the very top, too.  The organization is about risk-taking and opportunity now more than ever before.  It makes people want to work harder.”

Kyokai himself waves this kind of talk away.  “Those words are kind, of course.  And I appreciate them,” he says.  “But people deserve the credit for their own successes.”

For now, the patient approach has played well with the Transmitter fan base, which once cheered for Neo-Tokyo Cup-caliber teams and is thirsty for a squad that resembles their past in any way.  We will see how long of a leash they will have, however, and whether Kyokai’s charm will succeed in winning them over in the long run.