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Toshifumi Suzuki pioneered the konbini, the modern convenience store, transforming the way Japan buys everything from egg sandwiches to baseball tickets. His particular genius in leveraging data and consumer psychology remains the ingredient that keeps 7-Eleven — the brand he took from the US and recreated to meticulous alignment with local tastes — at the top of the industry as the world’s largest convenience store chain.
铃木敏文(Toshifumi Suzuki)开创了现代便利店（即“konbini”）模式，改变了日本人购买从鸡蛋三明治到棒球门票等各类商品的方式。他在运用数据和消费者心理方面的独到才能，至今仍是让7-Eleven——这一他从美国引进并按日本本土口味精心改造的品牌——稳居行业龙头、成为全球最大便利店连锁的关键因素。
An implacable saboteur of conventional wisdom, his innovations allowed small stores to punch above their weight in a retail environment which once seemed destined for dominance by giant supermarkets. Running through the company’s DNA, Suzuki said, was its habit of “turning recklessness into common sense”.
作为传统观念的坚定颠覆者，他的创新让小商店在一度似乎必将由巨型连锁超市主导的零售环境中，能够发挥远超自身规模的实力。铃木表示，贯穿公司基因的一点，就是习惯于“把鲁莽变成常识”。
But perhaps the most lasting imprint of Suzuki’s ambition was an upgrade to the concept of “convenience”, elevated from a mere tool of retail competition into one of the noblest missions of corporate Japan. The konbini, whose services include fresh food, banking and tax- and bill-paying facilities, reflects a sensitivity to changing demand that Suzuki set out to master.
不过，或许能最为长久地体现出铃木雄心的，是他对“便利”这一概念的升级：它不再只是零售业竞争的手段，而被提升为日本企业界最崇高的使命之一。便利店提供新鲜食品、银行业务以及代缴税款和各类账单等服务，正是铃木力图掌握的、对需求变化高度敏感的产物。
Suzuki, who has died at the age of 93, was born in 1932 in Sakaki, a town in Nagano prefecture, surrounded by the operations of the silk industry. The ninth child of 15th-generation local landowners, he was unable to play with friends because of his duties picking mulberry leaves to feed the local silkworms. As a teenager, he was enrolled in an agricultural school specialising in sericulture.
铃木享年93岁，1932年出生于长野县坂城镇，身边尽是与丝绸产业相关的劳作。作为当地传至第15代地主家族中排行第九的孩子，他因要负责采摘桑叶喂养当地蚕群，没机会和朋友玩耍。青少年时期，他被送入一所专门教授养蚕业的农业学校就读。
Despite bags of natural charisma, Suzuki was afflicted with a paralysing shyness. He joined the school debating club, he later wrote, “in an attempt to change my personality”. He moved to Tokyo to study economics at the prestigious Chuo University and was sucked into student politics, earning the nickname “the mastermind”.
尽管天生极具个人魅力，铃木却饱受近乎麻痹的羞怯困扰。他后来写道，自己加入学校辩论社，是“想借此改变性格”。之后他前往东京，在著名的中央大学(Chuo University)攻读经济学，并被卷入学生政治活动，由此得到了“策划者”的绰号。
But his prominence in student politics blacklisted him from the graduate schemes of Japanese companies. At a loss, he joined one of the few industries that would take him, a book and magazine distributor later known as Tohan.
但他在学生政治中的高调表现，使他被日本公司的毕业生招聘计划列入黑名单。走投无路之下，他进入了少数愿意接纳他的行业之一——一家图书杂志发行公司，后来被称为东贩(Tohan)。
It was here that Suzuki would make the two giant intellectual leaps that would eventually define him. The first, born of despair at daily abacus lessons and the decision-making torpor of big companies, was the idea that conventional wisdom deserved constant, belligerent challenge.
正是在这里，铃木作出了两次巨大的思想飞跃，并最终由此确立了自己的风格。第一步飞跃源于他对每日算盘课的绝望，以及对大型公司在决策上迟钝麻木的厌倦——他提出，所谓“传统智慧”理应受到持续而强硬的质疑。
The second was that the combination of statistics and consumer psychology was an immensely powerful business weapon. Suzuki cultivated, as he put it, “the habit of thinking deeply about the slightest changes in data”.
其次，他认识到统计学与消费者心理学相结合，是一件威力巨大的商业武器。正如铃木所说，他培养了“对数据中最细微变化深入思考的习惯”。
In the early 1960s, Suzuki joined Ito-Yokado, a supermarket chain, and began to rise through its ranks. On a staff trip to the US, his party stopped by a roadside in California where he saw, for the first time, a 7-Eleven store. Upon his return home, he suggested to senior management that the convenience store model would work in Japan. He was told it was impossible — the Japanese would never shop at night. Suzuki persevered and entered into negotiations with the US operator, Southland, for the franchise licence in Japan.
20世纪60年代初，铃木加入了连锁超市企业伊藤洋华堂，并开始在公司内部一路升迁。在一次赴美员工旅行中，他一行人在加利福尼亚的公路边停留时，他第一次看到了7-Eleven的门店。回国后，他向公司高层建议把便利店模式引入日本，却被告知这不可能——日本人绝不会在夜间购物。铃木没有放弃，随后与美国运营商Southland就日本地区的特许经营许可展开谈判。
On a wet morning in May 1974, a man entered Japan’s first 7-Eleven in the Toyosu district of Tokyo, and bought a ¥800 pair of sunglasses. It was, to the onlooking Suzuki, a landmark moment.
1974年5月一个下雨的早晨，一名男子走进位于东京丰洲、日本第一家7-Eleven便利店，买下了一副800日元的太阳镜。对在一旁观望的铃木而言，这是一个具有里程碑意义的时刻。
For the next half century, the Japanese operations of 7-Eleven expanded into a network of about 21,000 stores, their growth under constant refinement by a leader who saw every tiny detail of product offering, logistics and marketing as an opportunity. In 1991, when Southland stumbled into bankruptcy, Suzuki led its acquisition by Ito-Yokado.
在随后的半个世纪里，7-Eleven在日本的业务扩展成约2.1万家门店的网络；在一位领导者的不断打磨下，这一网络得以发展壮大，他把产品组合、物流和营销中的每个细微之处都视作机会。1991年，Southland陷入破产时，铃木主导了伊藤洋华堂对Southland的收购。
Suzuki was irritable and short-tempered, said one of his biographers, and prone to shouting at staff. “But his brilliance lay in the fact that once he had decided something, he stuck with it. He thought quickly, and acted quickly.”
他的一位传记作者表示，铃木性情急躁、爱发脾气，还经常对下属大吼大叫。“但他的过人之处在于，一旦作出决定就会坚持到底。他反应敏捷，行动也很迅速。”
When asked in his mid-seventies when he expected to retire, Suzuki said he would do so “when there is a gap between my thinking and the customers’ thinking”.
在七十多岁被问到预计何时退休时，铃木表示，他会在“自己的想法和顾客的想法出现差距时”退休。
Ultimately, his downfall was not a matter of choice. After years at the top of Ito-Yokado, Suzuki over-assumed his status and brought his son on to the board. The founding Ito family backed a boardroom coup that forced his resignation, leading one biographer to conclude that for all his personal iconoclasm and industry-transforming leadership, Suzuki was to some “only ever a salaried CEO”.
归根结底，他的下台并非出于自愿。铃木在伊藤洋华堂长期身居高位后，高估了自己的地位，把儿子带进了董事会。作为创始人的伊藤家族随后发起董事会政变，迫使他辞职。有一位传记作者因此评价，尽管铃木在个人作风上特立独行、在行业中具有变革性的领导力，对某些人来说，他“始终只是一个拿工资的职业经理人”。
But for Japan, his legacy stands on countless street corners as an ever-evolving showcase of the country’s talent for adaptability, innovation and attention to detail. Leo Lewis
但对日本而言，他的遗产矗立在无数街角，成为一个不断演进的展示窗口，展现着这个国家在适应、创新和注重细节方面的才能。——利奥•刘易斯(Leo Lewis)