Prepare for the future, at your convenience

Japan's first convenience store was not, as many suppose, 7-Eleven in Tokyo in 1974 but Mitsui in Kyoto in 1673. The genius behind it was Mitsui Hachirobei, heir to the sake shop his father had opened a generation earlier. Of samurai birth, the father saw warrior status as useless in the dawning age of peace. He renounced his and went commercial. He struggled, perhaps too much the warrior at heart to really make a go of it.