Leaders in Japanese business and political circles are grieving the loss of Kazuo Inamori, founder of Kyocera Corp. and KDDI Corp., long revered as a charismatic corporate leader and backer of a two-party system allowing regime change.

Inamori died of natural causes at his home in Kyoto on Aug. 24. He was 90. Kyocera announced the news of his death on Aug. 30.

Yuki Kusumi, president of Panasonic Holdings Corp., expressed sorrow over Inamori’s passing later that day at a news conference.

“I could learn a lot from his many books,” he said. “He was one of the business managers I deeply respected. His death left a hole in my heart.”

Inamori, a native of Kagoshima Prefecture, founded Kyocera in Kyoto in 1959 when he was 27. Under his leadership, the company grew into a leading supplier of electronic devices.

He penned numerous books on business management and success in living and work.

His “Kyocera Philosophy,” in which he exhorted the importance of doing the right thing as a person, gained a strong following in and outside of Japan.

Inamori also established one of the predecessors of major mobile carrier KDDI in 1984 as the government was preparing to liberalize the telecommunications industry.

What drove him was his firm belief that the monopoly over the industry held by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corp. would not be good for Japan.

“The telecommunications industry could achieve historic realignment as he urged small players to ignore their differences to form a coalition and provide telecommunication services that would genuinely serve the public,” said Takashi Tanaka, chairman of KDDI.

In 2010, Inamori, at age 77, accepted the challenge of rebuilding bankrupt Japan Airlines Corp. at the strong request from the government, led by the Democratic Party of Japan. He said he took the offer as his philosophy was that a person’s ultimate virtue is serving society and people.

“I accepted the job for free to rescue JAL employees, not because the company was Japan’s flag carrier,” he told reporters.

He introduced to the struggling airline his “amoeba management method.” Under this model, employees were grouped into small units to make them keenly aware of their balance sheets, a concept that was largely missing at JAL.

Inamori led JAL through restructuring and to go public again only less than three years after filing for bankruptcy.

“Only Inamori could achieve JAL’s V-shaped recovery in such a short period of time,” said Seiji Maehara, then industry minister, who asked him to overhaul the company so that it could take off again.

Maehara, now a lawmaker with the Democratic Party for the People, added, “I could not be more grateful. He saved Japan.”

Inamori also played a significant role in the birth of the DPJ administration, which wrested power from the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party in 2009 in an epoch-making event.

He was a proponent of a two-party system, preaching the importance of creating a political system where regime change is a realistic possibility. 

After the DPJ-led government was formed, he sat on government councils tasked with identifying wasteful uses of tax money and grappling with administrative reforms, wielding enormous influence over the management of the government.

Ichiro Ozawa, a former LDP heavyweight and now a veteran legislator with the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, praised Inamori as being far-sighted on his Twitter account.

“He knew from early on that Japan would need a mature democracy where change of government occurs and gave strong support to the merger of the DPJ and my Liberal Party and the DPJ’s taking power,” said Ozawa, who maintained close ties with Inamori over the decades.

“He was a man of considerable insight and future vision and extremely generous. I was hoping to make a change of power happen again while he was still living to repay his longtime support to us.”

Former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama of the DPJ said Inamori was seen as a moral authority and respected by even those who did not share his way of thinking.

“He gave me advice on what to do to maintain harmony within our party,” he said.

Hatoyama said he was sorry that the DPJ government fell apart after only three years in power despite Inamori’s backing, allowing the LDP to resume control of the government in 2012.