Biography | 佐藤恒治 Koji Sato — The Koraku Building Where He Named the Team After Akio Toyoda

On 26 January 2023 Toyota said Akio Toyoda would become chairman and Koji Sato president on 1 April.

The personnel announcement was dated Toyota City.

The public introduction of Sato's operating team was held in Tokyo on 13 February 2023.

The Associated Press photographed Sato that day with Kazuaki Shingo, Yoichi Miyazaki, Hiroki Nakajima and Simon Humphries.

Toyota's Tokyo Head Office then occupied the Toyota Tokyo Building at 1-4-18 Koraku, Bunkyo-ku.

The tower was finished in January 1982 beside Koishikawa Korakuen.

Toyota Realty and Mitsui Fudosan bought the building in February 2023 and kept Toyota as tenant.

The company has since announced a later move toward Shinagawa.

Sato used the Tokyo briefing to set the incoming team's theme as inheritance and evolution, the phrase Toyota printed in its own release.

He described himself to reporters as the captain of a soccer team.

Those lines are paraphrased from the official transcript and from the AP report of the same briefing.

The building is the capital-side door of a company whose legal home remains Toyota-cho.

A visitor today still finds the tower on Sotobori-dori between Suidobashi and Iidabashi.

The briefing rooms inside are not public.

The pin is the facade that faced the press the day Sato named the group that would follow Toyoda.

Photo: Yoseisho, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons