Yoshiharu Fukuhara not only headed the iconic company his grandfather started, but there's his orchids and cameras — and a museum to run, too

In July 1942, seven months after the attack on Pearl Harbor that started the Pacific War, Tokyo hosted one of the most ambitious exhibitions of art the world had ever seen. "Leonardo da Vinci," staged in an exhibition hall in the central district of Ueno, featured 600 exhibits by and related to the Italian master whose life, from 1452 to 1519, and works in both the arts and sciences, place him at the very pinnacle of the European Renaissance.

Among the many thousands of visitors who crammed in for some wartime distraction was an 11-year-old boy named Yoshiharu Fukuhara. Gazing at da Vinci's paintings, drawings and designs for such machines as helicopters and water pumps, the young Fukuhara was astonished that a single person could embody such diverse interests and expertise.

It's not surprising that da Vinci struck a chord with Fukuhara. His own family boasted several modern-day Renaissance men. The pattern for their lives was to combine artistic activities with careers at the business that Fukuhara's grandfather, Arinobu, had founded in 1872: the cosmetics and toiletries-maker Shiseido. As Fukuhara explained recently to The Japan Times, it was a pattern he followed himself.

By the time Fukuhara was born, in 1931, Shiseido — whose name derives from a passage in the "I Ching" calling for "the virtues of the Earth" to be praised — had established a thousands-strong network of stores throughout Japan, where it profitably sold its toothpaste, perfumes, facial powders, vanishing creams and soaps.

The company was then under the leadership of Fukuhara's uncle, Shinzo, a multitalented man who had not only steered the business through expansion and incorporation, in 1927, but had also established himself as one of Japan's leading art photographers. In 1919, he was also responsible for creating what is now Japan's oldest existing art gallery, the Shiseido Gallery in Tokyo.

Fukuhara's father, Nobuyoshi, also shared his brother Shinzo's twin interests of business and photography. When he wasn't keeping tabs on the Shiseido books as the firm's accountant, he was snapping flowers in his carefully kept garden.

The young Fukuhara followed his forebears into Shiseido in 1953 — a move he puts down to a series of coincidences rather than familial grooming. Nevertheless, his commitment to the company, and the respect he was accorded within it, led to him being named the president of its then-new U.S. subsidiary, Shiseido Cosmetics America, in 1966. Just over two decades later, in 1987, he took over the presidency of the entire operation.

Fukuhara oversaw massive expansion of the Japanese brand, playing a direct role in its metamorphosis into an international, or, as he says, a "stateless" icon. Shiseido now has annual net sales of over ¥690 billion, with more than a third coming from abroad. Top products such as its Tsubaki shampoos and the Shiseido makeup line have seen it become a household name not just in Japan but in Asia and elsewhere around the world.

Nevertheless, Fukuhara never forgot the lesson he learned from da Vinci and his own family members, and the horizons of his interests have always extended far beyond the Shiseido domain. His two greatest passions are orchid cultivation and photography, both of which he has pursued since his student days.

“Tokyo was supposed to have the Olympics in 1940, but they were canceled because of the war and I believe the Japanese government decided that in order to keep the public in good spirits they would hold that exhibition. I imagine they arranged it with the Italian and German governments. It was held at a place called the Ikenohata Sangyokan in Ueno — it doesn't exist now. The show included paintings, but also da Vinci's designs for ladders and contraptions to scale castle walls, designs for a helicopter, a water pump and so on.

I just remember thinking it was amazing that he did so many things. I never thought that I wanted to become Leonardo da Vinci, but I think seeing that exhibition opened my eyes to the possibility of having diverse interests and working in diverse fields.”