Former Sony president and chairman Norio Ohga, credited with expanding the company from electronics hardware to software and entertainment and developing the compact disc, has died aged 81.
Mr Ohga, who led the company from 1982 to 1995, died of multiple organ failure in Tokyo, Sony said.
Some decisions made during Ohga's presidency, such as the $3.4 billion purchase of Hollywood studios Columbia Pictures, were criticised as unwise and costly at the time. But Mr Ohga's focus on music, films and video games as a way to enrich the electronics business helped create Sony's success in his era.
"We are always chasing after things that other companies won't touch," Mr Ohga said in a 1998 interview with The Associated Press. "That is a big secret to our success."
The flamboyant music connoisseur steered his work through his love of music. A former opera singer, Mr Ohga insisted the CD be designed at 12 centimeters (4.8 inches) in diameter - or 75 minutes worth of music - to store Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in its entirety.
From the start, Mr Ohga recognised the potential of the CD's superior sound quality. In the 1970s, when he insisted CDs would eventually replace record albums, sceptics scoffed. Herbert von Karajan, Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock spoke up in defence of Sony's digital sound.
Sony sold the world's first CD in 1982 and CDs overtook LP record sales in Japan five years later. The specifications are still used today and shaped formats of devices developed since.
"It is no exaggeration to attribute Sony's evolution beyond audio and video products into music, movies and game, and subsequent transformation into a global entertainment leader to Ohga-san's foresight and vision," Sony Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Howard Stringer said yesterday, using the Japanese honorific.
Shattering the stereotype of the staid Japanese executive, the debonair Mr Ohga was never shy, his hair neatly slicked back, his boisterous manner exuding the fiery yet naive air of an artist. His persona added a touch of glamour to Sony's image at a time when Japan had global ambitions.
An experienced pilot, Mr Ohga at times flew the plane himself for business trips. A gourmet, he boasted about his roast beef. His hobby was cruising on his yacht.
Chairman of the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra since 1999, he continued to conduct there a few times a year. In 1993, he conducted the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall in a charity event funded by Sony.
Mr Ohga was set to pursue a career as a baritone opera singer when Sony co-founders Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita, intrigued by his complaints about the sound quality of Sony tape recorders, recruited him to the company.
Mr Ohga graduated from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1953 and Berlin University of the Arts in 1957.
He was an executive by his 30s, a rarity in a Japanese company. He was appointed president of CBS Sony Records in 1970, chairman of what later became Sony Corp. of America in 1988, and chief executive of Sony in 1989.
The company says he was key in building the Sony brand, especially working on design, as well as quality, to make products that looked attractive to consumers.
Sony started amid the destruction and poverty after World War II and built itself on the popularity of transistor radios, the Walkman, the Trinitron TV, the CD - shaping the history of modern electronics.
He is survived by his wife, Midori. Sony said a private wake will be held later.