Akio Morita was one of the most important businessmen in the world. He co-founded Sony, the company behind the Walkman and so much of the music gear people grew up with. So when he and his wife, Yoshiko, became close with Michael Jackson, it wasn’t two strangers meeting. It was two people near the top of the same industry who genuinely liked each other.
They met back in 1987. Michael was touring Japan behind his “Bad” album, and after a show in Yokohama the Moritas came to say hello.
The friendship grew from there. Yoshiko later wrote about Michael coming to her birthday party at their home, where he wandered over to Akio’s player piano and his little music boxes and played with them “like a child.”
Then, in late 1993, Akio became seriously ill.
Of all the people they knew around the world, all the famous names and business partners, the first to reach out from overseas was Michael.
“The very first message to arrive from overseas was from Michael Jackson,” Yoshiko wrote years later. “It was a healing tape he made himself.”
The tape was something Michael had put together on his own. His own voice, calling out Akio’s name over and over, telling his old friend that he would get better and that he would speak again. On the box, in his own handwriting, he’d left a short note. As Yoshiko remembered it, translated from her Japanese, it read: “Please listen to this morning, noon and night. Michael Jackson.”
So she did. Every morning she started the tape about ten minutes before Akio woke up, so the first sound of his day was Michael’s voice. At night she played it again until it finished. She kept that up every single day for more than six years.
Yoshiko told the whole story herself, and you can hear her tell it here.
Yoshiko Morita talks about her husband’s friendship with Michael
Years after that, the actual tape was played on Japanese television, so people could finally hear the gentle, almost shy way Michael spoke to his sick friend on it.
The healing tape Michael recorded, as aired on Japanese TV
Michael didn’t just mail the tape and move on, either. In January 1997, while he was in Honolulu on tour, he made time to visit Akio and Yoshiko at their home in Hawaii.
Akio Morita passed away in 1999. Around that time Michael had sent the Moritas a copy of his album “HIStory,” and with it a plaque carrying a message he wrote in English: “THIS ALBUM OF MY MUSIC WARMLY DEDICATED TO AKIO MORITA… FOR OUR EVERLASTING FRIENDSHIP. WE ARE LIVING IN THE SAME DREAM FOREVER… WITH ALL MY LOVE.” That one’s in his own words, no translation needed.