[1] He took over his parents' small grocery chain in the 1950s and spent the next four decades growing Yaohan into a global company with annual sales of 500 billion yen at its peak.
[2] In the difficult years after World War II, his mother Katsu defeated the odds to turn the family business into a success, and reportedly inspired the popular Japanese television series Oshin.
[1] In 1971, Wada opened the first overseas Yaohan store in São Paulo, Brazil, and began an aggressive series of international expansion, which coincided with the rapid growth of Japan's own economy.
In 1997, when Japan's asset bubble had burst and the Asian financial crisis hit East and Southeast Asia, Yaohan incurred major losses and was unable to refinance its debt.
He spent his time reading biographies of world leaders such as Deng Xiaoping, which inspired him to turn around his life and put his lessons to good use.