她白手起家，在82岁时成为日本首位女性亿万富

筱原欣子6岁丧父，20多岁离了婚，大学也一直没毕业。但《福布斯》杂志报道，如今她成了日本第一位白手起家的女性亿万富翁。

1973年，筱原在东京一间一居室公寓里建立了劳务派遣机构天欣福。就像她在2010年接受《金融时报》采访时所说，在日本历史的那个时期，许多女性就连做兼职也要询问丈夫的意见。筱原从中看到了机会。

她说：“社会由男性主宰，大多数女性从事的都是辅助性工作，能主动参与的机会几乎没有。我就是在那个时候想到可以拓宽工作环境，让女性施展她们的技艺，所以我创建了天欣福。”

现在，这家公司已经成为天欣福控股，有313处办事机构，设在洛杉矶和台湾等地。《福布斯》报道，去年这家上市公司实现收入45亿美元。筱原在天欣福持股25%，最近公司股价上涨12%，让她的身家达到了九位数。

她告诉《金融时报》：“我觉得我的特性之一就是痛恨失败。”

筱原的故事是创业热忱的一例典型。在她想到要建立天欣福时，做临时工几乎是非法行为。筱原因此四处游说，让法律得到了修订。她也很快意识到，自己这辈子想做的不光是当家庭主妇。

2009年，筱原接受《哈佛商业评论》采访时说：“举办婚礼后我很快就意识到自己宁愿不结婚，我并不适合做那样的人。所以我觉得自己最好尽快离婚，这个决定让我的妈妈和兄弟非常生气。离婚后我说，‘我得自己干点儿什么了’。”

天欣福成为国际大型企业有两个关键推动因素。《哈佛商业评论》认为，第一个因素是筱原决定开始聘用男性经理，这让天欣福更受主流的欢迎。

“1988年，我问‘我们招几个男同事怎么样？’那些[女]经理说，‘不用了，谢谢，我们根本不需要那些生物。’但我们确实需要。一家分公司碰巧请了一位男士来做兼职，喔，销售额那叫一个增长。”

《金融时报》指出，第二个因素是20世纪90年代日本“失去的十年”，也就是经济停滞期。为了设法避免使用成本较高的正式员工，用人单位找上了天欣福以及它提供的劳动力。

这让筱原把自己的领导风格描述为“寄居蟹式管理”。

她说：“寄居蟹出生时很小，蟹壳的尺寸刚好适合那个阶段的生活。天欣福成长时，也是这样出现了组织结构和制度。”

筱原从未打算成为亿万富翁。相反，她曾说过，她只是想通过一家“世人需要的”公司来留下印记。

“我想通过公司为社会做贡献。”（财富中文网）

译者：Charlie

Yoshiko Shinohara lost her father at age six, got divorced in her 20s, and never graduated from college. But today, Forbes is reporting, she is Japan’s first self-made female billionaire.

In 1973, Shinohara founded TempStaff, a staffing agency, from a one-bedroom apartment in Tokyo. As she told the Financial Times in 2010, this was during an era in Japanese history when many female candidates had to check with their husbands before they could even take a temp job. In this, Shinohara saw an opportunity.

“Society was dominated by men with most women working in assistant roles, and there were few opportunities to actively participate,” she said. “It was then I thought I would broaden the workplaces where women could apply their skills, so I launched TempStaff.”

Today, the company that has become Temp Holdings has 313 offices, from Los Angeles to Taiwan. Forbes reports that the publicly traded company had revenues of $4.5 billion last year. With a 25% stake, Forbes says, the recent 12% gain in Temp shares has put Shinohara over the nine-figure mark.

“I say one of my personal traits is that I hate to lose,” she told the FT.

Shinohara’s story is one of textbook entrepreneurial zeal. Temping was mostly illegal when she got the idea for her company, so she lobbied to have the laws changed. She also quickly realized that she wanted to do more with her life than be a housewife.

“Soon after my wedding, I realized that I would rather not be married, that this was not the right person for me.” she told the Harvard Business Review in 2009. “So I decided I had better divorce as soon as possible, a decision that my mother and brother were very angry about. After the divorce, I said, ‘I have to do something with myself.’”

Two key events helped turn Temp into a global juggernaut. The first was Shinohara’s decision to start hiring male managers, which allowed the company to gain more mainstream traction, according to the HBR.

“In 1988, I said, ‘How about if we put some men in here?’ The [female] managers said, ‘No, thank you, we don’t need any of those creatures.’ But we did need them. A branch happened to hire a man as a part-timer, and wow, did sales increase!”

The second, the FT says, was Japan’s “lost decade” of economic stagnation in the 1990s. As companies looked to avoid the higher cost of permanent employees, they turned to Temp and its workers.

This has led Shinohara to describe her leadership style as “hermit-crab management”.

“Born small, the scale of the hermit crab’s shell is appropriate to that stage of its life,” she says. “As TempStaff has grown, so have its organizational structures and systems.”

Shinohara never set out to be a billionaire. Instead, she has said, she just wanted to make a mark, through a business that “is needed in the world at large.”

“I want to contribute to society through business.”