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On the morning of July 23, the board of directors of Kobayashi Pharmaceutical held an extraordinary meeting and approved 64-year-old Satoshi Yamane to take over as president, effective August 8. The board also approved the resignation of the company's 84-year-old chairman Kazumasa Kobayashi and 53-year-old president Akihiro Kobayashi.

Until now, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical has been led by members of the company's founding family, and Satoshi Yamane is also the first non-family member to serve as president in Kobayashi Pharmaceutical's history.

Kazumasa Kobayashi and Akihiro Kobayashi are the fourth and fifth generation leaders of Kobayashi Pharmaceutical respectively.

After stepping down as chairman, Kazumasa Kobayashi will become a special advisor to the company. After his resignation, Akihiro Kobayashi will lose his legal personality, but he will continue to remain on the board of directors, responsible for dealing with a series of problems caused by the company's "red rice mold" supplements and setting up compensation for the victims.

On March 22 this year, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical announced that the health product "Red Rice Mold" supplement may cause health problems and urgently recalled three products, two months after the company received the first death report. So far, more than 80 deaths have been suspected to be related to the "Red Rice Mold" supplement, and many of them have been clearly caused by taking the problematic products.

According to a report submitted by Kobayashi Pharmaceutical to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan on March 29, the ingredient causing the problem in its red yeast rice products may be a substance called "penicillic acid", which was detected in the red yeast rice supplements produced by the company's Osaka factory from April to October last year.

A committee of outside lawyers has been investigating the incident, questioning Kobayashi's failure to promptly notify the public of the problem and potentially alleging the company was slow to warn consumers or recall the product.

The resignation of the two family members also came under pressure from outside shareholders. In a report on Kobayashi Pharmaceutical's corporate governance dysfunction, four outside directors called for an update of the management structure, including the replacement of top management. The company's founding family accepted the request.

In Japan, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical is known as the "National Pharmaceutical Company". The company was first founded by Kobayashi Chubei in Osaka in 1886 as a pharmacy, which lasted for 70 years. It was not until the 1960s that Kobayashi Kazumasa took over the family business and became the fourth-generation president of Kobayashi Pharmaceutical.

Kobayashi Kazumasa has both innovative consciousness and business acumen. After he took office, his greatest invention was the toilet cleaning ball, which became popular in Japan and was successfully sold to Europe and the United States, expanding the company's business from a pharmacy to the field of daily chemicals. To this day, daily chemicals are still an important business sector of Kobayashi Pharmaceutical, and it has launched many "phenomenal" products including the Warm Baby.

"Big fish in a small pond" is Kobayashi Kazumasa's famous marketing strategy. He believes that "big business can be done in a small market" and that consumption can be created where there is no consumption. He even wrote a book on this.

Akihiro Kobayashi is the fifth-generation head of the company. He officially took over in 2013 and became the legal representative of Kobayashi Pharmaceutical.