The Managing Director of the mega-corporation was a powerful man. But there are powerful men in Japan, and then there are men so powerful that they operate like gods within their own universes. Mr Ryoichi Sasagawa – whom I had met nineteen years before after entering an international essay competition for young people – had been one such man. In fact I might never have upped sticks and moved to Japan for a year if it weren’t for that essay competition, organized by the Japanese Foreign Ministry in the Eighties. The title of the essay was something like: ‘How can Japan and Europe cooperate to create global peace?’ These days I feel that this would be a tough one to crack, but when I was twenty-five years old the solution to this important question seemed well within grasp. So, first taking the precaution to check where Japan was on the map, I raced to my local library and concocted a compendium of clichés sufficiently upbeat to secure the pride of a young man and the approval of a panel of politically correct bureaucrats.To my delight, I won one of the prizes, an all-expenses-paid junket to Japan.
The official schedule seemed designed to confirm every foreigner’s preconception of Japan as an economic superpower dotted with temples, geishas, besuited salarymen and obedient wives. After a few days I started longing for something unexpected. We had toured immaculate car factories, met workers singing songs in praise of their companies, “done” ancient Kyoto and listened to lectures from earnest professors about how the Japanese brain, unlike its cruder Western counterpart, has no problem believing that things can be both good and bad or true and false at the same time.
The hospitality was also unstinting. On arrival I was handed a little brown envelope stuffed with freshly printed Yen bills, delightfully crisp and smooth to the touch. Prepaid meals and hotels awaited me at every stop, and no meeting began without a gift-giving ceremony. It seemed ungrateful, but all this organization was getting me down. I felt throttled by the lack of free-flowing conversation. Jokey exchanges were formulaic. Even spontaneity was choreographed. Instead of the famous three S’s of Japan – Silence, Smile and Sleep – I hoped for Scandal, Salaciousness and Sex.
Mr Sasagawa was the answer – the megalomaniac elderly billionaire capo of a vast speedboat-racing empire, plus Class-A war-crimes suspect to boot. Only a young person with ample naivety and cheek would send a letter to such a figure requesting a meeting, just on the off-chance that he might say yes. So, taking advantage of my new-found position as a temporary ambassador for friendly international relations, I wrote to him about my urgent desire to explore his views on world peace; in reality I just wanted to meet the man because his life was one of extraordinary risk, drive and success. It was said that his economic ambitions, though not his methods, mirrored those of post-war Japan.
Mr Sasagawa responded favourably to my impudent suggestion. Not only did he say yes, but he sent a bus-length white limousine to fetch me from my hotel. Sitting in that limousine, prodding its mysterious buttons and levers and devices, stroking its furs and leathers, seeing my satisfied reflection gazing back at me from polished woods, I became fully convinced of the fabled power and glamour of Mr Sasagawa. I enjoyed the thought that a man reputed to be so dangerous could create wealth of such reassuring safety.
I was whisked through Tokyo’s traffic to a smart building near the city centre, then down into an underground parking lot, where I was deposited in a gleaming lift which launched me upwards hundreds of feet to the Presidential penthouse at the top.The lift doors opened onto a cavernous office, which I peered into gingerly, like a bird that has to be prodded out of its cage.
It rapidly became evident that there was something of the James Bond villain to Mr Sasagawa’s sense of style: two ineffably beautiful girls in tiny miniskirts were waiting for me. They greeted me with flawless English and ushered me towards a huge armchair where I was to await the great man; at the time, it seemed entirely natural that the seat they’d shown me to was placed between a pair of stuffed tigers, their mouths frozen into eternal snarls.
Moments later, Mr Sasagawa entered through a side door. Modestly dressed in the Japanese businessman’s identikit suit, his small, compact figure was dwarfed by the leggy beauties who rushed over to flank him. Like many hugely rich Japanese, he didn’t like his personal appearance to exude wealth, and his neat, down-to-earth look seemed all the more impressive for the opulence of his office.
He walked briskly towards me, measured up my insignificance with some surprise, and grunted – which one of the girls translated as “Mr Sasagawa invites you to sit down please”.
“What can I do for you?” he asked indifferently, probably expecting me not to waste a moment before asking him for money, and perhaps toying with the idea of giving me some, if only to get our meeting over with. He seemed puzzled by my presence, and his eyes darted around restlessly – as if searching out a more impressive visitor.
“I’d like your views on world peace,” I said absurdly, realizing that I ought to have concocted a slightly more specific agenda. “Young people,” I stammered, “Britain, Europe, should do more to create international order. Together.With Japan. How can we achieve this?”
His subdued irritation at having allowed such a low form of life into his crowded schedule gave way to a strident monologue, peppered with allusions to his own efforts to create a world of love and understanding. Cold, mercurial, and with a menacing aura, he paused between each staccato pronouncement as his translator politely rendered it into impeccable English.
“It is the responsibility of your generation to create world peace,” he informed me, adding, “my generation has done all it can.”
“I see…”
“Japan is too dependent on the United States,” he barked, as the miniskirted beauties raced to transcribe their master’s maxims. “Europe should complete the triangle of peace.”
I had done a little bit of research into the great man. He apparently spoke of himself as “the world’s richest fascist”. It was said that he had made his first fortune by assassinating the chiefs of mineral-rich cities in China, and then plundering their wealth, including the wealth derived from narcotics dealing. It seemed an unusual apprenticeship for building world peace, but I didn’t get much of a chance to disagree with what he said, and certainly wouldn’t have risked anything so forthright.
The interesting part of Mr Sasagawa’s view of the world was not the call for universal brotherhood, which you hear in Japan over and over again. Instead it was his conspiracy view of history: things happen only because small cabals plot them. You can never trust what people say, but have to look behind it for their real motives, which are usually base and self-interested. You must watch like a hawk for the omens and signs that betray those motives. And once you know what you want, you should say and do whatever it takes to succeed.
Mr Sasagawa insisted that the only cabal that counts in today’s world is the West, led by the United States. In order to be in on it, Japan needed to avoid any repetition of its militaristic past.This meant talking peace and carrying a big wallet – a strategy that seemed to have paid off handsomely for Sasagawa, judging by the pictures of world leaders that graced his room, many of them signed with personal statements of admiration and gratitude.
After fifteen minutes, Mr Sasagawa stopped speaking and abruptly declared that the meeting was over. While I floundered between the two stuffed tigers, wondering about the protocol of getting from the armchair to the lift, he signalled to a flunky, who at once rushed over to me and presented me with a gift. Then Sasagawa stood up and personally herded me to the lift at a sharp clip. Just as the doors were about to close he further disempowered me by asking a last-minute question. By the time the question had been interpreted, I had nearly disappeared, peering at him as I was from between a crack in the doors. Assistants scrambled to wrench the doors open, so that I could benefit from his final pearl of wisdom:
“Can you,” Mr Sasagawa said, “can you run up the stairs of the building to the penthouse without getting out of breath? Because I can, in my eighties, and that is the secret of my success! Relentless training,” he barked, as the doors glided shut once more; “Discipline!” he added at the last moment. Then he and his beautiful assistants vanished, and I was alone in the lift, plummeting back down to my lowlier level in life.
In the limo going back to the hotel, I resisted my overwhelming desire to open the present. It was only in the privacy of my room that I tore into the expensive layers of wrapping paper, to find that Mr Sasagawa had given me a clock. The clock was designed around a picture of Mr Sasagawa. The picture showed him bearing his elderly mother on his back and carrying her up a hill. On the hour, every hour, this striking image of Mr Sasagawa’s filial piety lit up inspirationally.
I have no plans to bear my own mother on my back and carry her up a hill; surely it was enough just to give her the clock. It still stands today in her kitchen, should she feel a pressing need to reflect on her son’s youthful investigations into world peace. But the picture stopped lighting up some time ago, and Mr Sasagawa is dead.