Kyosuke Shiroyama
It took less than twenty minutes to drive directly from his house in Sanno to Hinode’s main office in Kita-Shinagawa, but since his days as managing director, Kyosuke Shiroyama would instruct his driver to take twice as long by meandering along a different route every morning. One reason for this was to secure the time to scan through the sections of the newspaper he had not finished reading at home; another was to observe the backstreets he did not normally pass by, the secluded stores, the signage and billboards, the flow of commuters.
It had been thirty-one years since he joined Hinode Beer. Even now that he had assumed the position of president and CEO in June, he retained basically the same perseverance he had attained by spending two thirds of that time in the front line of the sales division. No, in terms of both ability and character, Shiroyama knew there was simply no way for him to change.
Unlike other alcoholic beverages, beer acutely reflected the sensibility of the times and the quotidian emotions of the people. Thus, copious research was always conducted before the release of each new product, but Shiroyama occasionally felt caught between his salesman’s desire to maintain his intuition about the accuracy of such research even now that he had reached the top and the awareness that he was no longer in a position to share his personal hunches about a single product. Now that keeping an eye on current figures as well as the status of the entire company was his job, this incapacity to shed the perspective of front-end sales had, in effect, ultimately turned Shiroyama into a prudent manager who carefully considered the opinions of others and actually in some ways made him more agreeable.
He had never told anyone about his morning prowls—not the other executives, much less the general employees—out of concern that it might put unnecessary pressure on them. As usual on that Monday morning, November 12th, Shiroyama spent about ten minutes scanning the Nikkei’s personnel column, then as the company car drifted around the Yashio Park Town residential complex, he gazed out at the morning scene and, opening the window a little, breathed in the salty air. With fifteen minutes still to spare, his driver offered to take him through the neighborhood of James’s Slope, to which Shiroyama agreed, and as the car turned toward the waterfront and carried him along, his eyes continued to scan the scenery outside. In a rapidly changing city like Tokyo, less than a couple of weeks went by before a new store or new billboards popped up here or there.
Still, this whole time Shiroyama’s mind was never at rest. He lined up the affairs of the day in his mind, confirming what was urgent, worrying about the year-end account figures that would arrive in the middle of the winter sales campaign, deliberating over the next term index that had already arrived, reminding himself about the mid-to-long-term agenda items he would need to act on soon, and mulling over the angles and the sequence of the groundwork he would have to lay to reach a consensus at the next board meeting. On that day, his mind was predominantly occupied—for the time being—by the November forecast for next month’s figures as well as the numbers from October’s monthly interim financial statement, followed by other sundry concerns that asserted themselves one after another.
Hinode Supreme, a new product that had gone on sale in the spring, had already proved to be a big hit, clearing its first-year goal of thirty million cases by October, so Shiroyama felt somewhat at ease, but his concerns still seemed myriad. The gross domestic demand for beer had been on the rise these past few years, but the gradual decline of Hinode Lager, which had dominated the market for a quarter of a century, had now become the trend of the times. Last year, Hinode experienced a historical nadir when its share dipped below fifty percent, and management had been overhauled. And so, compelled by an onslaught of new products developed by their competitors, for the past two years Hinode had been reconsidering its product range, which relied too heavily on the lager, and had shifted toward a more diversified strategy. But the result of Hinode’s relinquishing its fortitude as the stalwart of the industry was that ultimately every company was dragged into a grueling, never-ending competition that forced all of them to increase their advertising budgets and to overproduce new products to maintain their market share. The situation was unlikely to change anytime soon.
The massive process industry that was the beer business operated on razor-thin profit margins to begin with, and they faced heavy competition abroad due to high liquor taxes. All of them had attempted to diversify but even for Hinode, whose pharmaceutical business was doing well, beer still exceeded 96 percent of their overall sales, thus things were not so simple. Moreover, at a time when external pressure to censure conglomerations of keiretsu-affiliated groups was sure to grow stronger on the heels of the Japan-US Structural Impediments Initiative, it was obvious that the company could no longer continue to skirt the issue by importing foreign brands and making licensing deals. Therefore, showing progress on their strategy to form a new business alliance with an overseas manufacturer—the company’s one and only offensive—was Shiroyama’s biggest responsibility during his term in office.
As a matter of fact, the world’s largest beer manufacturer, Limelight, with whom Hinode had held an exclusive distribution agreement for the last ten years, was privately consulting with them about their interest in establishing a joint venture. This was a complicated issue, and if they did not meticulously deliberate the terms, the company ran the risk of coming under fire from the Fair Trade Commission—which despised Hinode’s oligopolization of the market—and would force them to swallow unfavorable conditions. Even if they formed the joint venture, there was still the fear that domestic products would be upstaged in the future, pinned down as they were by the high liquor tax. And, considering the long-term effects, it might very well hasten their self-destruction to release their nationwide network of six hundred distributors from their contracts. Yet if they were to backpedal even the slightest and this opportunity went elsewhere, everything would be lost. Limelight’s move was top-secret, so he would have to keep a close watch on Japan Fair Trade Commission’s activities and figure out the right time to start laying the groundwork with the National Tax Agency.
Meanwhile, among their domestic concerns was the issue of a new Nagoya factory. They were accelerating construction because of a desperate need to raise their beer-canning rate, but due to sudden increases in land value, the site acquisition wasn’t progressing very smoothly. Then there were the liquor discount stores, who would undoubtedly gain strength from the easement associated with last year’s partial revision of how applications for liquor licenses would be handled. This issue would lead to the destruction of every company’s network of distributors that had been established during beer’s hundred-year history, so realigning their sales channels was an urgent matter.
On the logistics side, he had to figure out what to do about the relationship between Hinode Distribution and the Ogura Group. Personally, he wanted to reassure himself of the bank’s intentions regarding their purchase of additional Ogura stock, but what would be the consensus of the board?
“Are we about ready, sir?” asked his driver, always punctual.
“Yes, go ahead,” Shiroyama replied.
The driver promptly brought the car over to the front of their main office on the south side of Yatsuyama-dori Avenue in Kita-Shinagawa. The company’s new building, completed three years ago, consisted of forty floors paneled entirely in solid granite, which an architecture magazine wrote off as a nouveau-riche knock-off of 1920s New York. The first and second floors housed the Hinode Opera Hall with its world-class acoustics, and on the top floor was the Hinode Sky Beer Restaurant, managed directly by the company’s dining division. The remaining thirty-seven floors were occupied by all of the various corporate divisions and twelve of their affiliated companies.
At a quarter past eight, Shiroyama walked through its entrance alone. When he became president he had scrapped the practice of the executive secretary greeting him at the door, so he also carried his own briefcase. He believed that the elimination of wasteful time and expenses must begin at the top, and the matter was considered by and agreed upon by the board. He had also decided that all eight thousand employees of their fifteen regional divisions, forty branch offices, and twelve factories in the nation should be referred to at the company with just the polite suffix “san” after their names, rather than using job titles to refer to superiors. This wasn’t to put on airs. Rather, it was implemented to motivate and streamline their organization, but Shiroyama knew that some of the board members viewed it as an aggressive step toward the implementation of a Shiroyama system. It was necessary for him to pretend not to hear talk such as this—otherwise nothing would get done.
From the time he entered the lobby and headed to the elevator banks until he reached the president’s executive suite on the thirtieth floor, Shiroyama repeated a mechanical “good morning” about a dozen times whenever he encountered an employee. Since way back, no matter his position at the company, people had always said that his appearance seemed to represent the average Hinode employee, and even now that his hair had grayed, that had not changed and he still did not stand out at all. More than a few times during his stint as managing director, he would walk around the office and hear an employee who passed by murmuring to someone else, “Who’s that?” And when he’d worked in sales as a young man, he had had trouble getting clients to remember his face.
But now that he had become the “face” of Hinode, he had stopped hearing whispers, although at the Japan Business Federation or the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, this was basically the status quo. What it came down to was that they had entered an era in which, by working hard, an anonymous sales machine could rise to the top of management before anyone noticed. As a CEO, Kyosuke Shiroyama was in the vanguard of his generation—men born in the second decade of the Showa era, who were not baptized by the romanticism of the preceding Taisho era. He wasn’t cut from the same cloth as those corporate men who adorned the covers of business magazines, nor was he a model of management philosophy. He simply bore the responsibility to protect the profits of all of Hinode’s shareholders and employees. Shiroyama acknowledged that he was a management machine that, though lacking a recognizable face, ran the company with sound business acumen and reasonable leadership ability. In truth, he knew would never be anything beyond that.
As he entered the executive suite, Shiroyama said another “good morning” to his secretary, who had risen from her desk in the anteroom. Then, he finally opened the door to his own office in the back.
The secretary, following immediately after him, asked, “May I confirm today’s schedule?” She waited until Shiroyama had placed his briefcase on the desk and sat down before presenting an enumerated list to him. Her name was Takako Nozaki; she had been working in this same office for over twenty years. She was a woman who seemed to know instinctively the most efficient way to do things, so Shiroyama rarely made any demands of her. One would not call her beautiful, but there was something comforting about her low, calm voice.
“Will you attend the breakfast meeting at 9? The car will pick you up for the Japan-US Businessmen’s Conference at 9:45. Please don’t be late. Will you look at the report now?”
“In the car.”
“Then I’ll gather the documents and wait for you by the entrance. Also, the interview with Asahi Shimbun at 2:30 will be twenty minutes, including a photo session. The questionnaire is . . .”
Ms. Nozaki showed him another sheet of paper with an itemized list of questions, but she knew they would never stick in Shiroyama’s mind at such a short notice. “I’ll look over them myself beforehand,” she added diligently.
“There won’t be your usual rounds within the company at 3 today. The task force for the construction of the new Nagoya factory will give a briefing at the business development division, so please attend that instead. The board members who will also be in attendance are listed. Then at 4:15, the honorable Sakata-san from the Liberal Democratic Party will be calling, so please don’t forget.”
On the schedule, prepared with a word processor, were the words, “Thank-you call from S.” The call was in regard to a fundraising ticket.
“Yes. I understand,” Shiroyama responded.
“Then, at five there’s the ceremony for the Hinode Cultural Awards.”
With that, she placed a slim pamphlet in front of him. The award was a project of the Hinode Cultural Foundation, established ten years ago, with both art and music categories. Feeling embarrassed that he had forgotten all about it, Shiroyama replied simply, “Yes.”
“The list of recipients and their work is in the pamphlet.”
“I’ll take a look at it in the car.”
“I’ll have the car ready for you at the entrance by 4:30. Then, you will be returning at 7 . . .”
And that was that—the confirmation of his schedule first thing in the morning took three minutes. Another three minutes to go over publicity events and advertising, as well as crucial matters regarding business at the different branches and factories.
Last came the reports from the beer, pharmaceutical, and business development divisions, which arrived every Monday; the stack of October’s monthly interim financial statements; and clippings from trade publications such as food industry newspapers, all compiled into a folder. After placing them on his desk, Ms. Nozaki then delivered a carafe of water and a glass and promptly disappeared by eight-thirty.
Shiroyama looked at his watch. He had less than half an hour until nine, the official start of business. The accumulation of these half hours every morning was a small point of pride for Shiroyama. He laid out all four sets of documents on his desk, including the reports and the interim financial statements, and began scanning through all of them at once. When it came to numbers, his instincts were useless unless he looked at them everyday. He had no intention of criticizing the details of the accounting; he never said anything about numbers during management meetings, but taking a broad view of the numbers aided him with various decisions, including whether the company was proceeding properly day-to-day, and whether there were any unusual changes in its progress.
But first, last week’s results for Hinode Supreme: 520,000 cases. The report noted that, looking ahead to increased demand forecast over Christmas, there was the potential to restore the weekly sales pace of 700,000 cases. Based on the rate of orders to the end of the term, the cumulative forecast was set at upwards of thirty-five million cases. This would ensure them their next-term goal of seventy million cases. However, if the lager—which dominated with 80 percent of their product range—were to fall short of the previous term’s cumulative total, this term’s year-over-year sales could be on the brink of a deficit.
Next, he quickly skimmed the results of each branch, as well as the production rates and inventory numbers for each factory.
Then it was on to product trends of rival companies. The business development division had done an analysis on the strength of “Winter Dry,” which Mainichi Beer—the number two company in the industry—had launched that month as part of their winter strategy. “In terms of product development, what merits special mention is the shift in perspective. As for sales, note their targeted promotion to bars and restaurants, their focused campaign in the greater Kantō region, an increase of rebates, and so on.” There were no comments on Winter Dry’s reduced alcohol content. Shiroyama made a mental note of this, and his eyes flew to the reports from their product development division. Come to think of it, what happened to their next-term plan to stay ahead of the health craze by making a lower alcohol content the focus of their development concept?
Just as he started to turn the page, he suddenly heard Ms. Nozaki’s voice through the intercom on his desk.
“Vice President Shirai and Human Resources Manager Tsukamoto are here to see you.”
Shiroyama looked at his watch. Eight thirty-five.
“Send them in,” he answered into the intercom, wondering what they could possibly want now since they were about to see him at the breakfast meeting. The door opened just as he had stacked the documents he had spread on his desk and closed the folder.
“Sorry to bother you so early.” The man who said this as he entered was Vice President Sei’ichi Shirai, whose tone was as bland and curt as always. Following behind him was the human resources manager who, in marked contrast, spoke with shoulders hunched somberly and bowed deeply as he said, “I’m afraid we have a situation that might cause you some concern.”
Internal strife? Shiroyama wondered how long this would take as he offered them a seat. After all they only had twenty-five minutes to spare.
“So, what is it?” Shiroyama had cut to the chase, just as Shirai replied bluntly, “We received an anonymous, well, tape, instead of a letter.”
According to Tsukamoto, who explained the situation, during the selection process for new employees in October, there had been a University of Tokyo graduate who left in the middle of his second interview, saying he felt unwell. He was rejected after apparently going home and failing to return, and subsequently on two separate occasions the human resources department received a letter from the student’s father who raised doubts about their selection process. The father was a dentist with a private practice in Setagaya, and he was from a segregated buraku community in Hyogo prefecture. The father was convinced that there was some kind of discrimination in Hinode’s screening process. Although the human resources department had responded to his first letter, the second time he had used the name of the BLL, and so they had left it alone, after which they received this cryptic cassette tape.
The truth was, it took Shiroyama about three seconds to decipher the abbreviation BLL. It took him another minute to understand the point of the story, after which he suspected there must be some kind of mistake. Even if it were true, he settled upon mild wonderment as to why such a matter had made it all the way up to him.
“Here is a transcript of the tape.”
On the first page of the stack of A4-size paper that Tsukamoto presented him were the words: Hinode Beer Company, Kanagawa Factory, To Whom It May Concern. Shiroyama distractedly leafed through the twenty or thirty pages and was shocked to find the date June 1947 on the last page. He quickly turned back to the first page and began scanning through the document.
“We had the Kanagawa factory look into it, and the Seiji Okamura who appears here did in fact leave Hinode in 1947,” Tsukamoto continued. Meanwhile, Shiroayama’s eyes quickly singled out various words from the contents of the pages. Place names from the Tohoku region such as “Hachinohe” and “Herai.” Phrases such as, “someone from a buraku village,” “labor union,” “conflict,” “General Strike of February 1st,” and “discharged.” And finally, “The second convention of the National Committee for Buraku Liberation.” Ah, right, that’s what they used to call themselves, he recalled, but that was the extent of it. He reread the last lines of the transcript of the tape, the whole of which amounted to many pages, but he still could not fathom the intention of the sender.
“Is this all?”
“Yes. Whatever his objective may be, it seems to involve our employment screening process, and since the problem also concerns the reputation of the company, we thought that this decision goes beyond the discretion of the human resources department, including whether to report it to the police or to ignore it. That’s why we are informing you,” Tsukamoto said as he rubbed his hands idly.
“Do we have the original letter that this Okamura sent to the Kanagawa factory?”
“The factory has no way of looking up something from all the way back in 1947, so whether or not such a letter actually existed . . .”
“The father of this student in question, you said he used the name of the BLL in his second letter? Does the sender of the tape identify himself?”
“No. But the labels and postmarks are the same, and according to our investigation, this Seiji Okamura turns out to be a distant relative of the student.”
“Aha . . .” Shiroyama uttered ambiguously, but what was beginning to concern him more were the company’s internal issues that tended to reveal themselves in situations like this. In the first place, what was the general affairs division doing about it, since they were normally expected to handle this type of problem? Moreover, whether this was a general affairs or a human resources issue, Shirai was not the executive in charge. Shiroyama glanced at Shirai as this thought crossed his mind, but Shirai wore an innocuous expression, as if everything had been obvious to him from the beginning.
“I understand the situation,” Shiroyama said again to Tsukamoto. “I will let you know what I decide later. Please see to it in your department that word doesn’t get out about the tape.”
“I will do so.”
With a look that seemed to bemoan what an unlucky day this was, Tsukamoto stood up from his seat and bowed as he left the room. When Shiroyama had joined the company in 1959, Tsukamoto had already been occupying a desk in what was then called the personnel division for quite some time. They hardly had any contact until Tsukamoto became head of the division, but he had settled in at the company—Tsukamoto was a dyed-in-the-wool pencil pusher—and was now a diligent support pillar in the corporate structure. Though the lackluster of this man presented itself as a minor concern for Shiroyama.
On the one hand, Sei’ichi Shirai was an executive both in name and in practice—here was a man who had transformed the company by putting an end to the lockstep and conservative tradition of Hinode’s executive team. His appearance was just as unremarkable as that of Shiroyama, but of the thirty-five board members, Shirai’s keen foresight and ability to get things done was second to none. Ten years ago, when Hinode still had a 60-percent market share, Shirai was already criticizing the beer business’s inefficiency and lack of viability, and its difficulties competing against foreign products. Since then, he had created a diversified, long-term plan that anticipated the future, and as a result of his laying the groundwork for the improvement of Hinode’s stronghold, he now played an integral role on Hinode’s executive team as EVP and head of business development. Shirai’s approach—neither a simple pursuit of profit nor a prosaic philosophy—evaluated corporate activities as a holistic system on a macro level, and in a way, this is what made him a prime example of the management machine. But Shirai possessed something Shiroyama fundamentally lacked, even if they were part of the same management machine, and if Shiroyama were honest with himself, this was a constant source of anxiety. Shirai had spent considerable time living abroad in the US and Europe, and his true worth was his will and the assertiveness with which he made that will known.
Such thoughts now flickered in Shiroyama’s mind as his eyes drifted over the cityscape seen from the large windows on either side of his desk. The commanding view from the thirtieth floor undulated outward, as if the random unevenness of the buildings below had been leveled, and for an instant the wriggling cars and people looked like products rolling along an automated factory line. There were times when Shiroyama looked down from the window and wondered if his was the same general perspective as all CEOs, but no doubt in Shirai’s eyes, from this height the scene appeared to him as a line that should function at the highest efficiency in every respect. What stretched out before him was a system—it was neither human nor thing.
On the other hand, Shiroyama moved of his own accord, his body feeling lighter or heavier from day to day, still carrying a sense of having sold goods with his own hands for more than twenty years, and perhaps it was because of this—if he were to let his feelings be known—that his and Shirai’s sensibilities were somewhat incompatible.
Incidentally, there was another EVP at Hinode, Seigo Kurata, who had taken over the beer division after Shiroyama had been promoted. In contrast to Shirai, who continued to push for diversification, Kurata sustained the reality that beer still topped 96 percent of their overall sales. It was clear as day that Shirai was only able to wield his talents because there were men like Kurata who sold beer to the tune of 1.2 trillion, and now that under the current executive structure both Shirai and Kurata had become EVPs, the truth was that the difference in their approaches to corporate strategy divided the board into Shirai and Kurata factions even more than before.
What this difference came down to was whether to focus on a long-range outlook or the concerns of the moment. This disparity was brought to a head two years ago when, confronted by declining sales of their lager, a decision was forced regarding whether or not to proceed with a diversified product strategy. If they were to incite a competition, randomly releasing new products several times a year to counter other brands’ offensives, it would lead to a significant increase in costs to reorder production lines, as well as increased costs for product and sales management, and expanded advertising and promotional fees and so on—all of which would mire them down, essentially putting a noose around their own neck. It was a decision that could weaken the entire beer industry, so Shirai insisted that he could not agree to an excessive diversification of products, but at the core of his logic was an assessment of the managerial efficiency of Hinode’s entire system, which already carried twelve factories.
Meanwhile, on the beer division’s side, Shiroyama and Kurata ensured that if it came to that, Hinode, with its basic and fundamental strength, would be last one standing, an assertion driven by pride in the Hinode brand and the current hard-and-fast numbers. It was a futile clash—each side was correct in their own way but only about their own argument—and ultimately, on the judgment of the current chairman, they agreed to a fair enough compromise—they would issue new products when they needed to, and when they didn’t need to they wouldn’t.
Shortly thereafter, a longer-than-anticipated decline in lager sales precipitated Shiroyama’s promotion from head of the beer division to president, on the consensus of the board who had no choice but to strengthen the beer business, however the fact of the matter was that the need for diversification was more urgent than ever. Shiroyama and Kurata’s beer lines, which had been the backbone of Hinode for so many years, were now the last stand and, more than anyone, Shiroyama was aware of the drastic reform that the division required. He had yet to acknowledge it publicly, though. In these board meetings where various emotionally-charged conflicts, factional manuevering, and backroom deals were the norm, it was important to bide one’s time for the right moment to say anything.
Obviously the real reason Shirai had appeared during the busiest time in Shiroyama’s morning was because he intended to make a deal with him, one that presumably had to do with controlling some kind of move by Kurata. But Shiroyama made a point to devote enough time to ascertain Shirai’s motive for showing up like this, especially since Shiroyama’s sentiments were so clearly aligned with Kurata’s.
The human resources manager Tsukamoto had left after delivering his somewhat absurd story, and now Shirai leaned forward slightly, as if to signal that he was about to begin the real topic of conversation. Here it comes, Shiroyama thought, and glanced at the clock. Eight forty-three.
Shiroyama thought back over Tsukamoto’s explanation, recalling that there were certain problematic details. “I have two questions if you don’t mind,” he said, beating Shirai to it. “First, how did you become involved in a matter that you are not in charge of?”
“Oh, that. Tsukamoto had been looking rather pale in the face these past few days, so I just happened to ask him what was the matter. Not surprisingly he was loath to admit that they’d received an anonymous letter and a tape over trouble with the screening process for new employees,” Shirai responded without any defensiveness. “By the way, Tsukamoto forgot to mention something important. This student, Hatano, he was killed in a car accident on the fifteenth last month. They say he was speeding, but it’s not unthinkable that his father may have lost all sense because of it.”
In the moment Shiroyama took to find the words to respond, Shirai added, “It’s an unfortunate story, sure, but since it was a car accident, I have to say that it’s of no concern to our company.”
“Can I trust nothing took place that would make the other party suspicious of us?”
“I myself was at the second interview, so I can guarantee you that.”
“But I would think rejecting a University of Tokyo student who made it as far as a second interview is out of the ordinary, no matter the reason.”
“You’re absolutely right. Since Hatano left in the middle of his interview on the tenth because he felt sick, the next day the screening committee did in fact get into a minor debate about how to handle his case. Ultimately, we decided that in order to reject a student who came with a recommendation, we would need to meet with him again in person, so on the eleventh I instructed human resources to contact him—”
“And?”
“When I asked Tsukamoto about it earlier, they had contacted neither his home nor his university. He said they only contacted the university on the twelfth to let them know his application had been rejected. When I pressed Tsukamoto about what exactly happened, he said that Kurata had apparently instructed human resources not to bother any more with this student. Then I asked Kurata about it—” Shirai paused to take a breath. Then he came out with it slowly. “This whole thing traces back to a problem with Sugihara’s daughter.”
“You mean Takeo Sugihara?”
“Yes.”
This past June, in a staff reshuffling, Takeo Sughihara had been appointed deputy general manager of the beer division and a board member. Twenty-five years ago, Sugihara had married Shiroyama’s younger sister, so their daughter was his niece. Naturally, Sugihara fell into line with Shiroyama and Kurata.
Unable to immediately grasp the situation, it took a moment for Shiroyama’s shock to form. Shirai continued in a clerical tone, ignoring Shiroyama’s confusion. Shirai was like a blowfish, Shiroyama had often thought. Shirai the blowfish never suffered from autotoxemia, always saying the reasonable thing in a coherent manner, but now and then the people around him would fall victim to his poison.
“Shiroyama-san. I will only speak of the facts here. Your niece had been dating Hatano at University of Tokyo, and apparently she told her father that she wanted to marry him after graduation. When a parent hears such a thing from his daughter, well, he’s going to look into the young man’s background, isn’t he? The result was, there was an issue with the father’s family register, so Sugihara told his daughter he wouldn’t allow it—this is the story that Kurata forced out of Sugihara the other day.”
Hearing this much, Shiroyama finally felt his heart quickening, but the reality of the situation still had not hit home. During the past thirty-one years, his work or the mention of it had never carried over into his personal life—not even once—and his mind now experienced a dull confusion for the first time.
He had seen his younger sister over the summer during the Obon holiday, the festival of the dead, but the last time he saw his niece’s face had probably been at New Year’s. His niece had worn a kimono, which had been made specially for her coming-of-age ceremony, and his sense of admiration that she had grown into quite a young lady quickly dissipated when she put out her hands and, with an obsequious bow of her head, asked, “Uncle, my New Year’s money?” It did not matter that she was a University of Tokyo student—in Shiroyama’s eyes, she was still just a girl. Speaking of which, at the beginning of fall, hadn’t Sugihara himself mentioned that she would either go on to graduate school or study abroad? As he vaguely recalled these things, Shiroyama calmly examined each facet of the story, one by one.
When did Sugihara speak to his daughter about her boyfriend? And at that time, did he say anything to her about Hatano’s buraku connections? Did she then tell this young man—Hatano—about it? And if so, when? Until these things became clear, the cause and effect of Hatano’s leaving during the second interview on October tenth remained uncertain.
Shirai continued, ignoring Shiroyama’s prolonged silence. “Shiroyama-san. Whatever the reason Hatano decided to leave before the completion of his second interview, I think it’s best for Hinode not to get involved. There was no blunder on the company’s part, at least not in terms of the screening process, so there is no need to say more about it.”
“I’d like to know—was Sugihara at the second interview or not?”
“He was not. If Sugihara and the student in question had come face to face at the interview, it would have complicated matters, but since they did not—no matter what transpired personally—we should deem this occurrence as unrelated to the company.”
“Then why did Kurata go to the trouble of instructing human resources to quash things?”
“That has to do with an extortionist,” Shirai answered simply.
This cleared away one of Shiroyama’s suspicions, and the pieces fell into place.
“You mean the story was leaked . . .”
“It seems that way. Since Hatano disappeared from the site of the interview, human resources had a lot to handle that day and was distracted.”
“What have been the extortionist’s exact moves?”
“On the night of the second interview, Kurata received a strange call at home from someone who wouldn’t give his name. The caller mentioned the name of a certain individual, and that this person has a connection with Seiji Okamura, who is a distant relative of Hatano.”
Shiroyama looked down at the name “Seiji Okamura” on the first page of the transcript of the anonymous tape.
“And who is this individual?”
“Yoshinori Toda. The tape does not mention him by name, but it refers to him. He’s the man who was fired from our Kyoto factory in 1946 for inciting a dispute. I’ve looked him up—he now works as a freelance writer, and he’s been digging around about Chunichi Mutual Savings Bank.”
In his mind, Shiroyama was able to make some sense of the story. Someone who had heard about Hatano’s second interview deduced that the incident was relatively unusual, quickly fished around the student’s family history, somehow found the name Seiji Okamura among his relatives and, while he was at it, uncovered Okamura’s erstwhile connection to this writer Toda, which he determined could be of use.
“In any case, I assume Kurata warned human resources against saying anything sheerly to avoid trouble, but in the interest of maintaining consistency, what he did was not very good,” said Shirai, arriving at his first conclusion. Shirai’s method was to stick pins, one by one, into those surrounding him, as a means of securing his own logically coherent path. Just now, he had stabbed a pin into Kurata’s wings over his handling of the matter within human resources, and Shiroyama wondered if by bringing up the story of Sugihara and his daughter, who were his relations, Shirai had meant to pin his own wings as well.
The blowfish himself might have had no such intention, and now he lightly scratched his head of abundant gray hair, then with the same hand tapped Shiroyama’s desk as he sat upright in his chair. There were many employees who, whenever Shirai adjusted his position like this, felt compelled to straighten their own posture.
“You know, Shiroyama-san, even supposing this tape was just a prank, if someone is pulling the strings behind the scenes, I feel this problem needs a bit of attention.”
What Shirai was trying to say now was probably similar to what Shiroyama had been thinking as he listened to Tsukamoto’s version of the story. Shiroyama sensed this was not a conversation he should ignore, so he prudently kept his personal feelings to himself for the time being.
He looked at the clock. Eight-fifty.
“Please go on,” Shiroyama succinctly encouraged him.
“The Okada Association is behind this,” Shirai said. Just as Shiroyama had expected.
Known as an enterprise composed of corporate extortionists, corporate raiders, loan sharks, and financial brokers, among others, the entity known as the Okada Association was in fact the corporate underling of a large crime syndicate known as the Seiwakai, or so Shiroyama had heard from top officials at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. Ultranationalist bigwigs guarded access to Seiwakai, granting entrée to various politicians, followed by a trail of government agencies and financial capital from commercial banks and securities. Among Hinode’s board members and the representative from general affairs whose job it was to deal with such corporate extortionists, they were referred to simply as “Okada.”
Confidentially Shiroyama had been informed that both Ogura Transport, a company affiliated with Hinode, and Chunichi Mutual Savings, its main creditor, were currently facing loan problems, and that Okada was secretly and intricately entangled in the situation. He immediately understood that this situation must be connected to that one.
Hinode was not directly involved in the matter with Ogura and Chunichi, but as long as Okada was involved, it was hard to deny an indirect connection. Moreover, since this was by nature a world in which people got away with offering their right hand to shake while making threats with their left, it wouldn’t be out of the question for Okada to use Hinode’s years of loyalty against them and launch a new attack. Shirai’s remark—The Okada Association is behind this—implied all of these circumstances. Nevertheless, Kurata was the one who had managed the company’s relationship with Okada for years, and Shirai still had no business offering his opinion on the situation.
“So, what kind of moves have they made?”
“Neither Chunichi nor Ogura will be able to avoid an investigation at some point. Having anticipated this, Okada has probably started taking precautions.”
Sure, but just how accurate is this story? Shiroyama wondered as he nodded cautiously.
“It means Okada is also getting nervous. It’s a good time to strike,” Shirai pressed on, his speech now progressing to the pet theory he had been hinting at for quite some time. “I’ve made the same suggestion to Chairman Suzuki, but we should wait and see how the situation may change before intervening in the management of Ogura Transport. If we were to pursue things now, the public would say Hinode has bought up stolen goods. That would give Okada even more leverage against us.”
“Yes.”
“Our main issue is Limelight. As the executive in charge, I’m most fearful of the JFTC exploiting our weakness. They might leak the story of our joint venture with Limelight to put pressure on us. Then again, Okada might also leak it. You can’t deny that we are walking through a minefield right now.”
“Right.”
“And I know you have no objection to the assessment that Okada is a malignant tumor for Hinode. There is a right time for settling accounts. Luckily for us, this time Okada has exposed its tail in a completely unrelated matter. Now, about this tape with the reading out of Okamura’s letter—wouldn’t it be fine to notify the police about how the tape was sent to us by the student’s father, at least?”
“What?”
“I’d like to figure out a way to file a claim with the police, without naming that dentist Hiroyuki Hatano as the sender of the tape. I also want to include the second letter where he assumed the BLL’s name.”
“—Perhaps you’re right.”
Shiroyama looked at the clock. The minute hand read five to nine. Time was up.
“I understand what you’re saying. I’ll talk it over with Kurata.”
“Please let me know your decision as soon as possible. It’s already been five days since we received the tape.”
“Indeed. Personally, I can’t help but feel we did wrong by that student Hatano, so I’m reluctant to involve a grieving father in a police matter in addition to all that’s happened. At this point, it’s not as if we’ve suffered any actual damage.”
“Once we do suffer damage, it’ll be too late. To be honest, I have a bad feeling about this,” Shirai said as he stood up.
“What do you mean?”
“There is no such thing as a premonition without a cause. Just like there can be no revelation for those of us who don’t pray.”
Every so often, Shirai made reference to the fact that Shiroyama was a Christian and he himself non-religious, but each time he did so he looked like a young man weary of debating conceptual matters. There was no time, however, to respond to his remark. Shiroyama also rose from his seat. Outside the thirtieth-floor window, the morning cityscape emanated a faint glow as it basked in the thin sunlight of late autumn.
“By the way, which board members know about the tape?”
“You, me, and Kurata,” Shirai replied. The executives in charge of general affairs and human resources, who ought to have been informed in cases like this, were kept out of the loop. Well, well, Shiroyama thought. Shirai had also stabbed a pin through Tsukamoto from human resources.
As a sales machine, Shiroyama’s sole mission had been to sell as many cases of product as possible, and throughout those years of experience he himself had witnessed his fair share of the ins and outs of corporate activities, but it wasn’t until he was promoted that he became acutely aware of the tumor that was stealthily attached to such ordinary occurrences. A beer company couldn’t get by just making and selling beer. Not that Hinode was special—it was the same with any other corporation.
After revisions to the Commercial Code in 1982, there were generally two roads that corporations could take. One way was to sever all ties to corporate extortionists; the other was to maintain a relationship by subtly changing its form, and like so many other corporations, Hinode opted for the latter. The reason went far beyond the simple need to avoid trouble; the choice was made in the face of a reality that, even before the Commercial Code, corporations alone could not change the systematic customs of this country.
In Hinode’s case, however, the various expenditures to the Okada Association far exceeded an amount that could be approved by the manager of general affairs, and it was a dubious honor that the responsibility of dealing with Okada had been tacitly entrusted to Kurata. The fact was that, after all these years, nobody on the board could determine the limits of reasonable conduct—or just what that meant, anyway. Under such circumstances, when Shirai took his position as a board member six years ago, he asserted the need to settle their accounts as soon as possible, a hair-raising prospect for all the other members. At the time, Kurata had scoffed at the notion, indignation draining the color from his face. “I’d appreciate if you wouldn’t so easily insinuate yourself into a matter I’ve been taking responsibility for,” he had retorted.
The context for the argument’s turning so emotional was the corporate culture that supported such deep personal connections to political and business circles and ultranationalist groups, connections that had carried over from the zaibatsu era. Since a beer business couldn’t exist without distribution, in addition to its network of ten affiliated land transportation companies, Hinode controlled extensive real estate throughout the country. One might say that here was where the problem stemmed from, but every root was entwined with all of Japan’s economic activities and financial capital. Kurata could not be faulted for recognizing that it was not so simple as one corporation upholding a naïve sense of social justice on its own. Justice for a corporation was its ability to reap a profit.
And yet, Shirai was also correct that there was no long-term gain in Hinode’s continued entanglements with these subterranean roots. Shirai was not simply urging them to settle accounts. His argument was that they needed to make careful preparations and the necessary calculations in order to sever all ties. Shiroyama was well aware that over the last six years Shirai had been looking for an opportunity at every turn to lay the groundwork at board meetings to build consensus for his strategy.
Shiroyama also knew that the tide was about to turn. The economic boom would eventually end. Real estate and stock prices would readjust accordingly. If he were to predict what would succeed this gilded era of mass consumption, it would be, in a nutshell, “petit-bourgeois fastidiousness.” The mentality of citizens that could be summed up in such key words as thriftiness, downsizing, simplicity, and individualism would drive them to abandon material wealth in favor of emotional fulfillment, and to insist upon “fastidiousness” in society. In such a demanding era, the character of the political world, not just banks and corporations, would be challenged to follow suit. The age in which corporations would be scrutinized about their social responsibility and morals before their pursuit of profit was just around the corner.
If he were to examine his own company this way, Hinode’s management practices, which boasted an equity ratio of 47 percent, were clearly sound, but the reality was that Hinode’s overwhelming superiority did not align with an image of “fastidiousness.” From their ties to the National Tax Agency on down through various regulatory agencies, to their corporate keiretsu alliances throughout sales and distribution, and their designated shareholders comprised of major banks and insurance companies—every one of these factors would be considered out of step with everyday people’s lifestyle. And if their connection to a shadowy realm such as Okada became public, Hinode’s hundred-year-old brand image would collapse.
It was true that something had to be done about Okada. And just like that, Shiroyama had added another item of concern to his list—and it was still so early. But by the time he entered one of the executive conference rooms with Shirai, he wore an expression appropriate for the start of the day, presenting himself to the staff assembled there and repeating more morning greetings.
The executive breakfast meeting that took place the second Monday of every month had been a tradition at Hinode for more than twenty years. Those invited included the twenty executives at the main office as well as the presidents and vice presidents of each subsidiary company, but since they each had their own various affairs to tend to, attendance generally amounted to around twenty people. Since everyone sat down in the order they arrived, seatmates changed every time, so that they spoke with different people about different topics. Thus, while they ate their three-thousand-yen bento boxes delivered from Matsukado, they exchanged only generic news and information; there was a tacit agreement that serious subjects would not be discussed.
When Shiroyama took a seat, he found himself for the first time in quite a while next to the president of Hinode Beverage, who had already dangled the new health drink commercial that had gone on air last week as a conversation starter. “That monster that goes dancing by, it’s pretty weird, no?” “The monster’s supposed to be from Saturn.” “Oh, really?” “Now I get it, that’s why it’s wearing a skirt.” “Oh, that’s a skirt?” And so the mindless chatter around him continued.
“Say, Shiroyama-san. That commercial for Lemon Sour, it’s weird, right?” President Ishizuka of Hinode Beverage suddenly addressed him, to which Shiroyama replied vaguely, “Oh, sure.” Meanwhile, a scan of the room confirmed that Takeo Sugihara was not present. Since Sugihara regularly attended this meeting, Shiroyama wondered if his absence today might mean that Kurata, his superior, had spoken to him about the issue with his daughter.
“Well, that ad is now a hit. It seems that young people today appreciate a fresh kind of ‘weirdness.’ That’s what the guys from Mainichi Advertising tell me,” President Ishizuka continued.
It was Seigo Kurata who responded, “If that’s the case, our ‘100 Years in the Making’ spot with its gold letters and Viennese waltz might be too orthodox. And that one’s also by Mainichi Advertising.”
Kurata was a big man—the exact opposite of Shiroyama and Shirai—and his taciturnity, in inverse proportion to his physicality, also made him stand out among the board members. His face was even less remarkable than Shiroyama’s and Shirai’s, yet he gave the impression that only actual results mattered, which had earned him the nickname “the whiz” within the corporate world, and no one would deny that his savvy was the backbone of the beer division. To wit, in the caricatures that appeared in last month’s in-house newsletter, this silent torpedo of a man was rendered as an ox with a nondescript face, while Shiroyama was depicted as a penguin and Shirai as a woodpecker.
Even now, after taking the position of vice president, Kurata never took his eyes off the various numbers coming in from their branch offices and stores and, with every inch of the company’s sales network in mind, he read the weekly stats and compared these figures with the marketing analysis reports. He would observe any variations silently for the first month, and if they continued for a second month then he would call the branch office or stores directly himself; in the mornings Kurata’s phone line was generally busy. He was never in the office in the afternoons—almost every day of the week he was off visiting a branch company or a factory or a distributor. Back when he was still deputy sales manager, one of the executives had remarked, “Kurata is a torpedo.” What he had meant was that one could not see Kurata’s face because it was always submerged beneath the numbers.
And for the past ten years, Kurata had neatly tucked away his relationship with the likes of the Okada Association somewhere within his businesslike persona. Owing to the incompetence of the director of general affairs and the executive in charge at the time—who knows what the actual details were—apparently one of the EVPs had simply asked Kurata to take care of the problem. It was a while before Shiroyama, his superior, even learned that Kurata was handling it, and when he asked him about it, Kurata maintained his tight-lipped nature. Before Shirai started poking around about it six years ago, it was considered taboo to mention Okada at board meetings, and whatever weariness or frustration Kurata may have felt in shouldering such a taboo on his own could only be glimpsed in his slight stoop.
The conversation around the table had not let up, and with Kurata’s comments added to the mix, Hinode Lager’s 100 Years in the Making commercial became fodder for all. “It’s true that Hinode Lager can come off as orthodox, but that Viennese waltz spot actually flips our brand image on its head and pushes it to the edge. Does everybody see that?” asked an executive in charge of advertising. Someone then replied, “You’re right. That commercial is an elegant spoof,” while another added, “We ought to try selling beer by embracing the weird,” which was followed by laughter.
Ishizuka continued, “I met with the managing director of Dentsu the other day. He heartily endorsed the new commercial. He said Hinode’s sense for advertising is really cutting edge.” Shiroyama agreed with this. Once Hinode stopped depending on the overwhelming dominance of the lager—and in order to strip away their imposing and traditional image in accordance with their diversification policy—their entire advertising strategy had been entrusted to their young employees. This was already starting to show results. After all, they were the ones who had turned Shiroyama into a penguin and Shirai into a woodpecker.
“That’s great to hear,” Shiroyama said, and a chorus of agreement and series of nods followed. Then someone else offered, “I hear the cultural awards this year were a great success,” and the conversation flowed into another direction.
“Where’s Sugihara?” Shiroyama asked Kurata, trying to be nonchalant.
“A business trip to the Osaka branch,” Kurata responded tersely, leaving it at that for the time being. Just then another executive quipped, “Speaking of which, I hear the Supreme is doing well in Osaka,” which was followed by “Not surprisingly, in the Kansai region they seem to prefer a higher alcohol content,” and then, “Even if we reduced the alcohol content for the Tokyo market, I think it would take a few years for the Kansai region to follow suit.” Finally, it was Kurata who said, “We need to start thinking about region-specific products.”
“By the way, Shiroyama-san. I hear there’ll be a CIA spy at today’s Japan-US Businessmen’s Conference,” another executive piped up.
“Surely they’re not getting money from some corporation,” Shiroyama shrugged it off with a bitter smile.
Shirai interjected, “We’ll just have to let the auto industry be their target for a while.” However, everyone was aware that the delicate, behind-the-scenes negotiations with Limelight were about to begin, and so the topic was swiftly dropped.
Just like that, his first-item-of-the-day breakfast meeting was finished in a quick half hour, and Shiroyama got up from his seat, leaving half of the Matsukado bento box that he usually polished off. Reminding himself that Ms. Nozaki would be waiting for him with his briefcase at the front entrance at nine-forty, he hesitated a moment as he left the conference room, overcome with unease that he had forgotten to do something.
Then, perhaps waiting for just such an opportunity, Seigo Kurata began casually walking alongside him. “The matter with the student Hatano and his father,” he said. “Did Shirai tell you about it?”
Shiroyama nodded.
Since he and Kurata had worked in the beer division together for a quarter of a century, selling beer side by side, they were in lockstep with each other, both literally and figuratively. Kurata may have been known as a torpedo, but there was great range to his quiet breathing, and he often silenced himself to contain his rising emotions—all this Shiroyama felt he understood. After they both became executives, they had consciously started to distance themselves from each other, but in the time it took to cover the dozen steps to the elevator hall, they managed a brief exchange.
“There’s no need to be concerned about the issue with Sugihara and your niece. Sugihara’s investigation into Hatano’s background had nothing to do with the company.”
Kurata’s voice was low and people thought of him as deadpan, but Shiroyama’s ears picked up each and every emotion lurking beneath the surface as clear as a bell. He was conscious that Kurata was extremely irritated, though at what his irritation was directed he would never know.
“And besides, Okada hasn’t fully grasped the story either. Besides sniffing out the trouble with the second interview, all they’ve managed to do is look up Hatano’s family and dig up material they can use from that letter sent by a distant relation they somehow happened to get their hands on.”
“Was it that journalist?”
“Yes. And by the way, I’ll make sure Okada’s exposed tail gets a little thrashing this time.”
For an instant, Shiroyama thought he had misheard him. It wasn’t that Kurata had said the same thing as Shirai. Using his own methods, Kurata was making every effort to contact Okada, find out whatever information Okada had on hand and, once he had determined their motive, he intended to launch an attack. Even in a world where shaking hands with the right hand while doing battle with the left was common, for Kurata—who had dedicated himself to maintaining their relationship with Okada—to say such a thing had serious implications, which went beyond Shirai’s argument.
“Is the situation with Ogura and Chunichi that serious?”
“There’s word going around that S. might get caught up in the mix.”
S.—suddenly Shiroyama pictured the face of Sakata, the representative who was scheduled to give him a thank-you call that afternoon about the fundraising ticket, but he could not imagine the circumstances in which the most influential figure in the ruling party would be swept up in an investigation. Yes, Shiroyama dimly recalled having been warned that attention must be paid to the flow of money related to the land purchased by Ogura Development, Ogura’s affiliated company, as it could lead to a bribery scandal, but it was difficult for a corporate man like himself to grasp all this. If such a possibility really did exist, then it was all the more urgent that they settle accounts with Okada, lest it land Hinode in real trouble. Though it rattled him a little, his annoyance about this and the necessary steps against Okada were still both so vague in his mind that they didn’t seem relevant to today or even tomorrow.
“It means we’ve arrived at the moment when Shirai’s arguments make sense,” Kurata murmured softly, his words cast down at his own feet. Shiroyama could not make out the tone of his voice as it reached his ears. Kurata continued, touching upon the specific measures he would take. “I’ll have general affairs file an official claim with the police. And I’ll make sure that we don’t refer to either Okada or the dentist.”
Kurata was saying the same thing as Shirai, but without elaborating on how he had reached such a conclusion, which, at this late stage, irritated Shiroyama. “Kurata-san. This issue must eventually be brought before the entire board. When you feel it’s necessary for everyone to be made aware of what has happened, I urge you to report it immediately.”
“When the time is right, I will. For now, we need to take care of accounting.” Kurata finally looked up as he said this. The sunlight streaming through the windows of the elevator hall shone on his face. Shiroyama considered that the same view from the thirtieth floor must appear differently to Kurata than it did to him and to Shirai.
“Make sure we at least clear last year’s figures,” Shiroyama said.
Kurata immediately responded, “Just point one percent more. That’s two hundred seventy thousand cases.”
“If only the lager’s numbers would rise.”
“I’m also dissatisfied with the numbers from the past two weeks. I’ll have all the branches reset their target numbers for next month, and I’ll drive them to hit two hundred seventy thousand cases no matter what. You’ll see.”
As he said this, Kurata’s face gleamed with a vexing confidence.
Shiroyama’s day was not particularly busy. By the time he returned to the office after the Hinode Cultural Awards at the Hotel Okura—having put in a brief appearance at the reception—it was just after seven-thirty. He sent Ms. Nozaki home, thanking her for her efforts, and once he was alone, he sorted through the telephone messages and memos that were arranged on his desk along with his mail, and then spread out the business reports and interim financial statements that he had not gone over that morning.
By the time he started writing in the daily log that he kept, it was eight-thirty.
8:35 a.m.: Visit from Shirai and Tsukamoto. Confirm any issues with chain of communication within human resources. Shiroyama’s hand halted after he had written these words on the first line. It was the end of the day, so he allowed himself to draw out the personal incident that had been bothering him since the morning and think it over, then reached for the phone.
The phone rang four times before he heard a young woman’s voice say, “Sugihara residence.”
“Yoshiko?”
“Oh, Uncle. Are you still at work?”
“Yes. It’s been a while. How are you doing?”
“My thesis isn’t coming along very well,” she replied. Usually his niece was much more effusive: I’m great! When are you taking me out to eat, Uncle?
“Is your father home?”
“Yes. I’ll go get him.”
“Before you do, I’d like to ask you about Takayuki Hatano. I’m sorry to hear that he died in a car accident. Did you know he had applied for a job here?”
“No.” The girl replied after a brief pause, and her voice shook with genuine distress.
“Hatano had his second interview with the company on the tenth of last month. When was the last time you saw him?”
Now she waited for an extra moment before responding, “October ninth.”
“I’m sorry to be so intrusive, but where did you see him?”
“At the university.” His niece’s voice had sunk lower and, on the verge of tears, she said, “I’m going to switch to the phone in my room, could you hang on?” She put the phone on hold, and as Shiroyama waited, part of him began to regret making the call.
He heard his niece’s voice return. “Did I cause some kind of trouble for the company?”
“No, this isn’t about that. So on the ninth, what did you and Hatano talk about?”
“I told him I’m leaving home and I wanted him to come live with me—”
“And why would you do such a thing?”
“Because Mother and Father are stupid.”
“You have to be more clear. Explain it to me.”
“I had kept our relationship a secret, and when I finally told my parents over summer break, Father hired a detective agency to investigate Hatano’s family, and he told me to forget about marrying him because his father was from a segregated buraku community. And I figured I don’t need parents who would say such stupid things in this day and age. So I took my savings and looked for an apartment. When I saw him on the ninth . . . I had no idea he was applying for a job at Hinode. He told me he was going to graduate school—”
“When you saw him on the ninth, what did you two talk about?”
“He was shocked when I told him I was leaving home . . . He asked me why things had come to this so suddenly, and I had no idea how to explain it to him and—”
According to his niece, on October ninth, in the course of describing to Hatano the details about what had happened, she ultimately brought up the issue with the segregated community. Shiroyama had to stop himself from shouting at her—he was at a loss for words. His niece had meant no harm, but she had been quite thoughtless. He wondered how his sister and Sugihara could possibly have raised their daughter to be this way.
Since Shiroyama remained silent, his niece asked again in a tearful voice, “Did I cause problems for the company?”
“This isn’t about the company. It’s about you and Hatano. You should have thought a bit more about his feelings. Do you understand? Your parents may be stupid, but you behaved inconsiderately yourself.”
As he listened to his niece’s weeping over the phone, he kept asking himself, What is the point of saying all these things now? What good does it do to act rationally now? How am I going to deal with this situation? These questions shook him to his core.
“And did you attend Hatano’s funeral?”
“How could I? His parents have no idea who I am. There’s no way for me to apologize!”
“Yoshiko. Listen to me. Hatano’s car accident is not your fault. You didn’t kill him. Do you understand? With that said, you must now think about his grieving parents first, and there’s something you must do. So must your parents. This is not a problem that you can figure out and resolve on your own. I will talk to your father for you, so please put him on.”
While he waited on hold again, he pondered what his niece, Sugihara, and his sister could have possibly been thinking over the past month. Shiroyama thought about how for quite some time he and his wife had been living a monotonous and peaceful life after sending a boy and a girl of their own into the world without much trouble—no, actually what he felt now was displeasure toward his relatives coupled with anger about the dishonor that would reflect back on him. This fact itself was already the source of an uneasiness he had never grappled with before. In particular, he was nothing if not livid when he thought about Takeo Sugihara’s absence at this morning’s breakfast meeting and his almost certain lack of focus on his work; and as a fellow salaryman who knew there had to be a better way to have handled things, his fury only mounted when he considered such incredibly careless behavior from Sugihara, a man who had followed a steady and sure career track.
A despondent voice came on the line. “Yes. Sugihara speaking.”
“I heard all the details from Yoshiko regarding this student Hatano. Make some time tomorrow and go with her to pay your respects to the deceased.”
“About that, Kurata said—”
“This doesn’t concern the company. It concerns our family. It concerns your own integrity.”
“I wanted to go see them. But Kurata must have his own reasons too! He told me to pretend I had nothing to do with it—what was I supposed to do?”
“I don’t care about the company. This is a family problem. I’ll take responsibility for the company—I’m well aware of Kurata’s thought process. I will speak to him myself, and you do what you must do as head of the family. Hatano’s father is a dentist, so best to visit him during his midday break, or after he’s finished seeing patients. Understood?”
Sugihara hesitated briefly before he asked, “Is this about the Okada Association?”
Shiroyama was forced to reiterate, “That has nothing to do with your family’s problem.” Though as he spoke these words, he felt disgusted with himself and wondered what right he had to stick his nose in someone else’s family business. This was not Sugihara’s family problem at all—it was indeed the company’s problem. Sugihara, bemoaning what he could have possibly done differently, felt real anguish, yet the words out of Shiroyama’s mouth were so haughty and stereotypical that he himself shuddered.
“You are a father before you are a company man! No need to mention how you investigated his background—it could lead to more misunderstanding—but I’d like you to consider the feelings of these grieving parents, and to treat them with as much respect and courtesy as possible. I ask you as your brother-in-law.”
Shiroyama recoiled from his own mean logic, but a part of him coolly observed such reasoning and assessed, So this is the kind of man I am. He had advised against mentioning the segregated community because that’s what he would have done himself, but this calculation was based upon the company’s need to avoid falling victim to Okada’s dirty tricks and people’s suspicions. No doubt Sugihara saw through these contradictory arguments.
“I’ll go see the boy’s parents tomorrow. I’m sure it will help to alleviate my own distress, and that of my daughter and wife too,” Sugihara said with all the sarcasm he could muster, and hung up the phone.
As Shiroyama replaced the receiver, he gazed at the night view that stretched out beyond his desk. The cityscape that this morning had resembled an orderly factory line was now a vast sea of lights.
In a momentary daze, Shiroyama had the sense that he now faced an unexpected uncertainty. What plagued him was an inchoate anxiety—an instinct to avoid the fact that his own relative’s brief and careless remark had, however indirectly, precipitated the death of a student and shaken, if only slightly, the state of a corporation. When he found out what his niece had said to Hatano, in that instant Shiroyama’s mind had intrinsically rejected that reality. And even had it not, he would still have avoided working out the exact thoughts that were running through his head now. What he ended up with was the singular, indeterminate emotion that was the uncertainty of life itself.
On the other hand, Shiroyama wondered if there was an appropriate end to this complex situation that his niece’s single remark had triggered. Would time sort everything out? Would it eventually be lost amid life’s miscellaneous affairs? Would the feelings of the parents who had lost their only son—and those of Sugihara, his wife, and his daughter—be allayed so easily? And so on, he reflected. However, it did not take long for him to realize that such contemplation was an act without an end.
His thoughts having returned to the uncertainty of life, Shiroyama put away these emotions for the time being. He then picked up the phone again and dialed the office of the general manager of the beer division.
“This is Shiroyama. Could you give me three minutes? I’ll head over right now.”
“I can come to you,” Kurata said.
“No. I’m on my way.”
Shiroyama fixed the necktie that he had loosened, and left his office. He took the elevator one flight down to the twenty-ninth floor to find Kurata standing in the elevator hall. Shiroyama appreciated that he had hurried to meet him, but Kurata’s appearance—his necktie loose, complexion pallid, and his shirt sleeves rolled up—made for a dreadful sight, obviously indicating that until this moment he had been buried in reports at his desk. Unbeknownst to most employees, though, this was Kurata’s default nighttime look.
As usual, Kurata immediately took in Shiroyama’s expression and asked, “Should we go to my office? I’ve got our competitor’s newest product perfectly chilled.” He kept his own mien scrupulously calm.
“No, no. This is no time to be drinking,” Shiroyama responded absently, feeling obsequious as he became aware, after all this time, of his obligation to his employees—Kurata included—and the company. “Kurata-san. Given the situation, I must tell you this. In regard to that student Hatano, I’ve just questioned my niece about him and she told me that on the day before the interview, she told him about the issue with his father’s birthplace. I don’t even know how to apologize—”
“No. As it stands, this has nothing to do with your niece. It’s my fault for giving Okada an opportunity to take advantage.”
“No. This is also a problem for Sugihara’s family, so I’ve asked him to pay his respects—as a father—to the boy’s parents. I ask for your understanding about this. Please.” Shiroyama bowed, and Kurata waved off this gesture with his hand.
“I understand. But please allow me to handle the matters of the letter under a false name and the tape. I’d like to be able to prove at least one incidence of Okada’s involvement. Once the police have identified the suspect and how they acquired Okamura’s letter, we’ll withdraw our claim.”
“I understand. That’s all I wanted to say. I’m sorry to bother you so late.”
“It’s no problem. Thank you for coming down here.”
It happened just then, as Kurata reached over and pushed the elevator call button for Shiroyama. In the brief moment when Kurata extended his arm, a pungent smell wafted from his body. Shiroyama’s nose wriggled unconsciously, but by the time he had realized it was the smell of whisky, the elevator doors had already opened.
Shiroyama stepped into the elevator and stared back at Kurata, who stood outside the door and bowed once. He searched for the right words, but the door proceeded to close, and Kurata disappeared from sight.