Bonsai on the Ledge, 2

Kid in the Rocket Section

Welcome back to “Bonsai on the Ledge,” a story of espionage and deceit. Kyle Wright, a young American, is finding his feet in 1990s Tokyo. You can find a full list of episodes here.

Photo: Romain Guy

Though it had begun inauspiciously, Tokyo life took a positive turn for Kyle Wright in the spring of 1992.

He answered a jobs ad in the Japan Times looking for a young foreigner who could help with the English-language writing needs of a major Japanese trading company. The work paid nothing special—salaries and bonuses in the country were based on age alone, rather than on results. While Kyle knew he would have to continue living within the strict 10,000 yen a week spending budget he had years ago set for himself, this new firm would at least be a prestigious step up.

Kyle had seen in status-focused Japan that doors open for people associated with blue-chip names. The right company business card could lead to social opportunities, professional challenge, and financial breaks down the road. He accepted the new job.

The company was M. Mochizuki & Co., Japan’s fourth largest sogo shosha trading house. Mochizuki proudly traced its roots back to 1911. It was a core member of the Yasuda zaibatsu industrial conglomerate--the same vertical family of firms that housed Yasuda Mutual Life and later on Fuji Bank and Hitachi.

The department that hired Kyle specialized in the import and export of civil and military aircraft parts as well as ballistic systems. It was a highly sensitive business, and Mochizuki teammates were regularly reminded that their work was regulated by not only the Japanese government but also scrutinized by a web of global proliferation authorities.

Kyle’s skills and personality fit in immediately with his eight-member team. He was asked to check and often rewrite sales brochures, media releases, sales kit materials, presentations…literally any document that might cross his department’s door that would require an English-language version. The duties never slowed.

“Kyle-kun, read these through and look for mistakes,” a boss would bark as he tossed the American a stack of draft promo pamphlets. Soon the group was depending on him to rewrite manuals, comb through sales brochures for new suggestions, and supervise in-studio productions of videos and commercials. Kyle particularly enjoyed helping the president of Mochizuki. Tamura shacho had heard about the “new Californian kid in the rocket section” and started personally coming to Kyle’s desk with draft speeches, personal thank-you letters, and even confidential orders for reviews.

Kyle’s colleagues took note that he was building trust rapidly. In a small but noticeable way he was also raising the small team’s reputation.

While Mochizuki paid little, the time spent within its walls left Kyle something infinitely more valuable long term: a rigid understanding of Japanese business manners and comportment. M. Mochizuki insisted on perfection from anyone associated with the firm name. It was an invaluable boot camp course in conducting yourself properly in front of colleagues, clients, the public…really anyone, friendly or not, who could one day become aware of the firm name on your business card.

Every fresh Japanese recruit was put through the training, and Kyle was treated no differently. He was expected to emerge with skills and sensibility equal to his colleagues.

He was corrected in his bowing, his facial expressions (none is best), his listening, how exactly to address others, the way he accepted and then handled business cards, and his ability to repeat back precisely every point a client had just made at a meeting. He was taught to discreetly discover clients’ hobbies, obsessions, perversions, golf handicaps, favorite sports teams, pets’ names, and how many daughters or sons each had and in what grade of school.

Kyle’s bosses at Mochizuki knew that Americans came to Japan with none of these skills. But they believed that with patience and persistence—and the understanding that no one takes on a new set of behaviors within months or even years—proper Japanese behaviors could be taught.

After one meeting with a prospective client at which Kyle crossed his legs in a relaxed, Californian manner, his section boss, Mitsuhashi, took him aside. He spoke nicely. “When in a meeting, with anyone,” he said, “you sit upright and on the front edge of the chair…never fully in it. Lean slightly forward, legs together, hands on knees. This shows you’re listening and are interested.” He added, “Never slump, never cross or bounce legs, and absolutely do not look out the window at the nice day outside.”

Mitsuhashi smiled broadly and patted Kyle’s shoulder reassuringly. “You can do it. I know. You graduated from a very good school.”

Each morning the first three people to arrive at Kyle’s section at M. Mochizuki were expected to collect and distribute paper messages that had arrived from the world overnight. Faxes were so numerous they would be spilled out onto the floor around the five fax machines. Telex messages meanwhile printed onto a single two-foot diameter paper roll that over the course of the night spilled out into the room in an A4-wide strip that was 50 yards long by the morning.

Faxes were quickly passed out to recipients’ desks. Staff would then read the huge Telex strip from the top to determine where one message ended and where a new one began. Using a plastic ruler to keep a straight line, they tore across the bottom of individual messages, adding each to the Telex distribution pile. All told across its 40 departments, M. Mochizuki was receiving thousands of messages—orders, instructions, complaints, adjustments, confidential requests—each day from most every country in the world.

Most exhilarating for Kyle, though, was the unmistakable international and cerebral atmosphere at M. Mochizuki & Co. His colleagues were all well-traveled, and each had been recruited for academic achievement in their school years.

Kyle was told that Mochizuki prided itself on largely targeting new graduate intake each year from Kyoto University, Tokyo University, and Hitotsubashi. “Never from Waseda, Meiji, or by god Sophia,” one executive told Kyle…as if an American would immediately grasp those schools’ deficiencies. The exec crinkled his nose as if he had just smelled milk gone bad.

Kyle was skeptical of the diploma shopping. He had already seen that a brand name university in Japan never guaranteed creative or quick-witted graduates—in fact, bookishness or performance-dulling conformity are also real risks from top schools. Yet M. Mochizuki’s results seemed to speak for themselves. Maybe the firm had developed ways to screen against those common weaknesses, he thought.

Indeed Kyle was surrounded by sharp, at times acerbic, Japanese who were hyper aware of the world around them. Nobody was a fool.

Kanako Nomura was a 26-year-old woman in Kyle’s aeronautic and rocket telemetry section. Everyone was aware that Nomura-san (nobody would dare address her with the more common diminutive Kanako-chan) had graduated second in her Legal class at Hitotsubashi. It was a scorching achievement that no man in the section came close to matching.

While every female in M. Mochizuki was routinely referred to as an Office Lady, or “OL,” Nomura-san rejected the term. She also refused to comply with the office uniform requirements imposed on OLs—a mandated navy blue pleated skirt, brass buttoned vest, and bow tie paired with a sky-blue blouse.

“Talk about bullshit,” she would say for anyone to hear. “I’m not a stamp-licking idiot at the post office.”

Section Head Mitsuhashi knew talent, and he deeply respected what Nomura-san brought. He would get prodded however by higher-ups to “take care of that problem ‘OL’ in your section.” Having no choice, Mitsuhashi every so often made pro forma attempts at suggesting the uniform to Nomura-san. “Look, you’re totally career track and you’re going places here—we all know that. Why not try the uniform though,” he asked. “Gals love them as they save on dry cleaning bills, and you can also have a fresh change to evening clothes when going out after work…”

Smiling thinly, Nomura-san would look Mitsuhashi straight in the eyes as if to say “Hard to believe you’re even trying this,” and then horse laugh in his face.

Kyle looked up to Nomura-san, not simply because she bucked authority. She also showed no shyness toward him like so many other Japanese did. Her brashness and humor reminded Kyle of many female students back in his university in California.

Nomura-san dared to make personal comments and observations too, something few Japanese would do with anyone other than family or the closest of friends.

One night after work she and Kyle had a second round of drinks after other colleagues had already gone home. “Have you ever been attracted to another guy,” she asked out of the blue. Kyle was taken aback but genuinely amused. He blushed. “I don’t know. I’d like to think I would take that sort of thing case by case,” he said, using the English phrase the Japanese use to signal at least an openness to an idea.

“Case by case, okay. For hooking up with a dude! You are such a B,” Nomura-san laughed.

“B? What’s that?”

“Blood type. B’s are super ‘my way,’ all about taking it easy and going with the flow. Let’s just say B’s aren’t interested in what they are supposed to do.”

“I have no idea what my blood type is. In America, we don’t really—”

“Even more of a B! I bet you voted for that Mondale guy.”

Kyle guffawed. It was an oddly flirtatious conversation but at the same time clumsy on both their parts. Kyle had always assumed Nomura-san to be uninterested, sexually or otherwise, in people. In the office, certainly, all she seemed enthused by was work with quantifiable results.

Clearly she also had an eye out, sizing up her colleagues.

Both sat at the counter facing a large mirror that stretched along the bar back. Kyle noticed in the reflection that when she drank, Nomura-san had a habit of toying slightly with her hair. Her index finger curled and twisted little yanks, leaving her hair slightly frazzled as the evening wore on. It was an unconscious action, much like a little girl.

“Let’s make this the final round,” she said. “I have a visit to Toshiba in the morning and then after that NEC together with Oguma-san.” She ordered an Old Fashioned from the bartender, and Kyle got a final Manhattan.

“Oh, can you tell him on ice,” he asked Nomura-san.

“You should learn. It’s simple,” she said. “In Japanese, we also say ‘On the rocks’ like in English. But you just have to mispronounce it like us.”

“On za rokusu,” Kyle said to the bartender.

“Voila! Perfect, Kyle-san!” she giggled.

They finished their drinks and walked together to Yurakucho Station to catch the Keihin Tohoku Line. Nomura-san took the train north, Kyle took it south.

“Night. Thanks for the time,” he said as they parted.

Nomura-san, with her slightly messy hair and a tipsy smile, blew him a friend’s kiss through her train window as the doors closed. She then sat down with her back to Kyle and the platform.

Within a year of joining M. Mochizuki & Co., Kyle began gaining the trust of his colleagues and higher ups in the Tokyo head office. Five years now in the country, his Japanese communication skills were also advancing quickly.

Mochizuki began sending Kyle on independent visits to key client offices around the country. It was a feather in the cap as it internally communicated belief in the kid from California in the rocket section.

Kyle slowly crisscrossed Japan, stopping into clients in Noto, Sendai, Yokohama, and Nagasaki. Of all the new work he was handling, though, he was particularly proud to be entrusted with visits to a Mitsubishi Heavy Industry contingent stationed at Japan’s Space Center complex on the isolated island of Tanegashima.

TO BE CONTINUED