Memories of Japan – Land of the Rising Sun

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Japan was always one of my favourite countries to visit, not only as a major customer of QSL and a great country to tour around on its own merits, but also because it has some important family connections.

Japan is a major raw sugar importer and currently imports just over half its requirements, with the balance supplied by Japanese farmers – about 80% from the sugar beet industry in the cold region of Hokkaido in the north and about 20% from sugarcane in the southern tropical regions of Okinawa and Kagoshima. The sugar refining industry is relatively fragmented with 11 sugar refining factories, of which ownership is complex, with many refineries having multiple shareholders – often the large Japanese Trading Houses. To enhance industry economies of scale, some factories are jointly operated by multiple sugar companies. Back in my day, QSL was the sole supplier to the two largest trading houses, Mitsubishi and Mitsui, to whom we supplied a special quality of sugar applicable only to Japan.

Between 2002 and 2007, I made 15 visits to Japan on business for a variety of reasons – contract negotiations, dispute resolution, QSL Directors’ visits or just plain customer relations. Joan and I also visited Japan together in 2010, as our youngest son, Jared, was living and working there at that time. Given that the two Ms have interests in 6 of the 11 refineries, I had the opportunity to visit each of these - in Chiba and Ichihara (near Tokyo), Kansai (near Osaka), Kobe, and Moji and Hakata (each near Fukuoka on the island of Kyushu).

You may think that communication in markets like this might have been a problem, but this was never the case as their negotiators had always spent some considerable time working at one of their affiliates in the US, UK, Australia etc and were thus well versed in English. Similarly, currency was never a major concern as all deals were secured in US dollars and each country handled their own forex challenges. However, many of the cultural issues I mentioned in the last blog about Korea also applied in Japan. One of my lingering memories during contract negotiations was the habit of the Japanese negotiators to go silent if not happy with a tabled offer. This could extend for several minutes, during which time there might be some clenching of the teeth and breathing heavily through the mouth, but never any words. It seems that we westerners don’t handle the silent treatment that well and would prefer a firm rebuttal, or even an argument. So, after a period of this silence, you would often think: “Shit, I’ve obviously pitched my price too high – I’d better lower it”, an effective strategy for the buyer! But I would have to say that on balance, the Japanese were very fair negotiators and for them long term relationships and win-win was paramount.

Another cultural thing that I remember is that it seemed to be the unofficial ‘rule’ over there that you did not leave work at the end of the day before your boss left. So, if your boss happened to be a ‘workaholic’, as happened with one of my prime customers, that gave little time for evening social life for his younger subordinates. I used to stay regularly at the Strings Hotel, high above Shinagawa station, and next to the massive Mitsubishi building, and I was amazed to see many well-dressed employees just leaving the office around 11pm when I was on my way home from a night out. Occasionally, if some of the younger guys took us out for dinner, they sometimes had to return afterwards to the office. The other main place I used to stay, close to Mitsui’s headquarters, was the more conservative Palace Hotel in Marunouchi and close to the Emperor’s Palace. We always used to imagine we’d been spirited over to France when the locals talked about the ‘Paris’ Hotel!

Visits to the sugar factories were always VIP affairs, especially if it was one of the QSL Directors’ visits. Our hosts would really lay out the red carpet for us and really turn on a show. At times it was so over the top, I had to look behind to check that royalty wasn’t accompanying me! Hygiene is a very important aspect of Japanese culture, and on each of these visits we were always decked out in white coats, hairnets and gloves. Housekeeping throughout their plants was always first class and you felt as though you could almost eat your dinner off their floors.

Unfortunately, our particular hosts in Japan at that time did not share the Koreans’ love of either golf or drinking, so our extracurricular activities were somewhat more subdued. However, two interesting items come to mind. We had an early morning start during one visit where our hosts took us down to the Tokyo Fish Markets, where we witnessed a mind-blowing quantity of tuna and other large fish species, destined either for the sushi snack pack or the overseas markets. The other highlight occurred during one of my visits when I was escorting our Chairman and a couple of Directors. Following a very sumptuous dinner, we were entertained for around an hour by a local Maiko, which is what the Japanese call their apprentice Geishas. She might have still been on a learning curve but we thought she was fabulous, first performing some dances for us, playing the shamisen, and then taking us on with a few party tricks.

I mentioned at the start that we had some family connections with Japan, quite apart from my business connections. Our youngest son, Jared, lived and worked for two years (2003-04) at Yamagata as an assistant language teacher before returning six years later as a fully-qualified English teacher working at Ishinomaki, 50km NE of Sendai. Unfortunately, his time then was cut short by the horrific earthquake and tsunami that hit the latter city on the afternoon on Friday 11 March, 2011. This disaster ended up taking the lives of 20,000 local residents and for that whole following weekend we had no idea if our son was one of those, as all communications had been cut. To add to our ‘weekend from hell’, the following day was a massive family celebration in honour of my father, who turned 100 that day. Joan and I joined the ‘celebrations’ but our moods were very subdued and we chose not to share our situation with the family and put a potential dampener on the occasion. Fortunately, Jared was located by the Australian Embassy late on the Monday and he was airlifted back to Sydney two days later. He was not hurt but his rented apartment was badly damaged and tragically, one of the four schools at which he taught was washed away, losing almost all its students and teachers. Despite this, he has never lost his love for Japan and he is currently back there again, teaching at a high school just out of Tokyo.

Joan and I visit Jared in Japan for a fortnight in August 2010. I don’t know why I didn’t follow up that visit with a blog at that time, but seeing it was quite a comprehensive visit, I will post that blog separately.

Our other family connection is through my elder brother Craig, who following his career in TV production, took up writing books on military history. His first two books focussed on Japan. The first of these, called “The Path of Infinite Sorrow” tracked the bloody Kokoda campaign during WW2, written from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers that took part. His second book, “Nagasaki”, follows the fortunes of elderly survivors and descendants of the victims following the devastating bomb that killed 80,000 people. I can recommend both as a good read and I’m not even collecting any commission!

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Comments

[DaveandIssy]

Work culture
I never worked in Japan but have certainly heard all the horror stories about the work culture, and it being very much frowned upon to leave work before your boss, which must inevitably lead to all the juniors working the longest hours, which must then in turn result in all sort of social problems. All just part of the deal I suppose. Hmmm.

[Nomad Old Farts]

Work Culture
Yeah, that certainly pissed off the couple of younger guys I had contact with in my dealings in Japan. It's obviously a bit institutional and very historical, but as the young Korean lass suggested to me: "Things are going to change around here"!