“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.
Lady Joker, Volume 1 Page 11
