Teramura-kosan that my brother was running was a local small business employing not more than hundred and fifty people. They told me they were in management crisis. But I didn't think it wasn't as serious as they said. I'd read a lot on economics in my high school days, and studied a lot about Marxist economics, too. I had worked as a weekly magazine journalist covering stock markets. I thought this experience as a journalist reporting on the business world equipped me with a pretty fair amount of knowledge on management. " With a bit of my assistance, the company will get back on its feet easily. That's the way I saw the problem I was called back to Kyoto to address. But I was, as it turned out later, too complacent.
Indeed, I was making pretty handsome profits from the demolition job I had on the side in Tokyo while working as a journalist. One example is the demolition work at Daiei Chofu Studio I spoke a little about in the "Weekly Journal Days". When Daiei, the champion of the post-war film industry, went bankrupt, Teramura-kensan undertook the demolition work both at Kyoto's Uzumasa studio and at Tokyo's Chofu studio, thanks mostly to the long intimate friendship my father had with the president of Daiei, Nagata Masakazu, So they put me in charge of the demolition work in Tokyo.
A few days into the demolition work, an old guy came up to me and said "You wanna make a lot of money? How about 8 million?" Involved in the making of the 1951 Venice Film Festival Grand Pris film "Rashomon" as the lightening engineer, he was then known as a walking dictionary in the studio. "What do you mean?" I asked. He explained that there was tons of buried cable wire running underground across the studio. He said "If you dig it out, and sell it to a wrecker, that would be a lot of money."
The demolishers would have right to such scrap materials as steel frames that came out as a result of demolition. This was more true of the building of a bankrupt company such as Daiei, and we didn't care less about the ownership. The cable with a thick copper wire inside, would fetch the price over 10 times that of steel frames. I wasted no time before I rushed off into the laborers' canteen where 30 or so of young laborers were sitting around, drinking sake. I took the bottles away from them to say "Stop drinking for now and go to bad. You gotta start very early tomorrow morning, at 5"
What the old man said was true. We found the cable. The copper wire more than 20 cm across was really impressive, and should be worth 100,000 per meter. We used a bulldozer to pull the cable out. It came out endlessly.?@The young laborers who gathered there shouted "Wow! We've got more coming out" all looking as excited as ever. The cabled pulled out made a little mound. The words got around somehow to lure out people from one Tokyo scrap yard, many of them, with ready cash, making quite a commotion where we were. The cable was sold for about 40 million. It was literally an unexpected treasure trove. I got so delighted that I spent money liberally, rewarding the old man at the studio quite handsomely to express my gratitude, buying the Teramura-kensan youngsters a suit, each and every one of them, and a car for the company.
The demolishers' world is just as slovenly as this. It's a world in which you can't count on any future revenues but you end up having spent whatever unexpected profit has been made. In other words, everything is done without any preplanning. That was the way I saw the demolishing business, until I got back to Kyoto, that is. I was rather too optimistic in that I thought that all I had to do to resolve the management crisis was apply my knowledge in economics and business management. I thought it wasn't much of a problem at all.
But it took me less than a week to realize the gravity of the situation as well as the uselessness of what I had leaned through reading. Terayama-kensan was very much in trouble, hard pressed for money that it needed to pay for the drafts The only way to get around this problem, the shortage of money, was to find money somewhere, in other words, to become purely materialistic to face the facts of life where economic theories or ideas had no place. What was worse, in that particular case of Teramura-kensan, it wasn't just a normal sort of shortage of fund as we know it. It was far worse.
It's a common practice for almost any company to have an accountant take care of the job. He prepares a list of bills to be paid and seeks a decision, approval, and acceptance from the company's executives or chief accountant each time a bill is to be paid. One the day I arrived in Kyoto, such an accountant came to me with a list of the bills to be paid. "What the hell is this? Pay all these? This many?" I screeched in spite of myself. There were about 30 of payees and the amounts to be paid, most of them being more than 1 million. I asked "How much is the total?" He replied "About 20 million." Then I said, "Why not pay it?"Looking puzzled, the accountant said "We've got no money left in ....Bank" "You mean we haven't got any money to pay? "I asked, not leaning back any more.
It was a typical case of "bicycle operation" as we Japanese describe a business that will collapse like a bike unless it is kept running. What they were doing to barely keep it from collapsing was to pay the bills with the money they borrowed or got from discounted drafts. Checking the account book, I found the companies had been walking all the way on a tight rope. They were sort of scraping off whatever money was left with them to pay the bills for the day.
But oddly enough, I found in the book something like expenditure of some 40 million entered as "Company trip expenses". From what I heard, they traveled first class to Europe in a big group, stayed in the luxurious posh hotels, and played hard. They were all given some pocket money besides travel expenses. It was all at the company's expense. Of course, this was what they did when they had plenty of money around. But their extravagance was far too obvious.
Those in the construction business in general tend to be more extravagant with money compared to the average citizens. Being of yakuza origin, Teramura-kensan was even worse with nobody having a sense of economy or safe management. Both my father and my brother were sort of charging ahead all the time, spending their way forward not only when a profit was made but also when no profit was made. "Save money? Better be dead than being stingy" he used to say. And the people working for them were the same kind of people, whose preoccupations were drinking, gambling, and women.
Teramura-kensetsu was quite well known demolisher in Kansai region but it was getting left behind the time in the world of construction business engulfed in the waves of modernization. It used to receive almost all the orders for major public construction work before, but the account book I checked indicated that there weren't as many as before, the orders were steadily decreasing. The crisis facing Teramura-kosan seemed to be far more serious than I had anticipated.
I was soon to have discussions with my brother to find ways to get the company back on its feet. Raising money was certainly a matter to be addressed, but what was more important was to secure jobs to increase the revenue. But, securing more jobs was not as easy with all the big general contractors getting modernized and more competitive. It would take a lot of muscle to get the jobs we wanted. So it was decided that I was going to take care of the rough side of the scheme of ours.
Before he got involved with Terayama-kensan, my brother was the head of Miyazaki-gumi affiliated with Terayama-gumi yakuza syndicate. But he was not a violent sort of person, and too generous in everything to be yakuza. Since then he had been leading an easy life just running the company. So it would be hard on him to take care of the rough side of the job. Nor did we expect him to carry it through even if he agreed to take on the job. "I'll be like a bullet, striking out first, doing all the dirty work, and never minding getting hit back. So rest assured and never get agitated, and just stay calm at Teramura-kensan to get down to the business as usual just going about clean jobs like public construction work." I said this to my brother rather forcibly. He swallowed the idea.
Teramura-kensan was a sort of company built upon the sacrificial devotion and efforts made by the founding members, with quite a few of them victimized or imprisoned, including those injured or killed on the construction sites. It was a company founded by those people I spent my childhood with. So I didn't want to be just standing back to see it go away in my generation. I got myself firmly determined to go to any length to keep the company going.
The first step that I made was to set up a new company called Teramura-doken, registered as a demolisher, the same as Terayama-kensan. So the new company was what used to be called "kobochiya". With me as the president, the company hired seven or eight people, all skilled in scaffolding, and demolishing work. They were not only skilled in those techniques but they were all rough and violent. I picked up those people on the basis of their temperament. Those rough and violent tempered would surely be of great help if a need for arm-twisting arose as a result of us forcing our way through.
The world of scaffold men is a rough one indeed where fighting is the order of the day. But among those workmen were a special breed that work high above the ground carrying steel frames on their shoulders.Called "heavy-duty scaffold man", they were unbelievably Herculean. They were also death-defying foolhardy creatures. It would surely make you think they were born to fight. I recruited such "heavy-duty scaffold man" and also picked up on the street those juvenile mobsters rampaging around Fushimi area on motor-bike and made them into heavy-duty scaffold men. So it was intended right from the start to be a company specializing in rough stuff.
It was when Japan was at another post-war turning point, the first one being the one that came around 1955 as the beginning of the high economic growth era.
The era of the double-digit economic growth came to an end, with the growth rate settled down at around 5%. The days of heavy and chemical industries were coming to an end with the service industry looming larger on the horizon. The standardized consumption pattern began to be overshadowed by an emerging selective consumption pattern. In other words, the days of high economic growth rate were over.
It was also the end of the long social upheaval that started with the social reforms in the wake of the Second World War. In 1976, more than half the nation's population was born after the war. And more than 90% of the middle high school-leavers went to senior high school while the number of people going to college were not on increase any more. In 1977, the population drift toward cities stopped, and with it came 111the nuclearization of families. The post-war disintegration of agrarian society, population drift toward cities, disintegration of extended family system and the paradigm of "success on the strength of academic career" had run its course, marking the end of the "post-war society".
The year 1975 that I went back to Kyoto in the middle of such structural social change was also a year that saw the Japanese economy plunging further into recession. The number of people in actual unemployment exceeded 1 million as surveyed in February. Companies went bankrupt one after another. And the Okinawa Marine EXPO ended up as low-keyed as ever, thus failing to live up to the expectations that it might provide buoyancy to the stagnating economy. It was under such circumstance, in the middle of the recession that I got myself involved in the management of Teramura-kensan. It was so silly of me to be optimistic. I thought I could get the company back on its feet overnight, recession or not.
As soon as Teramura-doken was set up, we got down to the business. But before I give a full account of how it ended, I think it necessary to explain a little bit of the construction business.
The construction industry, though treated as utterly ignored by the young people and looked down as one of the most hated jobs these days, is actually the backbone of the Japanese economy that is leading the world. The number of business entities involved in this sector of the economy across the country totals 530,000 ranging from the top-notch general contractors with the annual orders received exceeding 2 trillion to the marginal very small subsidiaries, that accounts for 6.2 million people working for them, or as much as one fifth the entire population of Japan if their family members are included.
So a vast amount of money flows into this sector. The gross sales on the construction market exceeds 80 trillion every year accounting for nearly 20% of the GNP. And most of it comes from public work such as building social facilities. According to the government's basic plan, from 1990 on, 430 will be invested in the public work over the next 10 year, which represents 3.5 million per capita. No matter how much it is looked down upon as one of the most unpopular jobs, the Japanese economy depends heavily on the behavior of this particular sector.
But this industry is actually built around physical labor provided mostly by those marginalized people such as the less educated or discriminated against despite the fact that it continues to be the backbone of the Japanese economy. So it's a fun to be in this world with all the wildish cheerfulness and liveliness these people provide, but at the same time this is also a world in which the old habits die hard, still rampant. The most striking example to show this out-modishness of this industry is its pyramid sub-contract structure with a handful of giant general contractors at the top. Every industry has its own sub-contract system, but what makes the construction industry's subcontract system so unique is that it is highly stratified with subcontractors feeding off sub-subcontractors feeding off sub-sub-subcontractors. And small size contractors capitalized with less than 100 million that account for 99% of this industry are eking out by clinging on to a shred of this huge network.
This highly stratified structure has its direct reflection in the industry's close-knit hierarchical system of order. The contractor-subcontractor relationship very much resembles the boss-henchman relationship in the world of yakuza in that it requires absolute loyalty to the boss. Subcontractors regard the job as something they are allowed to do. Unlike the world of intellectuals, this world is dictated by an incredibly old value system with many of them still believing such dictums as "You shouldn't complain if you are a man." or " You should persevere if you are a man."
This structure can be seen as a re-enforced "rational" exploitation clothed in "pre-modern" net. This structure allows for a certain degree of worker's self-discipline, making possible a world in which they feel they are doing the job for themselves although it was at the price of their being exploited.
That is to say, it's a world so different to the world of "modern rationalism" and "middle class white-collar" that the post-war Japanese have been so intently pursuing. It might well be described more accurately as another Japan that staunchingly believes in physical ness or pre-modern values. This may explain that they have been relatively free from the waves of "rationalization", "control", and disintegration of the workers' that the Japanese industry is now facing.
My first reckless act was to break what's known as "dango" practice. It's a secret cartel formed so that the bidders for public work can control the bidding prices, prearrange the bidding order, and pre-determine the highest bidder. The reason that this practice seems deep-rooted in the world of construction business is that it benefits both those who place orders and those who receive them. It's good for one placing an order to be able to avert troubles among bidders. The one placing an order is this case is a government agency, which is so afraid of getting involved in troubles or scandals. So any government agency welcomes this illegal practice at heart as those rough contractors might otherwise cause troubles among themselves.
This practice benefits bidders because it saves them stiff competition, ensuring stable profits by taking turns. As I said, 99% of the businesses in the construction business are very small with capital of less than 100 million. If the bidding system were built on the "survival of the fittest" basis, there would be little chance that small size businesses can bid for any public work. But with the "dango" system, they can manage to find a job so long they have enough patience to wait. Indeed, "dango" is a mutually beneficial system.
This shows that "dango" system is structured vertically along the "hierarchical order" and horizontally along the "mutual beneficiality". This serves as a restraint on the competition to protect the weak as well as impedes free competition.
It should, however, be remembered here that it is no more than to maintain, and reproduce this discriminative highly stratified structural difference between big businesses and small businesses that the weak are to be protected.
Well, actually, it's not only those placing orders, and those bidding for orders that will profit from this. It's politicians. But they fall into two categories according to the way they benefit from this. One is Tanaka Kakuei style. The late Prime Minister would wield his political clout to arrange for one particular contractor to be a successful bidder, so that the politician would get a few percent of the construction cost as payoff. This method takes advantage of the vertical structure of the system. The other one may be called Kanamaru Shin style. He used to collect small amounts of money from a wide range of participants in dango meeting. This is what most politicians are doing as it does not constitute a bribery case. And it takes advantage of the horizontal structure.
Politicians profiteering from dango is found everywhere all over Japan. At the national level, those lobbyists in the parliament called "Kensetsu-zoku" are intent on political maneuvering by putting a pressure on bureaucrats in the Ministry of Construction in order to return the favor to the general contractors that sponsor them. When I was a journalist for a weekly "Shukan Gendai", politicians affiliated with Tanaka faction had sort of taken over the Ministry of Construction. The same is true of local governments with little Tanakas and Kanemarus are swarming around the sweet honey of public work behind the scene.
The world of construction business may be a microcosm of the Japanese society which is a society of mutual dependence. It's where politicians, bureaucrats, and businessmen depend on one another and collude with one another to share in whatever is lucrative. But I want you to remember that I am not saying that "dango" is an irrational, corrupt system that we should not allow to exist. If a complete bidding system were to be introduced, there would surely be more corruptions and shoddy workmanship. Nothing or no system goes in real life as it should in theory if human elements are involved.
Thrown into a typically Japanese or oriental esoteric and obscure world of Dango, I roughed my way through to get the fund we needed, thus making quite waves on otherwise placid sea of the stratified hierarchical construction world of the old capital of Japan. For example, if a dango meeting ends with more than two contractors are desperately in need of the job, the lowest bidder should take the job. But in reality no such bidding takes place. Because it would dramatically push down the bidding price. And naturally, they don't like lower bidding prices. What actually takes place in cases like this is that they draw a raffle to choose the successful candidate, or one candidate pays the others 10% of the dango money to pull out of the race.
As young as 30 years old, I was belligerent right from the beginning, putting on an air of "I don't give a damn about dango. Who the hell cares about such uncompetitive convention? " Things would get complicated because I would never agree to pull out. So there came a local boss known as "dango-ya"(or dango expert) to mediate. But I would put my foot down and never budge. The boss said "Hey, you're not gonna take my advice, are you?" I said "No" I would flatly reject his proposal and say, "Let's draw a raffle to get it settled once and for all." Then I would often pull a dirty trick in the lot drawing. We would do anything to rescue the company on
You see the lot drawing on local Prefecture or municipal level is so simplistic. What they do is to pick a matchstick from those held in the hand of a neutral contractor acting as witness. The one who has drawn a tipped matchstick is the winner. But what I did was to have the witness hold only untipped matchsticks. And when it is time to draw a lot, we would say "I cannot make a rude man of myself to go first as if to ignore our seniors. Greenhorn like me should not go first. Please go ahead." And my competitor would say, "No, there is no senior or junior in this as far as you are concerned. You're a helmsman of the long established and time-honored family of Teramura. So, younger one first." "No, my mother would kick my ass off if I did such a rude thing". Such a haggling of "concession" would go on and on until at last I outpatienced my competitor since there was no winning lot and I had to let my competitor draw first by all means. He would then draw first only to see me walking away with the prize. The matter was settled this way.
It's a little strange that the loser, dejected by the bad luck, would never say "Show me the other matchstick even though it's such an easy trick. And to forestall such a question, the witness would dispose of the other matchstick quickly as he pretended to be consoling the loser saying "It's was just a hard luck today."
I found it quite easy to tell from their facial expressions or the way they carried themselves whether the contractor was well-to-do, or hard up for money.
Well, I couldn't bring myself to pull the trick on those hard up for money, but I pulled the trick on contractors looking wealthy many times.
I also would sabotage dango many times as I submitted the paper to the local government office, bidding a price lower than the lowest bidding price agreed in the dango meeting. This would throw the whole bidding place into great confusion. Making himself pleasant as he talked with people in good humor since he showed up at the place, the dango-designated successful bidder first looked petrified, unable to hear what he's heard about the result and remained so for a while until he flew into a rage, saying, "What the hell is the meaning of this? What are you getting up to? You wanna pick a fight or something?"
"No, I just made a mistake."
"Mistake! What the hell are you talking about? You can't get away with this?"
"Then, find me anybody who has never blundered in his life"
"I don't give a damn about anybody's life. That's sabotaging dango"
"So what the hell do you want me to do? Cut my pinky off? I can chop it off anytime. But in that case, remember you'll also get what you deserve."
This hollering would go on and on. There would be only two ways to settle the matter. It would be either when I forced my way through to get the job, or when I agreed to pull out in return for about 10% of the dango money I received. If my opponent looked well off, I would force my way through to the end. But if the opponent looked so enfeebled that his company would fail without the job now being fought over, I would pull out. Not only did I do this in Kyoto, but also I did it in Shiga, too. And this gave our company a new lease on life for a little while. But my total disregard for, breach of, and deviation from the conventionalities of this world did not go without causing any problem at all. I was often bullied by local yakuza. But, being a bullet for Miyazaki family, I couldn't allow myself to be flinched by anything. So I kept on being as reckless as ever.
But I couldn't rest assured even after going through all the rough stuff I had to do to wrestle a job from rivals. There was always somebody else somewhere trying to wrestle the job from me. When we were about to get down to the job, as a subcontractor for a major general contractor to do the demolishing work of the steal frame roof of Yodo Horse Race Course in Kyoto, there was a phone call from a man who identified himself as a president of some demolisher in Tokyo, saying rather on a rather rude note "We are supposed to do the job for Japan Horse Race Commission as if to tell me that I took the job away. Pissed off, I said to him, "That's none of our concern. We'll do this job" then hang up. It is often the case that the contractor which does a job for Japan Horse Race Commission usually has a string attached to Japan Horse Race Commission. So they took it for granted that the job would come their way. But, who the hell would care?
The next day, the president, accompanied by 5 to 6 yakuza hoodlums, arrived in Mercedes and a limousine. One of them was wearing a shining lapel pin on his what looked like an expensive suit, showing that he was an executive of a large yakuza syndicate. They were high-handed from the beginning, and repeated bullyingly what was said on the phone on the previous day. That left me no alternative but to recourse to their way, the yakuza way. I said "Are you aware that the Yodo race course is within my territory? Your barging into my territory gets me aggravated. You don't like us Kyoto yakuza barging into your territory, do you?"
I said to the head, making those bodyguards bristle. But I ignored this, and went on "But, I understand what it's like to be like you are now. So why not talk it over? But if you don't want to talk, we're not gonna let you take anything from us. " This convinced them, rather easily, more easily than expected. This was because yakuza put their life on line to protect their territory for their earn. Especially, Kanto yakuza are more concerned about territory. So when their territory is at stake, they don't go out of their way. A mere mention of the word "territory" makes them have second thoughts.
The matter was settled as I agreed to pay about 10% of the construction cost to the president of the Tokyo contractor, but not to finalize the agreement until the amount of scrape was measured. The reason not to finalize at that point was to save the face for the high-ranking yakuza who had come all the way to Kyoto. But I was thinking "I would rather give away the money than pay it to you, the yakuza and stupid president. If you don't like it, do as you like." Afterward, I just kept saying, "The scrap turned out to be worthless", lying all the way through. Hostility almost broke out as the Tokyo guys got pissed off. But they didn't bother to come all the way down to Kyoto to pick a fight. The matter was closed in the end, unsolved.
Such behavior made me an enemy of the people in the same trade and yakuza. But as they say there is no accounting for the taste, I was not without any contractor who was fond of me. One of them was the president of Uchidagumi construction company of Seta, in Shiga Prefecture. I think I should tell a bit about this man as we can still see in the person of Mr. Uchida, the integrity of construction worker and yakuza that was once underlying the very foundation of the world of construction work. He is a man of extraordinary character and interesting. Of all sorts of people I have met in some 50 years of my life, he stands out as superb for his character and for what he is as one human.
My first encounter with Mr. Uchida came about when I was about to snatch a job away from Uchida-gumi as I did usually when pressed for money. A fight ensued as usual when a Uchida's man burst in. Far from becoming flinched as they expected I would, I threatened back, saying, "Where the hell do you think you are? It's not your fucking office. You just aren't good enough for the job. Get lost." And he left with parting shots, saying, "Hey boy! You're gonna regret it." But soon afterward, I had a guy flying into my office. I had known him since he was my fellow delinquent in my junior high school days. His name was Asaoka Isamu. Isamu was a subcontractor for Uchidagumi. He begged me not to be so reckless with Uchida-gumi, saying,"That's a company I owe a lot. Please don't go wild." Seeing my old friend bowing to me, and considering that the job is not worth the trouble I am having with Uchida, I decided to pull out to save Isamu's face for now. So we, two went down to Uchida-gumi for reconciliation.
What I saw in the president's room was a man in his forties of medium height and build, bold-headed with his face and arms sunburned reddish brown, his eyes sharp and glaring, and wearing trainers and sneaker shoes. He was the president, Mr. Yasuda. I said, "I made a rude man of myself saying what I said to your man without knowing at all that my childhood friend Isamu was receiving your favor. Please accept my apology. And I would like you to give your continued attention to Isamu. And I will pull out of this to return your favor" I said with a bit of formality. Looking moved by this, the president replied "You got a good spirit. Why don't we keep up our relationship?"
Through my business contact with him, I found him really attractive as one individual. Born into a local extremely poor family, he started out as a construction worker when he was in his teens. Since then he worked his way up to become a boss of some 50 employees. It sounds like just another success story. But what sets this man apart is that he has been convicted of violent criminal act more than 10 times. But the president is not yakuza. Rather he hates yakuza, a rare man capable of standing up against yakuza. His violent criminal act is just a result of the pride he has in his occupation as a construction worker, and his staunchly faithful belief in the company as a community of those sharing destiny.
For example:
When Uchida-gumi was involved on some joint project, it was swindled out of some money. The employee on the construction site responsible for the money got extremely distressed, not knowing what to do. Having heard of this, the president came into this saying, " How the hell could I be just sitting around while my son is in distress? I am his parent. Bring the bastard over here." Knowing the violent temper of the president, the bastard made all sorts of excuses and managed to avoid the direct confrontation for one month or two until finally Mr. Uchida saw red. But, he calmed himself for now and called the swindler to propose a negotiation to find ways for some compromise. One week later, he could manage to bring the swindler over to the office.
On that day, Mr. Uchida told all the employees to leave the office earlier than usual, and waited for the man to appear. Scared by the eerie atmosphere engendered by the president being the only soul in the entire office, the man who appeared before Mr.Uchida made a desperate effort to defend himself. Mr.Uchida wanted to forgive him if he apologized from the bottom of his heart. But as it turned out, not only did he try to defend himself but he made some slandering remarks on his employees. This infuriated Mr. Uchida who believed that "His employees are just as deer as his own children." rose to his feet and looked him in the eyes, saying, "I can't forgive anybody who speaks ill of my employees". The next moment the man was a severely injured man, completely beaten up.
To give another example. When Uchida-gumi got a job from a top general contractor, the first meeting was held in Kyoto's ryotei restaurant as a banquet attended by the general contractor and its subcontractors. Mr.Uchida was one of those invited. There sitting with a floor pillar behind them was the vice branch manager for a major city, looking uninterested, and overlooking his subcontractors. A general contractor's executive is just like emperor with all the subcontractors swarming around him one after another to share in the sake this emperor is drinking. But Mr. Uchida, who was a teetotaler, did not join the crowed, and was left out alone. Seeing him sitting alone, the vice branch manager threw the sake cup at him saying, "You'll drink our sake, too." when Mr. Uchida exploded. "Hey, man. I'm not a beggar."
This touched off a hollering between the two that lasted quite a long time. The vice manager's attitude remained unchanged all through this, making light of anything one constructor worker said. Mr. Uchida, then flew back home to pick up a hunting rifle then returned to the restaurant.
"I'm not gonna forgive you if you insult construction workers."
Having no idea what kind of man Mr. Uchida was, the vice manager kept insulting, adding "Are you, a subcontractor, gonna pick a bone with your contractor?"
"I don't care whether you are a contractor or anything. I won't let anybody ridicule me", said he as he pointed the rifle, terrifying the vice branch manager out of his wits, and beating him almost to death.
Mr. Uchida is an extremely reckless, and has nothing intellectual about him at all. But he is a real tender-hearted man. He says fearlessly, "My company is my family." "Construction workers live on their own physical strength. Nothing to be ashamed of about it at all". And he throws down the gauntlet to whoever it is that does him or his family a bad turn. This he does, however, always alone, taking utmost care not to cause his employees any trouble, and takes responsibility for the consequence.
Mr. Uchida had never used yakuza as would almost any president of a company no smaller than Uchida-gumi. He sticks to his paternalism as the father figure through and through. The world of construction workers is a pyramid with people like Mr. Uchida at the bottom. This is where this particular world differs from the "rationalized" and regimented business world. And I would like to add here that in the construction worker world or in Kansai, such a man is called "toppa", or "striker", a man who pierces through the enemy's defense. People in Kansai like those who go reckless sticking to paternalism.
For instance, any construction company of reasonable size owns 2 or 3 dump trucks. The drivers often get caught by the police for speeding or overloading. If one gets caught, the president rushes to the police station and shouts, "It's me that told them to do what they were doing. So you should get me." only to have a brawl ensue with the police. This boss is soft on his men but tough on the outsiders. He puts himself on the line to defend his peers. People then half sneer at him but at the same time have a feeling of awe.
I have struck and pierced through the enemy's defense, too. You can't last as a boss of construction workers without being a striker. My scaffold men often used to take advantage of their Herculean muscles to throw yakuza men against a wall and injured them when they flew into a quarrel with the yakuza at a drinking bar. Then of course, those yakuza men would come to my office to get even. I had no choice but to protect my men, rejecting any reasoning or whatever. I used to remind them of some principles involved to get around this kind of situation, saying, "Isn't it strange that you, professional fighters, should reveal that you were beaten by laymen. Is that something you should keep to yourself? " When the matter was settled after a lot of arguing this way and that, those heavy-duty scaffold men got almost overly grateful to me. This moved me so, making it hard not to do it next time. Such was a life of a boss of construction workers. It doesn't pay to be a boss of construction workers in the first place.
There is, however, a tendency to praise those who are reckless or irresponsible for their own sake. For instance we say rather enviously "What a "toppa" man he is, away from his home for seven long years!" He's only fooling around with another woman. But he is also called a "toppa" man. "Toppa" meaning "single-minded" has both positive and negative side to it. It's negative if he is too single-minded to see the woods for trees. But it's positive if he hold his own by staying consistent. Anyway this particular word is used to describe a man who is charging forward but does not know where he is headed for. Bound by your family and social conventions, it's very hard to make a "toppa" man of yourself. But there are a small number of people who are stubbornly being a "toppa" man. While looking at those reckless with disdain, people have some respect for them.
"You really are a "toppa" man not any less than I am." Mr. Uchida used to say. Indeed, I was, hard pressed for money. I roughed my way through whoever stood in my way. Construction companies have two great enemies, yakuza and residents' protest movements. Once they single you out, the construction work may be put off or even cancelled. So most construction companies spend a huge amount of "neighborhood control" money to soften up these enemies. But I forced my way through against residents' movements.
I had had no intention to do the rough stuff at first. I had a positive attitude toward these residents' protest movements at that time probably from my past left-wing inclination. Indeed, I still sympathize with labor union movements when nobody today seems to be interested. But my first encounter with those engaged in such a movement changed completely the image I had imagined of the residents' movements. I find those people only motivated by their egoism and trying to justify it. What is worse is that it never ever occurs to them at all that they are motivated by their egoism. After all they are trying to justify it.
One such an example is what happened when we demolished a public architecture in a white-color residential area in Kyoto. The moment we started working, with a dust-guard covering the entire architecture, one woman came up to us in protest, complaining about dust and vibration. "Of course, it gives off dust. It's demolition work we are doing. We cannot do it without giving off some dust." I replied. Then she said, "That's what troubles us." I had never had anybody complain like this about demolishing work we did. Some dust or noise must be tolerated in demolishing work. But I accepted their protest and proceeded with the work as cautiously as possible trying to minimize dust and noise.
But on the next day, came a large number of residents. One leader-like PTA woman with a heavy make-up on said to me, "We ask you to ensure that there is no dust, nose, or vibration when you work." I said to her "No, it's impossible. I ask for your little patience. The work will be completed in no more than a week's tine." Then she said, "That would inconvenience our citizen's life." Her followers all said in unison, "It's nuisance." That made me furious.
I said, "I see. We'll call the work off. You'll take over. After all, this is the building you have been using. But remember you won't be excused if any dust or vibration occurs. Don't make up a pretext for a fight, by asking for the impossible." Hearing this, the residents started screaming "It's a total disregard for residents." "Arrogant contractor", "Yakuza-like", and left in indignation.
The next morning when I arrived the site, I found the site thronged with a crowd of residents again. Then a middle-aged man walked up to me and identified himself as a Communist Party member. He said as if to declare "It has been decided that we are going to support the residents' action. And we will apply for provisional disposition to halt the work." He seemed to be convinced that this would frighten any contractor. Indeed, even yakuza was frightened by the Communist Party in Kyoto.
"Do as you like. I'll take you on. What kind of action is it, just snuggling up to the women's egoism!" The Communist guy was upset by the unexpected rebuttal. I instructed my men to pull 2 or 3 bulldozers around as I looked sideways at him. I decided to go about it in the Teramura-doken style. Nothing can prevent me. When 3 bulldozers were brought over, I told them to remove the dust guard. After I saw it removed, I said to them, "OK, smash it pieces completely." All the scaffold men and workers, who had a bitter feeling against the residents, came rushing onto the site. It's hell broke loose after that. Bulldozer ramming into the building caused the earth rumble, kicking up blackish dust high up into the air. Up went with it shrieks and screams of "On No." and "Please don't" from the women just standing petrified.
Soon, patrol cars came speeding over to the site. Shocked to see the eerie scene, one cop said to me, " If you go on doing such a thing, you will violate the law." "I am doing this because I want to violate the law. I don't mind you sentencing me to death or anything. Do as you like." The cop got taken aback. The residents watching the bandying between the cop and me with strained attention became stricken with terror. The Communist guy backed down a few steps.
The scaffold men and workers got very much worked up by the presence of the police officers and residents, pulled the bulldozers to full throttle. The demolishing, or smashing work, rather, proceeded so fast that it was complete at night. It was a horrible sight with the site piled up with rubbles and the residential area covered over with dust. We decided to do the cleanup job next day and went off, leaving a considerable number of residents standing there aghast, including the heavy makeup leader.
I said to her, "Hey, lady, we are nearly done with it." Trembling, the woman asked, "How is it going to be taken care of?" "Not to worry. We are professionals. By tomorrow evening, there will be not any speck left." And I added "Hey, lady. Don't turn to the Communist Party and the police so easily. If you cannot really put up with something, work it out yourself to your satisfaction."
Of course, some resident actions were very genuine, and I dealt with them in due proper manners. But most of the resident-led actions were like the above episode with the Communist Party or the police always waiting to meddle in. In such residential areas, the residents are reduced to separate individual "citizens" cut off from one another, rather than united and relying upon one another. So rather than addressing the regional problems as the participants in the autonomy, they tend to translate their special self-interest (resident egoism) into the interest of the general public (democratic interest) and have the problems taken care of by politicians or lawyers as their deputies. I am very much willing to give my support to the resident-led action that will promote direct democracy or citizens' autonomy. But the one I introduced above is anything but resident-led action.
This means I had to keep on being wayward and reckless. While I got increasingly branded as "an enemy of citizens", Teramura had become established as somebody that would never get flinched by anything. This helped increase the number of orders from major general contractors. As the orders increased, I did not have to trouble my head with money matters as if I had never had such a problem before. For all the things about general contractors, I got reminded again that they were powerful indeed and worth serving. They were like so large trees that even one leaf can shelter you from rain. Getting into their shade was enough to get a job to come my way. No wonder all small contractors kowtowed to them.
The more jobs I had come my way, the more opportunities I had to socialize with my counterparts and general contractors' people. They called it a preliminary arrangement meeting or something like that. But it was nothing but a party. People in the construction work world mostly played very hard, were very clever with every field of entertainment from drinking, gambling and women. Partly because I didn't drink much, I could bring myself to grow fond of sleazy atmosphere of high class night clubs in Gion. This left only gambling. Indeed, I sort of flew into gambling. I did all sorts of gambling from mahjong, "tehonhiki", "saihonhiki" or even golf for money. What I was absorbed in most was "tehonhiki" and "saihonhiki". There's nothing like being in a gamble house with its highly charged atmosphere. It was also a place for my reunion with my delinquent friends from my childhood who were now top executives of some yakuza syndicate. I also enjoyed watching well-known gamblers handling the cards. I used to frequent gamble houses with several millions of yen squeezed into my pocket.
It's not only in Kyoto that I gambled, but in Osaka, too. In Osaka, I was once admonished by an old gambler yakuza affiliated with a long-time gambling yakuza syndicate Sakaume-gumi. He was about 70 and associated with my grandfather.
On that particular day, I was losing control of myself because I kept losing. But I was foolhardy as was any young man and kept on betting, saying "I won't pull out until I win. "Then someone patted me on the shoulder and said, "Give it up." I turned around to see who it was. It was that old gambler of Sakuume-gumi.
Strangely enough, this word felt so soothing that I was no more as raging with hot blood as I had been a moment ago. The harder you gamble, the more difficult it is to get out of trouble if it is not your lucky day. What is important in gambling is to admit that you have "died", or are a loser. This is what the old man taught me. Afterward, he took me to a separate room and said, "I'll tell you what. It's when you lose that you can prove yourself as a man. It's so easy for a winner to be at his best. You can be only judged by the way you behave as a loser." Learning a lesson from an old gambler is one thing you can do at a gambling place.
I divided my time between nighttime gambling and daytime golfing for money. As it was all "toppa" guys of the construction work world or outlaws I played golf with, we would bet on any direction the ball would go, often 3 million on the final putt into the last hole. I started out as a real beginner but money talked a lot. One year later, I was playing golf as a single player.
I would also hang around Gion or Miyagawa entertainment areas. I invited my business counterparts and Teramura-doken's men to those areas for playing what we call "Ochaya-asobi". Many believe that this play costs a fortune or requires formalities. But, that's not true. It's less expensive than a high-class night?@club in Gion unless you want to show off. They are not so fussy about formalities. It actually is very relaxing. I very much liked it there.
The well-known amusement areas in Kyoto include Gion around Yasaka shrine, Kamihichiken around Kitano shrine, and Miyagawa-cho near the Gojo-ohashi bridge. But there are many more. In terms of the qualities of "maiko" dancing girl or "geisha", Kamihichiken ranks the highest, followed by Gion, then Miyagawa-cho, Gobancho, Shimabara, Shogicho, friendly Gojo-rakuen, Hashimoto, and under the Hichijo bridge. All are located near Kamogawa, which is a reminder that they go back to "kawaramono" such girls were referred to as in Heian or Muromachi period, "kawaramono" literally meaning "those on shore". Every amusement area has a restaurant called "ochaya" where they can eat, drink or play with girls.
So after eating and drinking in Gion or elsewhere, my buddies would take to girls, but I declined in most cases. Well, that doesn't mean at all I hated women, but heading for the girls as we licked our tongue after we departed from each other is embarrassing, and not my style.
After a leisurely bath, I used to send for a masseur and chat with her while she was working on me and an old woman from "ochaya" dropped in, sometimes accompanied by maiko or geisha girls. I really enjoy stupid conversations with them. Sometimes as my acquaintance with them went a bit further, I found myself involved in the trouble they had with their patrons. In most cases, girls wanted to get rid of their patrons who were extremely pervert or weird. Asked by a maiko girl, I used to bully her patron into leaving her, saying "What the hell do you think you are doing to such a young girl?" The girls in this world are very obliged. They still get excited and welcome me when I bump into them in Gion.
Men and women you find in Gion are people in entertainment business, or people in "flower town "as they are called in Kyoto. Unlike those you see dominating the present day amusement areas, they are professional both in good and bad sense. Among those professional no other people are more professional than women in "ochaya" or "okiya". They are retired maiko or geisha, and uneducated and illiterate, and earning their life like shrewd old women. But substantiated by their ruthless and solid perception of human beings or the world, their conversation skill makes today's show biz people sound as dull as ever. You would find every bit of their thinking and behavior interesting.
On several occasions, a women in her 70s was approaching me to say, "Are you a son of Mr. Teramura? Wow, your father did me a special favor several times. He was great, wasn't he?" The old lady suddenly turned sexy as if to make advances on me. That's how I got myself acquainted with "obachan" (=old women) in Miyagawa-cho. "Hi, are you up? Let's go eat okonomiyaki" I used to ask such old ladies out early in the afternoon when they were still in bed at home. Up and running since 6 o'clock in the morning, I usually had a few hours to spare at that time of the day. I spent this spare time hanging around with such ladies. Being of the humblest origin in Kyoto, they had weakness for such unsophisticated foods such as okonomiyaki. So it's usually 5 or 6 such ladies coming out to follow me, half-awake from sleep, and joined by those fags living in the back-streets of Kiyamachi. With these shrewed old women and fags unleashing their superb conversational skill with okonomiyaki in their mouth, the result was the funniest conversation they had ever known, so that everybody overhearing us, people serving there or being served, all laughed their head off.
Within such an inner circle, they were so open about letting everything hang out, often going out of their way to expose the secrets of others, with some talking about a powerful LDP Diet member having made unsuccessful advances to a geisha girl, or some talking about the owner of some big business having made a geisha girl pregnant, thus fathering a child. But nothing got them more serious than when talking about finding their blood-related young girl a patron. Most of the old ladies were born illegitimate, so their daughters or granddaughters are in the same entertainment business in most cases. When they know that their granddaughter seems to have found a prospective patron, they suddenly become restless, eyes twinkling, and horrendously devote themselves to securing the rich patron. Businessmen, politicians, kabuki actors, and film actors are common patrons. But, the first thing these old ladies do is to rigorously gather intelligence on the prospective patron.
Brandishing a spatula for okonomiyaki, they say, "He is said to be leading a rich man's life. But he is an adopted son with his purse strings controlled by his wife". "I don't think so. I heard he has quite a lot of his own money he can spend anyway he likes." They all put their information together for vigorous scrutiny, to decide whether they will rip off big money over a short period of time or siphon off small money over a prolonged period of time.
These obachan ladies are seasoned professionals up to the neck in the world of pleasure. They never fail to make accurate evaluation of their customers. No man can betray the eyes of obachan ladies in Gion or Miyagawa no matter how hard they pretend to be somebody he is not. Their correct power of observation of human beings was acquired hard way, therefore, it really works to everybody's wonder.
Once they have decided which way to go. They all gang up on the young girl and teach her all the lovemaking techniques they know. They are more like a secret tradition that goes back to the antiquity in the history of Kyoto. The young girl learns to go through all the sexual poses and positions. They boast, " Any man caught in this trap is bound to 'go to heaven' " The young girl then becomes patronized as she wished. But once one goal is achieved, these obachan ladies will shift their focus on how she can get as much money out of him as she can and break up with the man without causing any trouble. Whether she is a second wife, or mistress, not a bit of the patron's well-being will be considered by these women. What is there is only the cool Asian lower class realism that young girls are commodities so that their relatives want to sell them for higher prices to live off the fortune brought by their granddaughters. It really is a hopeless world. But these ladies, including the young ones to be sold, are so straightforward about it, and carry it through. Of course, there is something between a man and woman that cannot be taken care of by venality. But they dare to allow venality to take care of everything. It is in this sense that they are professional with a lot of grace.
I asked one of them, "Did she break up with that bald head?" She said proudly "Ya, I settled the matter", and gave me a lengthy account of how the relationship between her granddaughter and an Osaka's real estate patron had ended up. Well it ended up with the bald-headed having paid several million yen for the costume for Miyako-odori festival, and another several million yen for a new tombstone for her ancestors. She departed from him at the instruction of her grandmother and her contemporaries before his company went under. Such is an example of the stories they used to tell me.
To sever the relationship, the obachan seems to have ventured to put on her biggest act of crying and bullying. First, she pretended to be crying, then brought up some subjects associated with his sex life with her granddaughter and bullied him saying "I'll come see your wife if you are incapable of being manlike " But this was what she suggested but not what she actually said. These obachan ladies are the authentic and direct inheritors of the traditional techniques used by the professionals of the Shimabara red-light district as depicted in the novels by Ihara Saikaku or Chikamatsu Monzaemon. So she never allowed herself to sound like she was bullying at all. Everything they do, they do it with style. They get most soft-spoken as ever to say what they mean and shroud it in tears. She said in the end "I settled the matter alright. I'm sure my granddaughter has grown out of her old self. That patron? Well, he doesn't have what it takes to play in the pleasure world of Kyoto."
Later when I went listed as wanted by the Kyoto Prefecture Police Department on suspicion of corporate extortion, it was these obachan ladies who contacted me saying, "Come and hide in Gion or Miyagawa-cho. We'll all look after you"It's such an extremely partial world they are living in. Just because they feel closer to me than the police that are after me, they offer to protect me. That was probably the way the people in the Kyoto's pleasure world hid those rebels who rose up against the ruling Tokugawa. When I was under custody at Kyoto Prefecture Police Department, it was one of the fags in Gion who brought me some food. The food he brought me was some okonomiyaki with a cup of coffee from the restaurant I used to go to with those obachan ladies.
I spent 25 years of my life in Kyoto, and another 25 years in Tokyo. As far as my experience with them goes, not so many two cities are as dissimilar as these two cities are. Simply put, Kyoto is like Britain whereas Tokyo is like America. With very little moving in, through, or out of it, Kyoto is quite an immobile society based on the hierarchy developed over many years of its history. Their way of living, customs, and creeds are extremely conservative while their outlook on things are critical and bitter, or to put it more bluntly, is wicked, like in Britain.
On the other hand, Tokyo is a mobile society basically with no hierarchy. It's an open-minded new paradise formed of country folks both in a good sense and in a bad sense of the word. The way Tokyo people perceive things is quite straightforward with no edge or no shade of meaning to it. So it's quite comfortable to live in for people like me. Neither is there any discrimination nor is there any establishment class like WASP in America. Tokyo, which doesn't care about anything traditional can be said to be more American than any American city. Kyoto is a class society with long-time "kugeshu" aristocrats, "iemoto" of tea ceremony or flower arrangement school masters such as "Urasenke" , "Muromachishu" of Nishijin fabric weaving masters, "Bozushu" of priests such as "Monseki" of Honganji-temple, and "Fushimishu" of Fushimi's brewer masters on the top and the Nishijin fabric weavers, craftsman in various arts, and menial laborers at the bottom. Kyoto is also a society of discrimination consisting of buraku people and Koreans. So within a small Kyoto enclave, these classes are living together keeping a certain and delicate distance from one another, in an equilibrium reached through its long process of history.
It's my personal observation but what controls this immobile society of Kyoto consists of 4 groups. It's Fushimi brewer's "kuramoto" people, Nishijin fabric beaver's "orimoto" people, anti-discrimination movement, and yakuza. Fushimi's kuramoto and Nishijin's orimoto people are big patrons in Kyoto with their close connections to bureaucrats and politicians, still wielding a considerable influence behind the scene. The anti-discrimination movement is a movement entity engulfing many buraku people who are being discriminated against, also wielding a powerful influence over bureaucrats and politicians. And yakuza has a unique place and function in Kyoto as a lubricant between various classes. Yaizukotetsu is a gang of yakuza native and rooted in Kyoto with most of its 1600 members born in Kyoto. With their strong open and secret human ties, they are asked to take care of all sorts of troubles including a money trouble between a big company and small one or a trouble between a Buddhist priest and his mistress.
Being what he is, a yakuza man entrusted with a job does not waste any time before he barges in on anybody whether he is the president of the Kyoto's largest company Wacoal (a lady's fancy underwear manufacturer) or anybody. "Hey, loincloth seller! What the hell do you think you are, making your subcontractor suffer so much?" says he, and gets down to strong bargaining with the company. Many of these successful troubleshooting cases have eventually earned them a role to play in the society as a lubricant that mediates between various classes.
People in Kyoto are on the conservative side, and unexcitable, or rather cold-blooded. To show how conservative they are, look at the way they associate with a shop where they are a regular customer. Old Kyotoites will never try a new shop on the block if it's in the same category as the one they have already in their neighborhood. If anybody ever tries the new one, he or she will be criticized as heartless. This explains why old shopping areas still remain in Kyoto. And it's in their attitude toward the owner of a failed business when they show their cold-bloodedness. Where Osaka people would cheer up saying "Take it easy, my friend", Kyoto people stop talking to him, afraid that they may be asked to lend some money if they talk to him."
You will be surprised to see how quickly they change their attitude.
This characteristic seems to account for their steady and sound way of seeing things. During the bubble economy while all the real estate agents in Tokyo and Osaka went mad about land-rolling, no long-time real estate agent joined them. They said "Buying a piece of land at 10,000 and selling it at 50,000 in less than 3 months? It will be a matter of time that they will all fall over. Let's just wait and see." As one who was lost in the frenzy of the bubble, I can tell that it would have been practically impossible to see the things that way at that time. It may be their typical oblique way of looking at things, but the steady and sound characteristic of Kyoto people is unmistakable there.
Everything associated with Kyoto, both its people and its society, is hard to deal with. This shies away the youth, and frustrates them. So we have young people in Kyoto compelled to carry their anti-establishment attitude to extreme to find where they are. And they tend to hold those rebels in high esteem. Anyway you look at it, it's indeed hard place to be.
Not a born playboy, I couldn't get myself fully satisfied no matter how much indulged I got in gambling or playing with girls in red-light districts. I felt something amiss. In the back of my mid I had always been looking for something that would fill me with burning spirit. I may have been searching for some realistic excitement. I would often pick a street fight. My friend Kobata Yuichi was also smoldering as he couldn't get a real kick out of fooling around. We talked to each other in a coffee shop saying, "I'm bored to death just making money or fooling around. I can't get a real kick out of it." "So am I. Boring, isn't it?" We were commiserates, feeling that our life was left unspent. Kobata was a guy of my age and was well-known in the delinquent world of Kyoto since his junior high school days. He was so rebellious or anti-establishment that he resisted the police and school without any compromise since he was a junior high student.
He was a man of slender built and could have passed himself off as somebody in the show-biz or entertainment world. But, he was always looking for a fight, and provoked police officers or teachers and made a rowdy exchange of blows day in and day out. He picked a fight with delinquents, yakuza, or anybody. He was what a "leaning man" in the middle age Kyoto might have been like. He was a grandson of Yuzan who was well-known as a man of influence in Kyoto from Taisho to early Showa era. So, his recklessness may be attributable to something that is running in his family. Finally his recklessness took him to Kyushu where he wandered from one place to another when he was 14, with a girl. He couldn't get enough of it from Kyoto. He threatened and robbed his way through his days in Kyushu.
When he returned to Kyoto, he was just as terrible. He would perennially get busted by police for fighting or some reckless act. People in our neighborhood were saying that a patrol car had only two possible destinations, Teramura-gumi or Kobata's ruffian. Indeed, he spent most of his late teens in reform schools, and he was so violent in Nara Juvenile Prison known as the place for elite of juvenile outlaws that he is still being talked about as a legendary figure. To start with, on the train that was taking him to the prison, he made a spectacle scene by threatening a prison officer and argued loudly. And he resisted his way through prison. That put him in the disciplinary cell all the time. His career total time spent in the disciplinary cell was a record that remains still unbroken. He was far from being a mediocre enfant terrible. He was a terror itself.
But after he had gone through some years of yakuza life, he was by that time, already a businessman doing an honest job, running various companies. Kobata played hard, drinking a lot, gambling a lot, and playing with many women. But he seems to have some pent-up feelings which he couldn't release just by fooling and playing around. In addition to Kobata and me was Kitamoto Testsuyu who was then the head of a yakuza syndicate affiliated with Yamaguchi-gumi. The police used to call this trio "Fushimi's three evils". We were completely free to do anything we liked, especially Kobata and I did not belong to any organization that would have bound us to refrain from what we said and did.
One day Kobata and I were idling away in one Fushimi coffee shop when Kobata said on a sharp note "Look at that!. It's a creditors' meeting they are doing over there." I looked at what he motioned to with his chin and saw a reception set up at the doorstep of a major local company with some law firm clerks or yakuza who looked familiar milling about.
"Ya, it sure is a creditors' meeting. I know that company went bust, but didn't know that they are having the creditors' meeting today. But it would hurt our reputation if we let them do as they please in our territory. It really pisses me off. Let's get out of this fucking dumps and wreck it."
"Why shouldn't we? Are you set?"
The next moment, Kobata was already charging for the company, looking vivid, not looking glum any more as he had been just a moment ago. Slender Kobata was dressed in a sermon pink double suit while I, a chubby man, was wearing a dark color suit. The atmosphere around the reception got suddenly tense as they saw the strange duo. This reaction was not surprising at all because we were so well known. In this way I broke into the liquidation adjustment meeting. Going bankrupt means going through carnage. Creditors, yakuza, and professional liquidation men throng to the place, elbowing their way to the dead flesh to devour it like so many hyenas or vultures swooping down on it. It was a really Darwinian world where nothing is prohibited. It's free for all. Fraud, extortion, abduction, anything goes there, including murder or suicide. I have attended such meeting many times as a creditor to find to my surprise that a president of a company in an honest business turns into a completely different swearing old man saying, "If you can't pay me back, kill yourself to apologize." It's a capitalism logic and desire itself condensed into one picture.
"Can I see your permit?" said a clerk at the reception. How could we have had anything like a permit as we were not creditors or anything? We said, "What the hell are you talking about? "There is nothing you got coming out this fucking meeting, is there? Or are you saying you gonna pay me back if I show you anything like that?" Hearing us saying this, a young member from the yakuza that was there for liquidation job came forward and said "Sorry. Come right in."
We stepped into a large room full of creditors with the meeting already under way, roars of anger here and there flying across the room. Everybody had his eyes bloodshot as it was their critical moment where it would be decided whether they could get their money back or not. We made it through such a crowd and seated ourselves in the first row. Right in front of us were the president, a lawyer for the failed company explaining, all looking stiff, often interrupted by some creditors roaring "Pay my money back." "How are you gonna take responsibility for this?" Hearing all these exchanges for a while, all of a sudden, Kobata blasted out to the creditor that had been roaring the noisiest. "Shut your fucking mouth! How much do you claim against him?" That roaring man, asked a question by a man who could easily give himself away as a playboy, got upset and bewildered when he answered "3 million yen." Next moment, Kobata roared at him, looking as if he were the biggest creditor, saying, "You asshole! You can't talk big over chicken feed like 3 million. Get lost!" The man went quiet and looking resentfully at him with upturned eyes
Kobata roared at every single complaining creditor and said, "You are not gonna get your money back if these people go bust. Shut up!" Not so many people seem to understand in the first place that the purpose of such a meeting, or bankruptcy clearance is to decide whether to let the company go bust against the will of the owner or let the owner close down his business at his own will, or voluntarily. It's not a place to indict people for his moral responsibility. Laymen tend to be concerned about morality side of the matter. But they should know addressing the morality side of the matter won't get them anywhere. Kobata kept on roaring and creating an atmosphere that would induce the attendants to work toward the voluntary close-down. But there still remained one creditor insisting on clarifying the accountability.
"I don't wanna waste my time listening to you rabbiting on about nothing."
Kobata hollered at him, and got out of his shoes and hurled them at him with all his might. The pair of expensive shoes worth 300,000 went rolling about the room. At the same time the entire place went quiet. Belching out abusive language, he was quite composed inside as all the real bad guys are. Because it was his calculated act, the shoes he threw did not hit anybody. What he did was actually the common practice used by the one trying to preside over a creditors' meeting. But it usually doesn't work as it did with Kobata.
What he did this time, he hadn't been doing for many years for nothing. He knew exactly what he was doing. But the creditors had no idea of such calculation he was doing, staring at him, scared. Kobata seized this opportunity to forcibly declare the meeting closed, saying, "We have already come to a conclusion. The creditors' meeting is over. You go home now. The creditors, told to go home by the man wearing a gaudy pink suit, left the place reluctantly. Thus Kobata forced upon the creditors a solution in favor of voluntary closed-down, thus saving the face of the yakuza involved in the liquidation job.
Of course, things usually don't go as easy as this. Guns and daggers might have been seen at the corners of the meeting place. Well, they didn't because the yakuza and bankruptcy liquidation people cared about Kobata who was known to the underground worlds in Kyoto or Osaka. I saw one yakuza guy saying, "You saved us. Thank you." I was watching all this, I found his act so superb and so funny that I laughed like I had never before. But what happened afterward was just as funny. Kobata, whom the failed company owed not even a penny, was assigned the highest creditor's position on the creditors' board of directors. I asked him, "How come you got on the board of creditor directors?" "Relax. Don't get so serious." replied Kobata pretending he was not interested. The subsequent liquidation process for the bankrupt company evolved under the initiative of Kobata the way that was so characteristic of him.
It was Kobata's own decision that they were going to the Island of Guam for the creditors' meeting. It's completely up to the one presiding over the meeting to decide where to have it. Kobata called every one of the participants to tell them about his decision. Nobody at the other end of line knew what to say for a while until one said something like:
"G..Guam? Is that the island ...America... Why all the way down to such a place for a creditors' meeting?"
"After all it's all depressing money problems you gotta talk about. You ain't got anything out of putting your heads together in a dark room. Everything will work itself out if we lie leisurely on the beach on a tropical island and talk. Don't you think?
Bring your swimming gear, and a woman, too."
"I've never heard of a creditors' meeting the creditors attend with their women. And among other things, we're gonna go bankrupt, too if we go ahead with such a plan. Don't be so absurd." said one creditor.
It was only Kobata with his woman that went to Guam. The bankruptcy liquidation process went exactly as Kobata dictated right to the end. Indeed, it turned out to be so outrageous.
I kept on living life in the fast lane and as a "toppa" man until at last I found that Teramura-kensan was having more difficulty raising capital than it once was. It was the trouble I had asked for. But we were to start rolling down the path leading to the hell, bankruptcy.