LITMIR.BIZ

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There were to be no surprises and no introduction of brand-new information. But at first I didn’t know that.

      At the very first department heads meeting I attended, all I had to do was to stand up and introduce myself. That went fairly well. At the second meeting, though, I got a little carried away and got into trouble. Some of the international business had been handled by Tokuma Shoten executives. There was a group of them who took on whatever project came up that didn’t fit into another category or that no one else wanted to deal with. The people in charge of the various foreign projects were more than happy to turn them over to me. One of the more senior generalists, a man named Ohtsuka-san, had been assigned to be my in-house Tokuma liaison (probably because Tokuma-shacho didn’t trust Suzuki-san to be my only mentor). Ohtsuka-san had been in charge of Korea. There was a Korean company that Tokuma did various kinds of business with, and Ohtsuka-san wanted me to meet its chairman and take over the business relationship.

      Ohtsuka-san had arranged for the first face-to-face meeting with the chairman of the Korean company to take place over dinner. The dinner was scheduled at 4 in the afternoon in a fairly expensive sushi restaurant in nearby Higashi Ginza. I thought it was odd that a dinner would be scheduled so early and wondered if the sushi restaurant would even be open then. I went to the appointed place at the appointed time and was introduced to the head of the Korean company, Chairman Wook of Daigen Communications (we always referred to him as the Kaicho). After ordering beer, Ohtsuka-san downed his as soon as it arrived and then, to my astonishment, stood up, gave a curt bow, and just left.

      For the next three and a half hours over sushi and beer, Wook-kaicho explained to me everything I didn’t know about the film business in Korea. Most of what I didn’t know had to do with the historical relationship between Korea and Japan. It was illegal to screen Japanese films in Korea, partly because of the lingering animosity felt by many Koreans toward Japan after WWII, but also due to economic protectionism. Korea wanted its own film industry to flourish, and Japanese films, popular with Korean young people, were a threat.

      The ban on Japanese films was gradually being loosened, but only for Japanese live-action films. The ban on animated films was less likely to be lifted, because of the many indigenous fledgling Korean animation studios and the fact that animated films were watched by children. After a good deal of expensive lobbying by companies like Daigen that wanted to import Japanese animation, the only exception the Korean lawmakers would concede was for films that had won major international awards. Theatrical distribution would be allowed for those films but not TV broadcast or video sales.

      Wook-kaicho explained that there were Korean businessmen and a few Korean politicians who were actively campaigning to reverse this unnecessary remnant from another era, and that things were changing and certainly would change in the near future. Soon, he said, all Japanese live-action films would be allowed in and the ban on airing them on TV would be lifted. The ban on animated films and TV shows would remain in place for a while, but it was only a matter of time before that too would be lifted.

      I asked the Kaicho how he knew the Korean government would lift the ban. He leaned in closely and spoke in a low voice. “We know the people who make these decisions,” he said. “We have ways to influence them.”

      “You mean bribes?” I asked.

      He leaned back, picked up his glass, and had another sip of beer.

      “I know for a fact that the ban will be lifted by the end of this year,” he said.

      “What is it you want me to do?” I asked.

      The Kaicho’s problem was that he had been a very early supporter of Ghibli films. He had entered into a ten-year license contract to distribute the films in Korea. The end of his contract was fast approaching. The contract stipulated that if the ban on Japanese animated films was still in place when the contract expired, Daigen would lose the large minimum guarantee it had paid up front to Tokuma for the Korean rights to the films. Ten years had nearly passed. The ban had not been lifted. The Kaicho wanted me to extend the license for another ten years for free. “I know politicians. I’m spending money. I promise you the ban will be lifted by the end of the year. I guarantee it,” he said.

      At the next department heads meeting when it was my turn to speak I announced that the longstanding Korean ban on animated films was about to be lifted. My statement was met with a tsunami of uproarious laughter. Waves and waves of it washed over me. Tokuma-shacho turned to me and in an almost kindly, grandfatherly voice said, “Ah, you’ve been talking to Wook-kaicho. You see Arubahto-san (Mr. Tokuma could never pronounce my name correctly), Wook-kaicho has been coming to Tokyo twice a year for the last ten years telling us exactly the same thing. We believed him at first too. The ban won’t be lifted any time soon, no matter what he tells you.”

      And of course, it was not.

      In addition to standing up to speak at the department heads meeting, every month each department head was required to make a short speech in front of a large group representing the roughly thirteen hundred employees of the Tokuma Group. The meeting took place in the Tokuma Shoten Building’s in-house theater, Tokuma Hall. Each department head in turn mounted the big stage and addressed the three hundred assembled employees. The prospect of speaking in Japanese on stage in front of a large auditorium full of people terrified me, and it happened once a month.

      I knew I would always be the third speaker. After Tokuma-shacho himself and just after Suzuki-san. Tokuma-shacho was a consummate performer. His speech would always be in equal measure topical, thought-provoking, humorous, and altogether relevant. It was delivered in the booming, stentorian tones of an accomplished stage actor, but also dropped to a coarse and earthy intimacy as required. He could be grandfatherly and wise or thundering and angry, or very, very funny. Of course, almost everything he said was completely made up and most of it untrue, and his audience stayed riveted to his every word. He was a really good public speaker.

      Then Mr. Tokuma’s protégé Toshio Suzuki would stand up and speak. Usually Suzuki was even better than Tokuma-shacho. Suzuki’s speeches had the same qualities, and what he lacked in gravelly tone and the mellowness of age he made up for in the sharpness of his wit and the fact that his content wasn’t made up. What he said was clear, concise, and unobvious. He often said out loud what others were only thinking. He had a good strong speaking voice. He was also a really good public speaker.

      These are the two guys I followed when it was my turn to speak.

      The only way I could deliver a speech in Japanese was to practice it beforehand. I would write out what I wanted to say and then I would translate it into Japanese. Then I would show my Japanese translation to someone and make sure there were no obvious translation errors. And then, on the day I had to deliver this speech, I would spend the entire morning and early afternoon in the bayside park inside Hama Rikyu that was a five-minute walk from the Tokuma Shoten Building. I chose a secluded part of the park and spent hours there memorizing my speech and practicing its delivery out loud. I suppose if it had ever rained on the day of the speech I would have had to cancel it and go into hiding.

      With nothing in my head but my speech, I would return to Tokuma Hall and take my front row seat next to the Tokuma Japan Communications starlet of the month. Tokuma Japan Communications was the music division of the Tokuma Group. They represented many talented and even occasionally very successful musicians, and also some who sold CDs based on how good they looked on the CD’s cover. New, young, female artists were introduced to the company at the monthly meetings.

      For some reason, usually sitting next to me as I awaited my turn to take the stage was the newest of Tokuma Japan Communication’s starlets. Typically she was a girl of about sixteen with an adult woman’s body that was more or less contained in an attention-getting mini-skirt and abbreviated top. Before the speeches began, her name was announced and she stood up, teetered on her vertiginous platform heels, and turned to nod, jiggle, and wave to the audience. Upon seeing her move at close range, parts of my speech would suddenly disappear from my memory. For some reason, these young women always made me think of evolution, biology, and natural selection. Even a gigantic dinosaur could function with a brain the size of a peanut.

      Tokuma’s

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