Dragon Dance Read online

Page 21


  “That depends on the personality of the individual. Usually we choose something that is as remote from their experience as possible. Last year there was a very shy and timid man whom we sent to join a gang of house-burglars. A tough judoka was sent to work as a hairstylist, and a very proper young lady, one who had been living with her parents all her life, was sent to a topless bar in Roppongi. Others have become garbage collectors, fortune-tellers, factory workers, farmhands, every kind of occupation.”

  The elevator doors opened and Suematsu ushered her inside. Martine wondered how many leadership school students she had unknowingly encountered today. Maybe the homeless guy at the station had been one, or the taxi driver who brought her here, or even the security guy who had ogled her breasts so blatantly.

  “By the way,” said Suematsu, “this is all off the record, of course. We don’t talk to journalists very often.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s too much trouble. They don’t understand what we are doing here.”

  “But don’t some of your graduates go to work in the media?”

  “Oh yes, many of them. Even so, they do not discuss the school. That’s a matter of principle with us.”

  “But you don’t mind talking to me?”

  “In this case you’re an exception.”

  An exception that—from his mournful tone of voice—Suematsu was far from happy to make. Martine wondered what wiles Shiina had used to set up an appointment that was so obviously unwelcome. Or to put it another way, what could have happened to put Professor Suematsu so much in Shiina’s debt.

  The doors of the elevator hissed open, and Suematsu led her down a corridor so gleaming white it looked as if it had been cleaned with toothpaste. At the end of the corridor was Suematsu’s office, a large book-lined room looking out over the mountains. On the wall was a full-length portrait of old man [155] Morikawa, his wizened face glaring down fiercely at the increasingly undiligent and disharmonious world he had left behind.

  Suematsu directed her to an armchair in front of the window, then disappeared into the next room. Martine heard him pick up a phone and bark an order for coffee. She gazed out the window at the thickly forested plain below. A couple of months ago Martine had done a story on that plain. It was a famous location for suicides, with dozens of bodies being discovered each year. In more romantic times the dead were usually heartbroken lovers; now they were unemployed salarymen, debtors on the run from loan sharks and even, increasingly, the sick and senile who had been led into the heart of the forest by their middle-aged children and left behind.

  “So please tell me, Meyer-san—what is the purpose of your inquiries?”

  Suematsu was back, holding a large paper fan bearing the DHD logo which he flapped vigorously in front of his glistening face.

  “I’m here for some background research. I’m interested in the role of the Morikawa school in the current political turmoil.”

  “How do you know the school has any role?”

  “It’s common knowledge that many of Japan’s most promising young politicians are graduates of the Morikawa school. Nobody pays much attention because they are spread across various different parties and factions and they have no record of working together. Until now, that is.”

  Suematsu’s fan flapped a little more slowly. “Please continue.”

  “My information is that the Morikawa group of Diet members is preparing to join a distinct political unit—a new party led by a certain political celebrity.”

  Suematsu leaned back in his chair, his eyes narrowed to a glimmer. “You have some interesting information,” he murmured.

  “Thank you,” said Martine, radiating humility. “Though I must say it struck me as rather a strange combination.”

  “Strange? Why strange?”

  “Because Morikawa people are supposed to be elite technocrats, believers in economic efficiency and technological progress. This celebrity is a populist with fairly extreme, some would say unbalanced, ideas.”

  “In a time of national crisis all ideas must be considered, even the unbalanced ones.”

  “Even burning passports and taxing foreign luxury goods? Are those kind of measures going to create an economic recovery?”

  A ghost of a smile passed over Suematsu’s face. “Not by themselves of course, but that is not the purpose. You cannot have economic recovery without a recovery in national morale and self-respect.”

  “So that is Nozawa’s role—to get the public excited while you technocrats do all the serious stuff?”

  [156] “That’s one way of thinking about it.”

  “It isn’t the way that Nozawa thinks.”

  “Perhaps not. But he is a sincere man who wants whatever is best for national recovery.”

  “Though what he thinks is best and what you think may be rather different.”

  “My views are well known to everyone. Japan needs to spend much more on technological research, according to clear guidelines set out by the government. We shouldn’t be wasting money on luxury goods, whether foreign-made or homemade. We should be investing all we can in the future competitiveness of our industries. In that respect I can find many points of agreement with the views of Nozawa-sensei.”

  Martine nodded. The creation of an American-style military-industrial complex occupying a good-sized slice of GNP—no doubt Suematsu and Nozawa would see eye to eye on that too.

  “Still, isn’t it a rather risky strategy?”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, Nozawa isn’t exactly a disciple of the Morikawa philosophy of harmony and discipline. What happens if you can’t control him?”

  Suematsu was fanning his face faster now, head cocked as the breeze ruffled his mop of white hair. “This is all hypothetical,” he said. “Who knows what will happen anyway? There’s a proverb that says, ‘In the world of politics one step ahead is darkness.’ Have you heard that one before?”

  Martine nodded. She caught the change of tone at once. Suematsu had said all he was prepared to say, and the rest of the conversation would be on a different level of disclosure.

  And so it proved. Suematsu went on to discuss the structure of research funding, the meaning of national pride, and old man Morikawa’s views on excessive individuality. Martine tried to steer him back to the subject of Nozawa and his policy plans, but with no success. Suematsu had reverted to the role of a dedicated scientist with little interest in any other subject. The interview dragged on for another half an hour, but as far as Martine was concerned it was already over.

  As Suematsu led her back down the pristine white corridor, Martine glanced at the photographs lining the wall. They commemorated the graduating classes of the last thirty years or so—ninety percent male, and one hundred percent fresh-faced, eager-eyed, and glowing with patriotic fervor. Suematsu appeared in most of them, standing with the other faculty members behind the rows of students on benches, his mournful features gazing owlishly at the camera. Martine paused to stare at the last photo in the series.

  “What you see there is the future,” said the real Suematsu from over her [157] shoulder. “These youngsters will be the leaders forty, fifty years from now.”

  But Martine’s eyes were not on the students. She was staring at the partially obscured face of the man standing next to Suematsu.

  “Isn’t that Yasuo Shimizu, the management consultant?”

  Suematsu nodded. “Yes, that’s right. He’s a part-time lecturer here. He teaches a course on information technology and globalization.”

  There was something in Suematsu’s voice that suggested that neither Shimizu nor the subjects he taught met with his approval.

  “Is he a graduate of the school too?”

  “He is not a graduate,” said Suematsu brusquely. He turned toward the elevator and pressed the call button.

  “So how did he come to be appointed to the faculty?”

  “As I remember, he more or less appointed himself. After all, he is deputy chairma
n of the governing board.”

  Martine blinked in surprise. A slick-talking management consultant in his late forties lording it over a faculty of crusty old academics like Suematsu—that kind of generational leapfrog would be a surprise anywhere in Japan, let alone in a school dedicated to the values of social discipline and harmony.

  “And how did Shimizu come to be appointed deputy chairman?”

  Suematsu looked puzzled by the question. “How? Through family connections, of course.”

  The elevator doors opened, and Suematsu gestured for her to step inside. Martine stayed where she was, holding the door open with her hand.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Whose family connections?”

  “Didn’t you know? Shimizu is married to the great-granddaughter of Soichiro Morikawa. He is the family’s representative here. Now I’m sorry, Meyer-san, but I have some examination papers to mark.”

  Martine stepped into the elevator and the doors closed on Suematsu’s frowning face. So Shimizu was actually a member of the Morikawa family! That explained everything. Martine had always suspected he was a conduit for someone else’s ideas. Now she was positive.

  The senior Morikawa people must have been planning this for years. They had planted Shimizu in Nozawa’s political office, and plugged him into the Morikawa network of bureaucrats, media people, and businessmen. Meanwhile, they would be busily fanning the fires of Nozawa’s popularity. Then when the time was right—and that looked like now—their political representatives would come out into the open and join hands with Nozawa, professing great admiration and total agreement with everything he said. They would ride the wave all the way to political power, and then ... And then what? And then they wouldn’t need him any more. They would ally themselves with whichever of the mainstream factions accepted their terms, which [158] would no doubt include a major share of the expanding defense budget for the Morikawa group. Forget about the stagnation of the market for consumer electronics. Here was a huge new opportunity that would continue growing for decades. It was neat. It was devious. It fitted together like a jigsaw.

  It was mid-afternoon by the time her train rolled into the station. The security alert had been lifted—no nail bomb hidden in a trash bin, no beer bottle spewing out nerve gas—and everything was back to normal. That was typical of this crisis. It had a strange ability to switch itself on and off, to make you forget it even existed. You would be strolling through a prosperous part of the city, watching housewives shopping and school kids laughing, and the world would seem as orderly and benign as it had ever been and all thoughts of misery and damage would be like a bad dream that dissolves in the morning sunshine. Then you would see a homeless man slumped in a doorway, barking out a tubercular cough. Or a phone booth covered in stickers advertising child prostitutes. Or you would pick up a newspaper and get hit by the bad things happening everywhere, more and more each day—the stuff you didn’t want to know but couldn’t help absorbing, those fragments of crisis that lodged themselves deep in your soul.

  Martine didn’t go directly to the Tribune bureau; instead she stopped off at the office of McCallum, one of the best-known management consultancies in the world. Her contact there was the head of the Tokyo office, a jovial bear of a man called Haruki Kaneda. They had first met by chance in a karaoke bar in Nagoya. Kaneda loved singing karaoke, as well as guzzling whiskey, telling dirty jokes, playing pachinko, and slurping down spicy noodles, all of which they had both done to excess that night. Kaneda also had a doctorate in nuclear physics from MIT and was an accomplished classical violinist.

  They met in his office, which was lined with pictures he had painted, photos of himself with various global leaders, and bookcases filled with his own books. Kaneda was not a modest man. He took a childlike delight in his own achievements that would have been intolerable in anyone who lacked his generosity, humor, and restless energy.

  “Tell me what you want to know,” said Kaneda, leaning back in his revolving chair, his huge hands wrapped behind his thick neck.

  “What makes you think I want to know anything?”

  “You journalists are one-pattern people. You’re always after information that you’re not supposed to have.”

  “It’s our job. We can’t help it.”

  “So what’s the subject this time?”

  “Management consultancy, actually. I thought that you’d be the best person to ask.”

  “I’m the only person to ask. Nobody else in this country really understands [159] the dilemma of modern management. It’s all analyzed in my latest book. Have you read it yet?”

  Kaneda was waving a hand at a bookshelf containing copies of his latest book in half-a-dozen different languages.

  “Of course,” said Martine, as convincingly as she could. “It’s fascinating stuff, the best management book in years. But the kind of analysis I’m looking for is not quite so theoretical. I need your professional opinion on a certain person.”

  “Which person?”

  “Yasuo Shimizu.”

  “Hah!” Kaneda rocked forward on his chair, slapping the palms of his hands on his knees. Martine knew that the two men were arch rivals, as different in personality as they were in appearance. Kaneda was a bear, heavy-handed, gruff, and totally straightforward in everything he did and said. Shimizu was more like a Siamese cat, slender, elliptical, and impossible to read.

  “First of all, how do you rate him as a management consultant?”

  “Hmm ... that depends on your perspective. His writing is frankly banal, just a mixture of other people’s concepts thrown together and spiced up with fashionable jargon. It’s like a bowl of sukiyaki without any meat. On the other hand, he’s a brilliant salesman, with a top-class record of bringing in business.”

  “Presumably he’s got the companies in the Morikawa group locked up tight.”

  “Of course. His first big contract was developing an overseas production strategy for Morikawa Electric. That was when he was with Byrne and Company. When they saw the size of the contract, they had no choice but to make him a partner straightaway. Then a few months later he announced he was going to marry the granddaughter of old man Morikawa. That’s what we call getting close to the customer!” Kaneda gave a throaty chuckle. It was obvious that he didn’t take Shimizu too seriously.

  “So his success was based on personal connections?”

  “At first, yes. But soon he was winning new contracts from all sorts of companies outside the Morikawa group. Without him, Byrne and Company would never have gotten so big in Japan. You can see that now. As soon as he went independent, their share of the market collapsed.”

  Martine nodded. She couldn’t help wondering what proportion of these new contracts had been allocated by anonymous graduates of the Morikawa school, occupying management positions across the industrial spectrum.

  “And what do you think about this venture into politics? Do you think it will work?”

  Kaneda shook his huge head. “From a theoretical point of view, I’ve got serious doubts. What Shimizu is attempting is a classic brand crossover, and nowadays this rarely works. Markets have become too dynamic. You may get [160] a big short-term impact, but the brand value decreases as you lose focus. As a long-term strategy it doesn’t make sense.”

  “So what would you suggest?”

  “A brand overhaul, aimed at forging a new emotional bond with the market. Instead of just exploiting the old image of Nozawa the singer, I would make people respond to him in a completely different way. You have to be ruthless in marketing these days, Meyer-san. In order to build a new image, you have to kill the old one.”

  Kaneda’s eyes were gleaming with enthusiasm. There was a serious risk that once he got onto this kind of subject you would never get him off.

  “Very interesting,” said Martine. “Thank you for all your help.”

  “All this is explained in detail in my new book. By the way, your review will be appearing soon in the Tribune, I suppose.”


  Martine smiled sweetly and rose to her feet. This was definitely the time to leave.

  An ordinary day in an ordinary suburb of an ordinary town. A thick-necked young cop sat dozing in his police box, exhausted after a full night’s work moonlighting as an enforcer for a loan-sharking company. A gaggle of middle school girls were squatting on the station steps, waiting for their customers to lead them to the cut-price love hotels lining the backstreets. A guy with a crewcut sat in his car, reading a manga magazine and listening to an old Nozawa song on the radio.

  Outside the “50 yen” shop a man in a bow tie and tuxedo—stifling hot in this weather!—was yelling through a megaphone, frantically trying to drum up custom for the bargains on offer. At the bus stop an elderly man stood gazing into space, exactly as he had been for the past four hours. The electroluminescent tattoo on his forehead flashed brightly enough to be read from five yards away—“Noodle Heaven—all you can eat for ¥200!” Three steps closer and you’d be able to smell the alcohol, the only payment he got from Noodle Heaven for his work as a human advertisement.

  On the other side of the street was a more expensive advertisement—a huge poster of Tsuyoshi Nozawa, three stories tall, wearing his headband and construction-worker trousers, his naked chest rippling as he held up a carton of fruit juice.

  “Made with Tohoku’s Most Delicious Apples,” ran the slogan. “Not a Single Imported Drop!”

  In a side street adjacent to the bankrupt Mitsukawa department store was [161] parked a small white van. According to the logo on the side, it was the property of the maintenance division of NTKDI, the telecommunications monopoly that had recently been taken back into public ownership. A few hours ago two men in NTKDI uniforms had climbed the fire escape at the back of the department store, lugging a huge box of communications equipment. They had climbed all the way to the roof, host to an array of cellular base-stations. Without these base-stations, the cop would not be able to get his latest instructions from the loan-shark people, the middle school girls would not be able to communicate with their salarymen customers, and the guy with a crewcut sitting in his car would not be able to market his portfolio of designer drugs to the middle school girls. The proper maintenance of the base-stations was vital to the town’s economy.