Finally, he picked up a binder of fax messages and unfolded one. There, in a rushed hand, were the words: I’m coming home today. Now that you’re back with Mother and Brother, please get some rest—Shoko. This message had been sent from London by his daughter, who worked as a trader for Morgan. Concerned about whether it would be all right for her to leave her post at the opening of the market on a Monday—had it been the weekend, that would have been another story—Shiroyama quickly refolded his daughter’s fax.
Just then, he heard a knock and Ms. Nozaki came in, carrying a tray with his light supper. In addition to the food, there was a small bottle of Hinode Meister and a single pilsner glass on the tray. Had his secretary been one who enjoyed a sip of alcohol every so often, he would have offered her a glass, too, but after twenty years at a beer company, Ms. Nozaki still could not tolerate a single drop of beer.
“The executive chef sends his regards.”
With that, Ms. Nozaki left him, and Shiroyama looked down at the tray she had set on his side desk. The meal had been prepared in the beer restaurant on the fortieth floor, and it was Shiroyama’s favorite. Ordinarily the salted pork was simmered in white wine with sauerkraut and Irish Cobbler potatoes, but the chef had omitted the bones from the pork for Shiroyama. The small helping of pristine white sauerkraut with juniper berries, piping hot potato, and green beans sautéed in butter and still steaming in a Meissen dish were served in the same way, and in the same portion as always.
Shiroyama poured the cold Hinode Meister into the glass. At first he poured it somewhat quickly to get the bubbles going, then more slowly as if to let the foam rise, until the amber-colored beer was capped off with a picture-perfect, three-centimeter head, and he stared at it for a minute. Shiroyama did not necessarily dwell on the fact that the beer itself was being held for ransom, but still, instead of reaching for the glass, he began with the sauerkraut.
Just as he had taken a bite of the potato, he heard Ms. Nozaki’s voice over the intercom, announcing that Shirai and Kurata were here to consult with him ahead of the stockholders’ meeting. Shiroyama reasoned that meeting with two vice presidents at once would save him time, so he told her to let them through, and they appeared about two minutes later.
“Please, please—finish your meal. It’s nothing formal we need to talk about,” Shirai said as he strode in at his usual hurried pace. Shiroyama, nevertheless, rose from his chair, bowed his head to the two of them, and felt the need to apologize again. “I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused.”
“Nonsense. First see that you get plenty to eat. We’ll just sit ourselves down,” Shirai said as he brought in a chair for himself, and Kurata followed suit.
“I remember that’s your favorite.” Shirai remarked about Shiroyama’s meal, demonstrating that he could afford to make small talk. Kurata, for this part, wore a peculiar aloof expression that was even more inscrutable than usual, as if he had tucked away the anguish that had been on display first thing that morning at the Fujiyoshida Police Department. This disturbed Shiroyama, but when he considered that he himself did not present the appearance of a victim, either, he had no choice but to accept their mutual deception.
“Shiroyama-san. Over these last three days, the executives have reacted to your abduction in many different ways, but personally I think this is a prime opportunity to shake up the board.” Before Shirai could get any further, Kurata interjected, “Before that, why don’t we share with him what the various reactions were?”
Kurata did not so much as change his expression, but the unexpected retort made Shiroyama pause his fork in midair. Shiroyama could not tell immediately whether the remark was sarcastic or the wayward manifestation of a personal grudge, but it was an unprecedented and uncharacteristic utterance coming from Kurata the torpedo.
A flicker of annoyance passed over Shirai’s eyes. “Each person’s reaction? I said fuck it and you said shit.” His casual deflection quickly mended any rift between the two men. Kurata responded with a short bark of laughter, which startled Shiroyama again. Shiroyama had never heard Kurata laugh this way before, but before he could doubt his ears, the burst of sound and any accompanying facial expression had already passed.
“Shiroyama-san, I can afford to tell you this now, but we didn’t expect you to return so soon. We discussed the maximum amount we could pay if we received a demand for ransom, and even how we would prepare for a company funeral, if worse came to worst. Indeed, things were said that might make you faint.”
Shirai made a showcase of himself, laughing loudly. These wisecracks were laced with his trademark venom, but they were also a means of evading and assuaging the unbearable truth—as well as a calculated tactic to gauge Shiroyama’s reaction before deciding how best to broach the real topic. Shiroyama offered only a bitter laugh in response and went back to eating the potato, which he had mashed with his fork.
Meanwhile, Seigo Kurata had suddenly for some reason begun to seem like a stranger to Shiroyama. Kurata’s face, which after fifty-five years had not lost its good looks, was impassive. Shiroyama imagined that Kurata was either in a daze following three straight days of anxiety or perhaps had experienced some sort of recalibration. Shiroyama felt bewildered, as if the pillar of support on which he had always relied had vanished from before his eyes, and all at once, he saw a flickering image of Kurata’s face from thirty years ago.
Back in 1965, Shiroyama had been appointed manager of the First Sales Division of Hinode’s Yokohama branch, which was where he first met Seigo Kurata, three years his junior. Kurata was already the kind of man who didn’t give a damn about the appeal of Hinode’s products, which at the time already dominated the market. When a colleague remarked that Hinode’s product had sold ten thousand cases, Kurata would reply that a competitor’s product had sold five thousand cases and would then provide an analysis as to why it had managed to sell that many. Everything Kurata did was out of the ordinary. To increase his monthly sales figures, he upped the percentage of the rebate and worked aggressively with their distributors, and in order to further boost their products in the marketplace, he went around with employees from the distributor in order to negotiate directly with liquor stores and bars. He even worked as a salesperson in stores, and if there was product he failed to sell, he would come retrieve whatever inventory was left, put the beer back into his truck, and transport it to a regional area with a less substantial sales network. After delivering one case at a time as samples to smaller, less successful distributors, he would liquidate the rest by selling them to a discounter, and only return once his truck was completely empty.
Kurata was still in his twenties back then, but he had two small children to feed, having gotten married when he was a student. One summer day, Kurata explained that his wife was at the hospital about to deliver their third child, and he piled his other two children into the truck loaded with unsold beers from the distributor, saying, “Well, I’ll be off then.” He did not return for three whole days. On the fourth day he finally called and told Shiroyama that he had met with the young owner of a sake wholesaler who, despite having a liquor license, was thinking of shuttering the business after the previous owner had passed; Kurata had convinced him instead to become a distributor for Hinode. He then said that he had persuaded Hinode’s Fukui branch to sign an official distributor contract, and managed to start things off by selling them the fifty cases of beer left in his truck at wholesale. Shiroyama would never forget how nonchalantly Kurata had recounted it all.
That was the kind of man Kurata was. He used whatever means necessary to make a sale, always taking responsibility for the numbers he did sell; what was more, he grasped the larger picture of the sales business to expand their network and improve figures, going beyond individual performance. Everyone took notice of Kurata and his abilities, but within Hinode’s antiquated corporate environment his personnel reviews were rather low. It could have been that Kurata’s service as
first responder to customer complaints since early on in his career had an unfairly negative effect. Shiroyama was aware that he was the first man to capitalize on, deploy, value, rely upon, and nurture Kurata’s talents.
When he was promoted he made sure to recommend Kurata as his second-in-command, and when he was transferred he pushed for Kurata to be his successor. Even as he worked to keep the peace around him, he had continued to support Kurata both publicly and privately because he believed that not valuing Kurata’s business acumen would be a loss for the company. In the time since the two of them had taken on managerial positions, Kurata had never disappointed Shiroyama’s expectations, and as others gradually came to accept him, the dominion of the Shiroyama and Kurata partnership took hold.
But times had changed. Kurata’s corporate view was conservative, even compared to Shiroyama’s—which perhaps could not be helped so long as the manufacturing industry remained as it was—but the gaps in Kurata’s capacities as a manager, especially in contrast with someone like Sei’ichi Shirai, had now become all too evident. Kurata was still preoccupied with increasing sales month-to-month, while Shirai, on the other hand, had been assessing the profitability of their company based on its return on shareholders’ equity, declaring stagnant growth for the future of the process industry and spearheading the charge toward diversification. Now that producing and distributing beer out of their own company factory was the direction the manufacturing industry was inevitably heading, it was apparent which of these corporate views should take the lead for the betterment of Hinode’s future. Shirai was handicapped by his age—he was fifty-nine now—but he was more than capable of carrying on for a few more years.
And yet, it goes without saying that the transformation of the future would not happen without those who could increase profits in the present, and did not change the fact that the beer business would remain the foundation of their company. With his steady performance, Kurata’s power was as immense as ever, and precisely what gave rise to the petty swirl of personal emotions within the other departments. Over the last five years, Shiroyama had managed to keep them sufficiently balanced, but when it came down to it there was no middle ground in any matter, and he was well aware that with every decision he made he was sowing the seeds of personal grudges. He didn’t know how much those seeds had grown, but whatever dissatisfaction sprouted would obviously be directed toward Kurata, as the one in line under Shiroyama. And Shiroyama was painfully aware that when an unexpected incident such as this occurred—one that could undermine the fate of the company—those internal anxieties and concerns must have all been leveled at Kurata.
Yet even this did not account for Kurata’s current behavior. Previously, Kurata would have quickly suppressed the movements of any executives who seemed restive, then would have acted as if nothing had happened; or he would allow them to rebel and use that as an excuse to quash them, again pretending as if nothing had happened; or perhaps he would feign indifference and maneuver his way through them—in any case, he would never have allowed any sign of discord to reach Shiroyama. Instead, he would have run interference on any such strife, proclaiming to Shiroyama that he should not trouble himself with these matters, that he should instead focus on managing the company. But here Kurata was tonight, suggesting that Shirai share what the executives had been saying in Shiroyama’s absence.
Shiroyama could not imagine that Kurata would ever defect, but he now had to consider that Kurata’s devotion—in which Shiroyama had placed his trust completely over the past thirty years, and his loyalty to the company that sustained it—might be suffering from systematic fatigue.
In particular, after everyone else had proved incompetent in the company’s dealings with corporate extortionists, Kurata alone had served as liaison with the Okada Association, reluctantly but diligently. By circumventing the official channel of general affairs, this tacitly presented the arrangement as a fait accompli created by the merciless corporate logic that, should it become necessary, any legal questioning would be contained to a single executive. Shiroyama could only describe Kurata’s motive for carrying such a burden on his own as single-minded devotion to the company, but even devotion had its limits, he presumed.
It wasn’t hard to imagine that when they learned of their president’s kidnapping, everyone in the company guessed it was at the hand of the Okada Association and had focused their criticism on Kurata, wondering what he had been doing all along. For now the only three people who knew that Okada, with whom they had severed ties two years ago with a billion-yen settlement, had reappeared this year to demand that the company purchase land in Gunma prefecture were Shiroyama, Kurata, and Shirai, but no doubt Kurata must have received the most shock upon hearing the news of the president’s kidnapping. It had been readily apparent—from the expression on Kurata’s face at the Fujiyoshida Police Department—that he was feeling nothing but regret for devoting so much of his life to dealing with the underworld. When push came to shove, all the company did was place blame rather than show any appreciation for Kurata’s years of hard work.
There was nothing strange about a certain disenchantment toward the company taking root in Kurata’s mind—even when Shiroyama had seen the photo of his niece handed over by the criminals, he had not wasted any time thinking about why he should die for the sake of the company. Nevertheless, as Shiroyama beheld this transformation in the man who had been his partner for thirty years, he experienced the fleeting sensation that the ground was giving way beneath his feet. He was filled with a sense of private defeat, one that was wholly new and unexpected to him. Since being abducted, he had spent time contemplating all manner of things, but his mind could never have fathomed such a change in Kurata. And yet, recalling the vexation evident in Kurata’s profile that long-ago summer day as he drove off in his truck with his two small children, Shiroyama wondered if this unfamiliar side of Kurata had existed since then.
As Shiroyama felt the foundation that had supported him at Hinode for thirty years beginning to shift under him, his thoughts returned to the ripple effect of this incident, which could not simply be resolved with backroom deals. Shiroyama had no choice but to believe that Kurata would not betray him. As he tucked away the premonition that he might not be able to trust the man in the future, a fresh sense of isolation came over him.
Shiroyama put down his fork, picked up the glass he had left untouched, and took a sip of Hinode Meister. A third of the board members had expressed concern that development of the Meister would only hasten their lager’s sinking sales. Since he had ultimately overruled them and decided to forge ahead with the new product, he reminded himself that it behooved him to drink it—no matter the circumstances. He faced the two vice presidents sitting before him.
“The chairman already went over the difficulty of the situation, so I’m prepared. I’m going to tell you two what really happened before anyone else, so please, I need to ask you to take the lead at the board meeting,” Shiroyama began.
“Kurata-kun and I are both ready for that—it’s why we’re here now. By the way, Shiroyama-san, the evening paper said something about six hundred million . . .” Shirai said, getting straight to the heart of the matter.
“Six hundred million is incorrect. That’s not the amount—the sum that the crime group demanded is two billion.” Shiroyama watched both pairs of eyes grow large as the two men took in this number, then continued before he himself had a chance to hesitate. “I don’t know why, but the crime group gave me the preemptive instruction to tell the police that their demand was for six hundred million.”
“We were thinking six hundred million wasn’t so bad, but two billion is a lot,” Shirai muttered.
“I didn’t tell the police this, but the reason the crime group let me go was so that I could accurately convey their demand and to take preparations to make the payment. The criminals said that their hostage is the beer. Three-and-a-half million kiloliters of it.”
“Our beer . . . ?” Shirai and Kurata simultaneously cried out in shock, and they both glanced at the small bottle of Hinode Meister on Shiroyama’s side desk. Shirai shrugged, as if he had no words to express how he felt. Kurata, meanwhile, frowned deeply, his furious expression much easier to read than his previous mien.
“Shiroyama-san,” Shirai said. “I’ll ask you point-blank: Is the criminals’ demand for money directed at you personally or at Hinode Beer—which is it?”
“Hinode Beer. That is beyond a doubt.”
“Did they say why they’ve targeted Hinode?”
“No. Aside from their demand for two billion, and that they would make contact before Golden Week, they said nothing else, nor did they answer any of my questions. They were completely unyielding. Truly.”
“So, are you saying they did not mention the matter with that student named Hatano and your niece?”
“No.”
“What about the land in Gunma prefecture?”
“Nothing of the sort was mentioned.”
“I see . . . Kurata-kun also claims that Okada and the Seiwakai are not involved, so that means at this point, we really don’t know why Hinode has been targeted.”
“It appears so.”
“Well then, if the beer is the hostage, then there’s only one thing the board has to decide,” Kurata began. “We’ll prepare the necessary materials for the board members to determine whether or not we should negotiate.”
“That’s no good, Kurata-kun,” Shirai immediately objected. “The executives have different crisis mentalities, so if you mention negotiating straightaway it will only trigger a negative reaction. Our first priority is to make sure that every member recognizes—definitively and without any misunderstanding—that the beer has been taken hostage. Shiroyama-san, if possible it would be best for you to explain this yourself. If the beer is the hostage, then obviously we must assume there will be attacks on our products.”
Lady Joker, Volume 1 Page 48