Lady Joker, Volume 1 by Kaoru Takamura (lightest ebook reader .txt) 📕

was some kind of discrimination in Hinode’s screening process. Although the human resources department had responded to his first letter, the second time he had used the name of the BLL, and so they had left it alone, after which they received this cryptic cassette tape.

The truth was, it took Shiroyama about three seconds to decipher the abbreviation BLL. It took him another minute to understand the point of the story, after which he suspected there must be some kind of mistake. Even if it were true, he settled upon mild wonderment as to why such a matter had made it all the way up to him.

“Here is a transcript of the tape.”

On the first page of the stack of A4-size paper that Tsukamoto presented him were the words: Hinode Beer Company, Kanagawa Factory, To Whom It May Concern. Shiroyama distractedly leafed through the twenty or thirty pages and was shocked to find the date June 1947 on the last page. He quickly turned back to the first page and began scanning through the document.

“We had the Kanagawa factory look into it, and the Seiji Okamura who appears here did in fact leave Hinode in 1947,” Tsukamoto continued. Meanwhile, Shiroayama’s eyes quickly singled out various words from the contents of the pages. Place names from the Tohoku region such as “Hachinohe” and “Herai.” Phrases such as, “someone from a buraku village,” “labor union,” “conflict,” “General Strike of February 1st,” and “discharged.” And finally, “The second convention of the National Committee for Buraku Liberation.” Ah, right, that’s what they used to call themselves, he recalled, but that was the extent of it. He reread the last lines of the transcript of the tape, the whole of which amounted to many pages, but he still could not fathom the intention of the sender.

“Is this all?”

“Yes. Whatever his objective may be, it seems to involve our employment screening process, and since the problem also concerns the reputation of the company, we thought that this decision goes beyond the discretion of the human resources department, including whether to report it to the police or to ignore it. That’s why we are informing you,” Tsukamoto said as he rubbed his hands idly.

“Do we have the original letter that this Okamura sent to the Kanagawa factory?”

“The factory has no way of looking up something from all the way back in 1947, so whether or not such a letter actually existed . . .”

“The father of this student in question, you said he used the name of the BLL in his second letter? Does the sender of the tape identify himself?”

“No. But the labels and postmarks are the same, and according to our investigation, this Seiji Okamura turns out to be a distant relative of the student.”

“Aha . . .” Shiroyama uttered ambiguously, but what was beginning to concern him more were the company’s internal issues that tended to reveal themselves in situations like this. In the first place, what was the general affairs division doing about it, since they were normally expected to handle this type of problem? Moreover, whether this was a general affairs or a human resources issue, Shirai was not the executive in charge. Shiroyama glanced at Shirai as this thought crossed his mind, but Shirai wore an innocuous expression, as if everything had been obvious to him from the beginning.

“I understand the situation,” Shiroyama said again to Tsukamoto. “I will let you know what I decide later. Please see to it in your department that word doesn’t get out about the tape.”

“I will do so.”

With a look that seemed to bemoan what an unlucky day this was, Tsukamoto stood up from his seat and bowed as he left the room. When Shiroyama had joined the company in 1959, Tsukamoto had already been occupying a desk in what was then called the personnel division for quite some time. They hardly had any contact until Tsukamoto became head of the division, but he had settled in at the company—Tsukamoto was a dyed-in-the-wool pencil pusher—and was now a diligent support pillar in the corporate structure. Though the lackluster of this man presented itself as a minor concern for Shiroyama.

On the one hand, Sei’ichi Shirai was an executive both in name and in practice—here was a man who had transformed the company by putting an end to the lockstep and conservative tradition of Hinode’s executive team. His appearance was just as unremarkable as that of Shiroyama, but of the thirty-five board members, Shirai’s keen foresight and ability to get things done was second to none. Ten years ago, when Hinode still had a 60-percent market share, Shirai was already criticizing the beer business’s inefficiency and lack of viability, and its difficulties competing against foreign products. Since then, he had created a diversified, long-term plan that anticipated the future, and as a result of his laying the groundwork for the improvement of Hinode’s stronghold, he now played an integral role on Hinode’s executive team as EVP and head of business development. Shirai’s approach—neither a simple pursuit of profit nor a prosaic philosophy—evaluated corporate activities as a holistic system on a macro level, and in a way, this is what made him a prime example of the management machine. But Shirai possessed something Shiroyama fundamentally lacked, even if they were part of the same management machine, and if Shiroyama were honest with himself, this was a constant source of anxiety. Shirai had spent considerable time living abroad in the US and Europe, and his true worth was his will and the assertiveness with which he made that will known.

Such thoughts now flickered in Shiroyama’s mind as his eyes drifted over the cityscape seen from the large windows on either side of his desk. The commanding view from the thirtieth floor undulated outward, as if the random unevenness of the buildings below had been leveled, and for an instant the wriggling cars and people looked like products rolling along an automated factory line. There were times when Shiroyama looked