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

visiting clients—to the point that, even now just standing on the grass, his feet hurt a little.

“The long-range forecast predicted that this summer will be extremely hot,” the president of Sato Transport called out to the two men from the distributors.

“Yes. Things being what they are, all we can do is pray for good weather,” the president of Iida Shokai replied.

“I don’t know what we’ll do if there’s no hot weather to drive up business,” the president of Tomioka followed up.

Since the kickoff to the spring sales season had not gone so well for any of them, Shiroyama agreed that they must count on the weather. Their competitors doled out new products again this spring, but Hinode had not. While sales of the lager and Supreme were still steady, they had decided to prioritize a large-scale reform of their domestic product line and the reorganization of delivery terminals in order to simplify their distribution system, but current sales figures were still forefront in his mind.

As they emerged from the grove of cedar trees, team number three was waiting to tee off at the par-four eighth-hole. Shiroyama saw that the man gripping the long-iron was Sei’ichi Shirai, and he appeared to be having trouble addressing the ball. The eighth hole was a dogleg with a narrow fairway shaped like the hollow curve of a suribachi bowl, which made the tee shot crucial, but Shiroyama could see right away that Shirai was restless and taking far more time than usual.

Shirai’s golf game was similar to Shiroyama’s but the way he played could not have been more different. Shirai had always been the type to first envision a conquest that was a level above his own skill, and then seek out various methods for achieving it. While Shiroyama paid more attention to his overall score, Shirai would go after a difficult course and be happy as long as he parred just one hole, even if he triple-bogeyed the other seventeen. Shirai’s approach to golf seemed somehow to correlate with the way he worked and his management philosophy—though there was quite a gap between his ideal and reality—and at times his pursuit of a strange shot made it hard to tell if he were calm or just moody, so it was interesting to watch him.

Shirai finally pulled into his backswing and followed through relatively cleanly, sending the ball flying. Shiroyama couldn’t see where it landed, but since light applause rose immediately from the crowd, he presumed the ball was in a good position.

Shirai maintained a breezy countenance in front of all their distributors, but the truth was that he was incredibly busy, approaching the conclusion of four years of ongoing negotiations for Hinode’s joint venture with Limelight—an event that would determine the course of their entire industry. Playing golf today must have really pushed him to the limit physically, but in order to divert the attention of the newspaper reporters and industry insiders, who were paying close attention to how the terms of the negotiations would pan out, and to evade the doubts and suspicions of rival companies, it was absolutely crucial for him to attend the competition as usual, looking as if nothing was amiss.

Waiting for his turn to tee off, Shiroyama made small talk with those standing around him, as once again he pondered questions about the joint venture he would have to make a final decision upon in a few days’ time.

In the fall of 1990, when Limelight revealed their intention to dissolve Hinode’s exclusive distribution agreement and to establish a new joint corporation with them, Hinode had been genuinely dismayed to realize that Limelight’s objective was a full-scale entry into the Japanese market. The terms of the joint venture that Limelight presented would have limited Hinode’s investment to 10 percent, with Limelight controlling all agency and management rights, and with regard to sales routes—the most crucial issue—Limelight would be free to select them as they saw fit, without being restricted to Hinode’s network of keiretsu distributors. Moreover, the period of the joint venture was for ten years. In sum, the joint corporation that Limelight proposed would, rather than fitting into Hinode’s network of affiliated companies, operate as a completely independent competitor that would dominate a corner of the Japanese market, and it was merely a formality of borrowing the name of a domestic manufacturer to get around the restriction on obtaining a license to sell alcoholic beverages.

Shiroyama and all the other executives were appalled at this, and during the first year of negotiations, the option to dissolve their existing relationship with Limelight was also on the table. Now that the past ten years of Hinode’s business expansion efforts were finally bearing fruit, Limelight’s products had reached domestic sales of seven million cases per year with a market share of 1.3 percent, and while dropping those figures would be, for the time being, a considerable loss for Hinode, the long-term damage incurred, were they to accept the terms Limelight insisted upon to establish a joint corporation, would be incomparable. Opinion was divided among Hinode’s board members—either force Limelight to change the terms of the joint venture, or lose the 1.3-percent share by dissolving their relationship.

Nonetheless, last fall, after three years of negotiations, the tenacious bargaining led by board member Shirai had yielded results—Hinode’s investment ratio was now forty-nine percent, and while management rights had been ceded to Limelight, the condition was that their sales routes would be restricted to Hinode’s network of keiretsu distributors—and they had hammered out an agreement in mid-October. Afterward, both parties began drafting a prospectus to submit to the Japan Fair Trade Commission as soon as possible, but at the last minute, the JFTC had suddenly intervened. Limelight concluded that the winds were in their favor, what with the progress of the Japan-US Structural Impediments Initiative, the advent of a coalition government that had pledged deregulation and to open up markets at home and abroad, and the subsequent stricter enforcement of the Antitrust Act. Thus, they had