desks were so close together that it would be easy to pass things back and forth without even standing up. The only difference I noticed was that the chairman’s and president’s desk-chairs had high backs.
Anyone below the level of senior managing director had to share space at one of three oblong tables in the front of the room where each director had an assigned seat. Their names had been taped to their places at the table so the secretaries wouldn’t get confused. Each director kept his work in one of the wooden cabinets that surrounded the perimeter of the room, but lower-level directors had to share.
On the otherwise anonymous tenth floor, there was one highly privileged space—the Mr. Honda Room. It was a utility closet-sized room located off the executive office. The room was reserved for Mr. Honda’s visits. Paintings and photos of him drinking beer with other retired executives decorated the sparse walls. Even though the founder had retired, he maintained an almost sacred status within the company.
In the lectures about Honda I had learned that its founder, Soichiro Honda, was one of the few living legends in postwar Japanese history. At the age of eighty-one he was still the flamboyant maverick who had created Honda Motor Company in 1948, contrary to the wishes of the Japanese government, with little more than war-surplus engines.
Born in 1906, Soichiro Honda grew up with a fascination for mechanical things. In his youth he had worked as an apprentice in an automobile repair shop and later established his own piston ring manufacturing company. He had little formal education, but a great passion for learning. After World War II he met Takeo Fujisawa, a businessman looking for a promising investment opportunity, and together they built Honda Motor Company into a twentieth-century industrial player in the international motorcycle, power equipment, and automobile market. In 1973 both Soichiro Honda and Takeo Fujisawa retired and were named Supreme Advisors to the company.
Sometimes during the morning rush I would go into the executive office pretending to check something because I wanted to see what it was like. I watched the secretaries interacting with the executives, noting that their body language often conveyed what kind of relationship they shared. Some directors barely paid attention to secretaries and just barked orders. Others treated the secretaries almost as equals. No matter how casual or serious the interaction, I noticed a particular similarity in the way all the women treated the men—as though they were mother and son.
In the pantry after work the women would complain or worry out loud about a director, and the others would console her. “He’s so impatient. He’s always making his own appointments and then doesn’t tell me. And why doesn’t he ever call when he’s out of the office?” they would say. The secretaries knew the directors’ schedules as intimately as the feeding schedule of a baby. They knew if a director was taking medication, and worried if he didn’t eat his lunch or if he seemed tired.
When a director went on a business trip in Japan or overseas, he usually brought back some kind of gift—cookies, rice crackers, or candy—for all the secretaries to share. Boxes of treats filled the table in the pantry, and our tea breaks included anything from traditional seaweed-wrapped rice crackers to Godiva chocolates wrapped in gold foil. Later I learned about the private gifts that certain directors brought back—scarves, leather wallets, and perfume. Although the gifts were not entirely a secret, no one wanted to flaunt special attention.
After three weeks of general observation, the office manager Mr. Higuchi called me into the executive conference room to talk about my assignment. He handed me a one-page document in Japanese with my name written in Roman letters at the top.
“I’ve made up a list of your job responsibilities,” he said.
It was the first job description I had seen since accepting the job. He had divided the tasks into four categories. First, I would be Mr. Chino’s secretary, starting out as an assistant secretary and moving up to a main secretary. Second, I would be in charge of all English-language correspondence. Third, I would work as a receptionist as I learned other skills, and fourth, I would provide English language advice to all the directors.
“I want you to focus on the job of receptionist and take care of the English correspondence,” Mr. Higuchi advised. “Then later, when you are ready, we will start training you for the secretarial job.” He didn’t mention anything about when that would start.
I remembered that I had been so excited about joining Honda that I had accepted the original job offer in Ohio without even knowing the salary. But the prospect of working as a receptionist with the hope of becoming a main secretary did not sound promising. There was no mention of what the secretarial job actually entailed, but I had observed enough to know that it didn’t mean delving into special project research or attending meetings with executives. I felt as though Mr. Higuchi wanted me to prove my ability at monitoring the front desk so that maybe one day I could serve tea too.
I had to admit that even receptionist skills were challenging because they were all in Japanese. I couldn’t even answer the phone properly. But I was disenchanted with the thought that these tasks made up the core of my job. Was this why I had been sent to Japan in the first place? At least Mr. Higuchi’s written list inspired in me a sense of purpose, but the overarching goal of becoming a good tea-serving secretary was discouraging.
His list also included five goals to keep in mind throughout the training. One, learn the operations of the executive secretariat; two, learn Japanese; three, learn the way Honda operates in Japan; four, study the approach to public relations; and five, study Honda’s philosophy. These basic ideas appealed to my hopes for a higher purpose, and I embraced the Zen-like quality of his direction. It gave me hope that some day I would be given more sophisticated assignments. I desperately wanted to believe that I had a significant role, that I was good for something more than monitoring attendance.
Immeasurable as the goals were, I earnestly went about pursuing them. I started to keep daily lists of all the new Japanese words I learned and asked my colleagues to explain unfamiliar phrases. Every few days I sent Mr. Yoshida a fax describing my duties and reporting on events. He responded promptly, which gave me a feeling of importance that I didn’t get from doing the tasks themselves.
I threw myself into organizing all the English mail. Part of the job was to filter junk mail from legitimate mail, but I had to do more than just filter it. If an envelope was addressed to a specific director, his secretary felt personally responsible for it even if it was a computer-generated invitation to buy millions of dollars of personal life insurance from a guy named Buddy. As a result, I first had to weed out the junk and then I had to persuade each secretary to throw it away.
One of the first letters I read was from an American woman. She wrote to the president of the company warning him of a plot to use gamma rays in conjunction with Sputnik to destroy the Japanese. The letter went on for twelve pages detailing, among other things, what pop astrologer Jeanne Dixon had predicted for the year.
I usually knew a letter would be interesting when I saw that it was simply addressed to: Mr. Honda, Main Post Office, Tokyo, Japan. One letter came written on rumpled paper in elementary-school script. It was from an American man saying that he had written Honda about an engineering idea. He had since moved, but had heard from a friend in his old neighborhood that a Japanese-looking person had been in the area. The man figured that it was Mr. Honda looking for him and so he wanted us to have his new address.
Another amusing letter came from a young Californian woman who sent a set of holistic, psychedelic love poems to the president. She wrote of her special mission to serve him in any way possible and kindly included nude photos of herself posed next to a waterfall. Although the president and other executives might have been entertained by these scandalous letters, they never even heard about them because it was my job to throw them away.
Some of the English correspondence demanded serious
