tones of formal Japanese to explain its features into a microphone.
I was treated as a guest by the women and sometimes even by the customers themselves. The Welcome Ladies included me in after-work drinking parties, took me on day-trips, and told me secrets about turbulent and clandestine love affairs. Young men in thousand-dollar leather riding gear and schoolgirls wearing sailor-suit uniforms asked to have their pictures taken with me and requested that I autograph their Honda brochures.
At six in the evening the thank-you-and-goodbye soundtrack played as we ushered all the visitors out the sliding glass doors, bowing and smiling sweetly as though it pained us to bring the eight-hour workday to a close. After the doors were locked and the bright lights dimmed, all the Welcome Ladies lined up in a row facing the showroom manager. With our hands clasped gracefully, we continued to smile as the manager made a few closing remarks. We listened politely, as though with great interest, then bowed to him in unison saying, “Otsukaresama deshita, You are the tired one.”
The Welcome Ladies then retreated into the dressing room, where a shocking transformation took place. They shed the Jane Jetson costumes and put on expensive, funky black dresses. They concealed their pink lips in deep red tones and reapplied eye makeup several shades darker. Checking to make sure their cigarettes were pocketed, the women emerged from the Welcome Plaza purged of their girlishness.
I enjoyed watching this transformation, and I admired the women for it. Their new appearance was rebellious and in a way explained how they could generate eight continuous hours of sticky-sweet pinkness to strangers and then listen nightly to a patronizing speech from the manager on how we would have to try harder to be more friendly the next day.
During the year of weekends that I worked as a Welcome Lady, I never went beyond the first-floor Welcome Plaza of Honda’s Headquarters. I knew there was a bank of elevators that transported people to the building above, but I had no idea what it would be like.
“This is an intelligent building,” a young woman from the Personnel Department said as she handed me a schedule for the next six days. “We will begin your orientation with a tour of the headquarters,” she explained.
I sat at a table in the center of the seventh-floor Administration Department across from this woman, who was dressed exactly like me in blue polyester. All around us was a buzz of activity: phones ringing, people moving around and in-between aisles of desks and cabinets that gave some order to the huge open office space. I had hoped that wearing the uniform would have at least helped me blend in, but instead I felt curious eyes watching me, and sensed people wondering, “Who’s that redhead in the uniform?”
The orientation schedule was meticulously organized into daily and hourly columns according to the twenty-four hour clock. Lunch at 13:00, a lecture at 14:30, and the end of the workday at 17:30. Each event on the schedule included a room number and a list of participants’ names.
Just as Mr. Yoshida had promised, the woman told me that the Personnel Department would help me get settled in Tokyo—set up a bank account, review company policy, and, most importantly, find a place to live. My understanding was that I would choose from two or three apartments found by the Personnel Department. I was familiar enough with the city to have an idea where I wanted to locate, but I had never looked for my own place so I was glad to have their help. As I was a foreign employee, the company would also pay my rent. I assumed there would be a ceiling on how much could be spent, so I asked the woman how much was allowed.
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about the amount,” she said. “We’ve already found a place for you to live.”
“What?” I asked in English, hoping that I had misunderstood her.
“It’s all settled. We’ll go visit the apartment later this week,” she said and pointed to the schedule. “See here. ‘Visit apartment in Nerima.”’
I was stunned. Nerima was over an hour away from headquarters by train, including several transfers. But more than the location, I couldn’t believe that I didn’t have any choice in the matter—especially with something as important as my home for the next two years. The woman explained that another foreign employee had recently been transferred to a facility outside Tokyo and that I would be taking over the recently vacated apartment. It was obvious from her explanation that the Personnel Department had taken care of absolutely everything.
Honda’s intelligent building was like a self-reliant city. In addition to eight business floors, a cafeteria, and the Welcome Plaza on the first floor, the building housed a travel agency, a bank, and a dry-cleaning service. One floor had a health clinic including a pharmacy and dental office; there was an exercise room, a coffee shop, a VIP restaurant, a gift shop, and a formal Japanese tatami room.
What made the building intelligent was the internal computer system that operated like a network of nerves throughout the building. Communication between the intelligence network and the employees took place through a magnetically coded identification card. So that attendance and overtime could be monitored, every day employees ran their identification cards through an electronic sensor located on each floor. The network went up the center of the sixteen-story building like a spinal column. Other sensors throughout the building controlled air conditioning and lights. The cash registers in the coffee shop and cafeteria were also in the link, so all purchases were recorded on the identification card and then automatically deducted from the employee’s monthly paycheck.
The woman from Personnel who explained all this to me was Ms. Uno. She was in her mid-twenties and spoke cautious English, carefully articulating each syllable. She didn’t make the usual language mistakes like replacing the L sound with an R and calling me “Rora” or telling me it was time for “runch.” Often, before speaking, she would pause, and her eyes would dart around the room as though she were searching for the correct words spelled out on the walls.
I learned that Ms. Uno had been hired right out of college as one of the first career-path female employees at Honda. Unlike most women who were hired as clerks, she was trained along with the male employees. She spoke fluent French and English and, compared with the other women I had seen on the seventh floor, had an unparalleled flair for wearing polyester with style.
Ms. Uno patiently guided me through my first days of work. She seemed confident and well organized. My admiration for her grew, and like a friendless camper I attached myself to this knowledgeable counselor. Our first days consisted of a series of meetings with managers in the company who taught me about the history of Honda and company policy. My Japanese wasn’t good enough to understand the lectures, so Ms. Uno acted as a translator.
The first lecture was on the “History and Management Philosophy of Honda.” A man in his fifties from the Training Department met us in a large conference room on the fifteenth floor. We gathered at one end of a long table, the speaker on one side, myself opposite him, and Ms. Uno in-between but just out of the speaker’s direct line of sight. From the moment the meeting started I saw a side of Ms. Uno that disturbed me.
“Wouldn’t you like to sit here?” she asked the speaker, motioning to another chair that looked more comfortable. “Shall I order some coffee?” she asked him, waiting for his nod before placing the call. When we started the meeting, she sat somberly, as though banished from conversation, and quietly translated his words. She seemed to withdraw into herself, occupying the smallest space her body could possibly manage. When the lecturer stopped for a break she asked if she could clean his ashtray. Her comments were barely acknowledged with smoky nods. I couldn’t understand
