Japan Experiences - Fifty Years, One Hundred Views by Hugh Cortazzi

Author:Hugh Cortazzi [Cortazzi, Hugh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, General, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781134278909
Google: Bx9mAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-12-19T04:56:45+00:00

19

British Businessmen in Japan: Developing Trade Relations

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LEW RADBOURNE ● DUNCAN FRASER

LEW RADBOURNE first went to Japan with the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) (see Chapter 1) and returned in 1949 as a junior expatriate with Dodwell and Company. He recalls those early years:-

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Dodwell and Company was a British trading firm which saw its origins in Japan during the Meiji era. Starting in Tokyo, which even then was sprinkled with debris-strewn bomb-sites and whose population was in a very deprived state, a comparison of expatriate conditions with those prevailing now is dramatic.

The cost-conscious management of British companies re-opening in Japan post-war, before profitability could be safely assumed as likely, seemed to me to start with their attitude to young bachelors. Often billeted with a married couple in the same firm until such time as escape could be contrived, the next best would be to share a mess with others in the same or other companies or small ‘digs’ in the Western (or Japanese- style) part of a Japanese house. Accommodation was normally rented although a number of houses were purchased at prices which even in today's depressed Japanese property market were ludicrously low. One of the classics must be Dodwell's purchase for a few ‘thou’ in 1949 of a 1000 tsubo (3,300 sq. m) plot to house one of the joint General Managers. I helped with interpreting during the purchase negotiations. The property was subsequently sold in 1988 for 57.1 million pounds!

During the first four-and-a-half years' service at Dodwell, I lived in a number of different abodes, one of which – a pleasant little house in Azabu near the Tokyo Tennis Club – had been bought for use by a married couple. When, however, the wife was thought to have become pregnant and a survey of the property revealed that it was off its foundations and likely to collapse if jolted by a severe earthquake tremor, senior management immediately ordered Radbourne and one other bachelor to move in to avoid a waste of living space until other arrangements could be made.

We were subsequently moved to a large Western-style house in Oi-machi, which the company rented, built pre-war in a style which would have done any Victorian proud as the owner's research had obviously been confined to English interior designs as illustrated in late nineteenth-century journals. The family who owned it had moved out of Tokyo during the war and left the property unoccupied and unheated for some years although all the heavy furnishing and drapes, including antimacassars, remained in situ. Five young bloods took up residence in what inevitably became known as ‘Mildew Manor’. With variations in the mix, the hard core of the quintet were John Garrett, Russell Main, Desmond Reid, Pat Deveson and the author – if there had been an equivalent of Alcoholics Anonymous in Tokyo in the early fifties we would have driven them to despair!

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With the yen at ¥1008 to the pound, a starting salary of £500 p.a., with allowances, enabled expatriates to live at an adequately comfortable standard, run a small car and employ a servant.

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