This last disturbing prospect had convinced Kenji Asano that the time for operating within the rules was past. He had already taken a first step, aided unwittingly by a bureaucrat of immense ambition within the ministry. His first counterploy against Noda had bought time—how much he didn't know— but the next move must be decisive.
He glanced around his office, then at the MITI reports stacked high on his desk. Benkei at the Bridge. For Kenji Asano only one course was left. He would now have to use his own master, MITI, to destroy Matsuo Noda.
His mind went back to the meeting at his MITI office Monday of the previous week. Although he was on temporary assignment at the Institute, he still checked in daily at the ministry. Filing into his office at nine-thirty sharp had been the three men whose "consensus" was crucial. The difficulty was, they must never know what he planned.
Michio Watanabe, International Trade Policy Bureau,
Trade Research Section: heavyset, early fifties, a professional bureaucrat with powerful eyes and a permanent expression of skepticism. He had been a close colleague of Noda's for decades.
Tanzan Kitano, Industrial Policy Bureau, International Enterprises Section: gray hair tinged with silver, immaculate dresser, spoke five languages. He had been in MITI over twenty years and had maintained the same mistress for fifteen: a man respected for his long-range thinking.
Hiromu Ikeda, Industrial Technology Agency: late thirties, thrived on expediency, doing the job no matter the consequences. Part of a hard new breed, he was Japan's future. And MlTI was his future.
While the men moved toward the wide couch across from his desk, Kenji Asano opened with offhand pleasantries, directed mainly toward Watanabe, partly because he was eldest and partly to sound out his mind-state. Next he welcomed Kitano with a few inquiries concerning his wife and son, a transparent formality since he was known far and wide to despise them both. Finally he greeted Ikeda and indicated the meeting would be short, knowing the younger man liked to move directly to matters at hand and regarded the usual preliminaries as an old-fashioned waste of time.
Agenda: The American companies Matsuo Noda was acquiring. A proposition had surfaced (in Japanese bureaucracies, all ideas are anonymous and thus devoid of repercussions) that certain MITI personnel be put on leave of absence to serve on the boards of those U.S. concerns. Given the heavy participation of Japanese monies in Noda's American program, perhaps a more formal monitoring mechanism would be helpful to head off potential anxiety in Tokyo's financial community.
The idea, of course, was Kenji Asano's. He had first laid the groundwork with a few oblique hints to several of Dai Nippon's major institutional backers, particularly the Dai-Ichi Credit Corporation, Ltd. That move had borne fruit. Within days they had begun wondering aloud whether the ministry might wish to consider helping oversee Noda's American investments. So far, so good. Now MITI itself had to be convinced. This meeting would undoubtedly be the first of many, resulting eventually in a consensus. Would the ministry go along?