The third photo was a face familiar to all of Japan's avid TV viewers—Akira Mori. She was wearing a dark blue Western suit, her hair a glossy pageboy cut, the conservative look of times past. It was the occasion of her graduation from the School of Law, Tokyo University (Tokyo Daigaku, or Todai as it's known), an important moment. Todai's alumni represent a network, a batsu, of the country's ruling elite, who compete with each other for the choicest, most prestigious government ministries. Although she had chosen a more visible career, she still relied heavily on her contacts in this governing clique, heads of the leading ministries, including Finance, Foreign Affairs, and of course the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, MITI.
Matsuo Noda himself had, in fact, once headed MITI, probably Japan's most powerful ministry. He came from ancient samurai stock—fittingly perhaps, since the bureaucrats of modern Japan are mostly of that class. The samurai caste, men who served a liege lord and were forbidden to engage in trade, were actually Japan's first public servants. In between civil wars they became sword-carrying bureaucrats. Many a modern bureau chief has ancestors who wore two swords and sliced up a peasant or a merchant now and then with impunity, which may help explain why the average citizen still views government officials with such nervous awe.
A Todai honors man himself, Noda was a natural for MITI, which runs what is in many ways a covert operation. The head offices are in a nondescript, soot-covered building of tinted glass and limestone near Tokyo's Hibaya Park, guarded by armed, helmeted members of Japan's National Police. Inside it's mostly open floors and lines of gray steel desks; no plush carpets and mahogany suites. MITI has twelve bureaus, each devoted to a major industrial sector. If its officials decide Japan's strategic interests would be served by a certain manufacturing group's cutting production, lowering prices, altering product lines, these "recommendations" are passed along. And it happens.
Noda began his career there by circulating through the different sections, "going around the track" as it's called, after which he proceeded to run the General Affairs office of various bureaus, by which time everybody had him picked for a mover, on the "elite course." Eventually he was promoted to section chief in the International Trade Bureau, next on to bureau chief, and finally at age forty-seven he made the top. Vice minister.
After he reached the pinnacle, he held the job for a mere five years, then routinely left. He had to go; early fifties and you're out. MITI is no country for old men. He moved on to head the Japan Development Bank, JDB, where he financed various high-tech start-up industries. Finally he retired and went out on his own.
Unlike most other retired government officials, however, he didn't accept any of the lucrative private offers he received, the suddenly "vacant" spot on a conglomerate's board of directors. No, he had his own smoldering vision. In a dazzling and successful departure from usual Japanese convention, he
founded Nippon, Inc., an adjunct to Japan's major financial players, with headquarters in the commercial center of Kyoto. His new organization immediately became a financial fixture in the new postindustrial, high-tech Japan, and now, five years later, Nippon, Inc. was a thriving force in the management of capital. These days even the new generation at MITI routinely called him up for "consensus."
For Matsuo Noda now, everything was in place; he was at last ready to pursue a lifelong dream. He'd never forgotten the end of the war, that last day on Okinawa when Ushijima's 32nd Army was a dazed remnant. He'd been in the cave above Mabuni when the general radioed his farewell to Imperial Headquarters, then severed his own spinal cord. Matsuo Noda, with anguish he could still remember, had burned the regimental flag and told those remaining to scatter, to become guerrillas—repeating Ushijima's last command to "fight to the last for the eternal cause of loyalty to the emperor." Noda had declared that their struggle would continue on for a hundred years if need be.
He had overestimated the difficulty. The plan now poised had required less than fifty.
As usual for a work-at-home Saturday (just another business day in Japan), he was wrapping up loose ends from the week, finishing reports, signing off on audits. Two printers were running, since he preferred to work with hard copy, and he was reviewing the list of outstanding loans NI was in charge of monitoring, checking for any early signs of trouble. Had any credit ratings slipped? If a receiving corporation was publicly traded, had its stock faltered? What was the overview: securities, un-amortized discounts on bonds, cash on hand? Next he paged through the weekly updates from the Small Business Finance Corp., the National Finance Corp., the Shoko Chukin Bank, various credit associations and savings banks. It was all on his Kyoto information base, pulled off the new fiber-optic network that linked Japan's financial centers.