alert all the secretaries. The others, from whatever position they were in, conversation or work, would immediately follow her greeting with an even louder, more cheerful “Ohayō gozaimasu!” The executive would keep walking, maybe nod his head and utter a barely audible “Ohayō.”
For a week I observed my fellow OLs at work, rushing to answer the phone and patiently analyzing the piles of mail that were delivered six times a day. They served tea and cleaned ashtrays, they washed cups and then started all over again.
I had not been asked to serve tea, but I knew there was no way to avoid it. Every morning I watched as Ms. Ogi prepared to meet with each of her directors and review his schedule for the day. She balanced a jade-colored teacup on a red lacquer tray in one hand and held the schedule book in the other. All the secretaries repeated this routine for each executive. Tea was served mid-morning to whoever was at his desk, and again in the afternoon. If an executive had a meeting or returned from an outside event, tea welcomed him back.
I already knew that green tea in Japan was more than a beverage. It was a hobby, a culture, a way of life. My host mother, like many Japanese women, had practiced the art of tea ceremony. Every week, for years, she went to class and rehearsed the delicate, meditative movements of tea preparation.
Once, my host mother had invited me to accompany her to a formal tea ceremony. She spent two hours wrapping me up in a three-layered kimono. Magnificent purple and red flowers embroidered the outer garment. I also wore tabi, white cotton socks, and geta, wooden clogs, and an elaborately tied obi around my waist so I could move only in short, shuffling steps. My host mother had to show me how to walk with my toes pointed in, heels apart. The obi prevented me from leaning back. All I could do was sit with my back straight. I felt like an exquisitely packaged Japanese doll that couldn’t play; I could only watch.
But even knowing the historical and cultural importance of tea, I felt about serving it like I did about the uniforms. Why was it restricted only to women?
In high school I’d had a teacher who would routinely ask only the girls in the class to fetch him a daily cup of water. Some girls felt honored by his attention. I felt sickened. On one occasion he asked me and a friend of mine to get his drink. We went to the drinking fountain, spit in his cup, filled it with water, and then served him.
The executive office was adjacent to our office. From the double doorway I could see the entire room, which was about the size of two tennis courts. A long row of windows spanned one wall. There were no walls or room dividers interrupting the open space because all thirty-seven directors of Honda Motor Company shared one office.
The chairman, president, vice presidents, and senior managing directors, a total of eight men, sat in a row furthest from the entrance with their desks facing the window, the most prestigious location. Their plain wooden desks had no distinguishing features. Each one had a beige telephone and a flimsy corporate phone directory hanging on a yellow plastic adhesive hook. The 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