my arms hanging to the floor. The woman filled a bucket and poured warm water over my shoulders. A rush went through my entire body. She poured again.
2
Office Ladies
FIVE HIGH-PITCHED, cheerful voices rang out simultaneously, “Hishoshitsu de gozaimasu. Hello, this is the executive secretariat.” Each secretary had a phone on her desk, and when the red light flickered and the bell rang, every available hand immediately reached for a receiver. They were like television gameshow contestants racing to push the buzzer first.
At first I assumed that the secretaries were competing with one another; then I realized that no one kept track of who answered telephone calls. It was a group responsibility. The group made sure that the phone didn’t ring more than once.
This new team was unlike any group I had ever experienced. For one thing, in matching uniforms, all ten of them looked alike. Each one was under five feet tall and weighed less than a hundred pounds. They had straight, shoulder-length dark hair and fair complexions; coral-colored lipstick painted their interminable smiles.
The executive secretaries looked like more studious versions of the Welcome Ladies. They too were in their twenties and greeted me with smiles even though their polite introductions were interrupted by self-conscious giggling.
From the beginning they treated me with gentle uncertainty, as though at any moment I might explode into unintelligible, blithering English. Although I was one of the youngest, and clearly the most inexperienced, I felt as though my native language threatened them—that if I spoke in English they would feel obligated to converse with me. I made an effort to speak only Japanese.
The only English speaker in the group was a man who was the president’s personal assistant.
“My name is Tsutomu Umeno, but you can call me Tom,” he said with a cheeky grin when we met. The women tittered with approval. His voice was hearty and friendly. Tom looked to be in his early thirties and wore an elegant white suit coat, gold cuff links, and an expensive watch. When I commented on his English skills he told me he had spent a year at Stanford and later had worked in the Philippines.
Tom explained that he was the only male secretary in the group, but unlike the female secretaries, it was his job to attend the president wherever he went, whether it was the Tokyo Auto Show or a factory in Brazil. Tom acted as translator, public-relations man, and gofer.
He pulled out a Cross pen and drew an organizational chart of the “executive secretariat,” as he called it, on a piece of notebook paper. There were eleven women, including me, and five men. In addition to the manager of the department, two of the men were responsible directly to the entire executive board of directors for special projects. The other man was the assistant manager, Mr. Higuchi, whom I already knew was responsible for the daily activities of the secretariat.
Before coming to Japan I had been told by Mr. Yoshida that the executive office was a special group within Honda. It had its own floor in the headquarters, unlike any sales or administration department. Our group was directly responsible to the thirty-seven men who made up the Board of Directors of Honda Motor Company.
During the first weeks of work I tried to get to know my colleagues by joining them for lunch. The women usually split into small groups according to age. One of my first lunches was with the youngest group, women in their early twenties.
I placed my tray next to my colleague Ms. Kodama. Two other women from our office sat across the beige Formica table in the company cafeteria. Several women from other departments wearing the same blue polyester uniforms were seated next to them with trays or box lunches from home. Over five hundred employees filled the room.
“Oh, you’re having fish today?” Ms. Kodama exclaimed within hearing of everyone at the table. “Are you sure fish is all right?” she asked with a concerned smile.
I assured her I liked fish. Then she commented on my selection of rice and miso soup even though it was the same meal she had selected.
“Do you like bread or rice better?” she asked me, deliberately emphasizing each syllable.
“I like them both,” I told her. I had been through this conversation many times as an exchange student with people who had never met or conversed with a non-Japanese person. As a student I had felt obligated to answer the questions I knew would come next. Did I eat bread or rice for breakfast? Did I eat with chopsticks or a fork? What Japanese foods did I hate? I knew the routine so well that I could answer without having to pause to think. I wanted to remind Ms. Kodama that I had lived in Japan for a year, but instead I kept quiet and tried to enjoy my meal like the rest of the group. I cracked open my wooden chopsticks and began to eat.
“Oh, Rora-san, you use chopsticks so well!” she praised me. Then she wished me good luck in eating the fish. Ms. Kodama reminded me of my host mother as an exchange student who would reward even my smallest effort with exaggerated praise. When I had finally learned enough Japanese to write her notes she would return them to me, corrected with red check marks and smiley faces. The continual approval made me feel like a dim child.
Another day two senior members, Ms. Ogiwara and Ms. Shoji, invited me to go out to lunch. They were older than most of the secretaries and were in their late twenties. In the office both of them showed a level of self-confidence and maturity that I would later recognize as common to Japanese women who remained single beyond the traditional marriage deadline of twenty-five. They were both good-humored but decidedly un-silly, another characteristic I found appealing.
They took me to a small noodle shop called Ezokko across the street from headquarters. As at many restaurants in Japan, the main dishes were displayed as plastic replicas in a glass case, so making a selection was simple. Both Ms. Ogiwara and Ms. Shoji immediately put me at ease by not trying to help me order a meal, and just asked me what I was going to have. We ordered, paid at the door, and then edged inside to find three seats together. Small wooden tables packed the narrow shop. Waiters in white aprons yelled orders across the customers’ heads to the cooks wearing white hats behind a long counter.
Everything about Ms. Ogiwara seemed small except her personality. “You can call me Ogi,” she had said when we first met. A wide, cherubic grin lit up her heart-shaped face when she laughed; she giggled heartily, sometimes using her hand to cover her mouth. But when she couldn’t contain her amusement her whole body would react; she would bend over at the waist and swing her thick mane of hair.
Ms. Shoji had a more formal presence. Neat bangs and straight hair sharply framed her strong triangular face. When she smiled she exposed what the Japanese called yaeba, a single cuspid tooth that jutted out slightly in the opposite direction of her other teeth. The minor irregularity was considered appealing, like a beauty mark, and not something to be corrected by the orthodontist. Ms. Shoji was poised and dependable, the kind of person who had probably been a straight-A student since first grade.
Three steaming bowls of noodles arrived at our table.
“One corn ramen, one gyōza ramen, and one pork ramen,” the waiter said, placing the jumbo-sized bowls in front of us. The lip of the bowl was the size of my whole face.
“Would you like some garlic?” Ms. Shoji asked, lifting the lid of a small ceramic dish. The aroma of freshly minced garlic made my mouth water and I added a heaping spoonful to my broth. With garlicky steam covering our faces we dug into the noodles, slurping loudly to let the air cool the hot broth as we ate.
Neither Ms. Ogi nor Ms. Shoji commented on my skill with chopsticks or marveled at my noodle-slurping ability. We talked about work and the directors. I told them that I felt my Japanese was improving already and that I had recently been dreaming about work in Japanese.
“Sometimes I dream about work too,” said Ms. Ogi. “That’s when I know I am working too hard!”
Ms. Shoji nodded in agreement. “When one of my directors shows up in my dream and then I see him the next day at work I want to say, ‘Hey you—I have to see you all day long so stay out of my dreams!’”
We