Any other business | 19 March 2011

Stoical and fatalistic, the Japanesenational character will rise to the challenge

When I was a banker in Tokyo in the mid 1980s, it was my occasional pleasant task to tour the provinces visiting local banks which kept sterling accounts in London. I had nothing to sell, but my colleagues and I carried bags full of golf balls to hand over as gifts at each stop, where after a ritually polite meeting with the bank’s president, we would be treated to an evening of karaoke and misowari (weak, icy whisky and water) by whichever of his underlings spoke the most English.

I have fond memories of Fukuoka in the south, Kanazawa during cherry- blossom season and frozen Aomori in the north, where the karaoke songbooks were printed in Russian. I can’t remember whether we ever called on the Sendai Bank or the Fukushima Bank, both now perhaps evacuated because of the nuclear threat — because, to be honest, most Japanese cities looked alike, and most karaoke-night conversations followed exactly the same script.