Chapter 4.8: Nishiwaki's Golf Course Franchise

Mr Shintaro Ishihara was the Goethe of Japan. I was his pupil, someone in the same profession, and his escort runner. In this chapter, I have woven together more of my private recollections, spanning as long as twenty-plus years, and "my unfulfilled promise" to him. ー Shin Ushijima

Chapter 4.8: Nishiwaki's Golf Course Franchise

Read other chapters in My Mentor, Shintaro Ishihara

I've already written about my January 7, 2006, call with Shintaro Ishihara, right after the new year. But I also received a phone call on February 25.

We talked for close to an hour, from 6:57 PM to 7:42 PM.

At the beginning of the call, Mr Ishihara said, "I heard Goldman Sachs is beating down the prices of golf courses to buy them up and turn them into a franchise. Is that true?" I replied, "Yes, I believe so. If reports are correct, they are taking the franchise public."

It didn't immediately dawn on me why Mr Ishihara suddenly broached the subject of Goldman Sachs.

His aim, though, was to talk with me about some plot that was beginning to take shape in his mind.

"Takayuki Nishiwaki has bought four golf courses, and he plans to buy 10 in all. He's going to make a new company for them and take it public. That shrewd yakuza says that he's going to manage it under a different name."

Then I understood. That was why, out of the blue, Mr Ishihara broached the news that Goldman Sachs had been buying some golf courses. It made sense to me.

So I gave him some legal advice: "Oh, that's not possible, not even in a novel. It's impossible for a yakuza–related company to go public. Even if you force it to pass as a subsidiary or a company under a different name, it's in fact related to the yakuza, isn't it? Which means that you would have to lie about it, okay? You could not pass the IPO review for listing the company."

Picking Up the Pace

As usual, Mr Ishihara never argued with my legal advice. He completely trusted my analysis as the advice of a reliable lawyer, and seemed to be rethinking his storyline on the spot.

"Okay, I got it. Now, then, what kinds of things could Nishiwaki come up with to obstruct the yakuza's plan? What could he do? How about threatening the bank president and demanding that it write off its debt? Anyway, the yakuza has the promissory note… You know, the one for the land swap.

"What if they pocket the difference 50-50 from the off-the-books funds? It would be a deal between Chairman Nishiwaki and the shrewd yakuza, Eizo Asanuma. But Nishiwaki, not wanting it to go that far, resents the yakuza's arbitrariness and retaliates.

"Then, after that, the shrewd yakuza counters, which eventually leads to the situation where the Nishiwaki clan is blackmailed, using their precious music foundation as leverage. It is the same prestigious music foundation connected to a member of the imperial family. It's the Raku Foundation."

I was hardly able to keep up with the fast-paced story developments taking shape in Mr Ishihara's head.

Another Approach

However, I managed to respond,

"Nishiwaki is modeled after Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, isn't he? Mr Tsutsumi was related to a holding company called Kokudo Keikaku, whose subsidiary was Seibu Railway Company, Ltd. Seibu Railway was a listed company, but Kokudo Keikaku's shareholder ratio in it had been falsified. An outside auditor of the subsidiary, who was also a lawyer, had uncovered this misconduct.

"Tsutsumi undoubtedly did everything in his power to resolve the problem, and the company's certified tax accountant may have intervened, trying to minimize the damage caused by the falsification. But as you know, Mr Tsutsumi had not taken the matter seriously, which eventually led to the ruination of his kingdom. As a result, even Mr Tsutsumi himself ended up getting arrested.

"In the novel, the protagonist Eizo, the shrewd yakuza, confers with a certified tax accountant, and any number of other variations are possible. But a story involving a listed company is a whole other world. How about this:

"Nishiwaki's certified tax accountant and Eizo the shrewd yakuza negotiate with each other and hammer out a compromise. At first, they both seem convinced it would work, but the compromise involves the music foundation. A breach of trust issue emerges regarding the foundation. That gives Eizo another excuse to attack the company. What would you say?"

Spontaneous Ideas

Ishihara then adds, "The founder's doing drugs. That's also possible, isn't it?" He just spontaneously came up with such outlandish ideas and kept going.

"Nishiwaki later finds that someone involved in the foundation is his own son. Then, there's the shame he feels for his wife. Or you know, many other things could happen."

Mr Ishihara also called me the following day, February 26.

"I understand that even a family-owned company can be listed, as in the case of Seibu, and that dummy stock can incur some problems. By the way, is it possible for an unlisted company to diversify the ownership of its shares?" he asked.

Of course, it is.

I replied, "Yes, inheritance and listing are totally different things. Unlike a listed company, it's common for an unlisted company to change the ownership of its shares at its discretion, especially when it happens at the time of inheritance."

Then Mr Ishihara brought up the Aneha incident, which was a high-profile case at the time. Is that the same as the Horie case?" he asked.

"No," I replied. "In the Horie case, the company involved was subjected to an audit by certified public accountants. However, the Aneha case involved a structural engineer who falsified documents. Both cases arose in connection with their professional activities, but they were otherwise completely different."

That time, in contrast to the usual situation, Mr Ishihara was hardly convinced. He seemed to have his own reasons, and produced a list: "Gotoda, Matsuura of Namirei Co, and prosecutors, Kamei, Fujii, etc. So many people, so many incidents."

Mr Ishihara said whatever popped up in his mind without explaining the details. Our phone conversation ended after that, and I had no clue as to why he had brought prosecutors into our conversation.

October's Progress

On September 14, he telephoned again, but I was unable to pick up the call at the time. My secretary told me that Mr Ishihara was on the line at 3:20 PM, but I was in a meeting. When she relayed the information to Mr Ishihara, he said, "Okay, thank you. I'll get back to him later." It was Mr Ishihara's typical manner of handling it.

He got back to me a month later, on October 13, and we talked for 14 minutes, beginning at 11:10 AM.

It seemed there was progress with his plot.

"He finally gets what he wants with his childhood friend. Well, I mean Eizo. About the foundation, Nishiwaki's wife, that is, Eizo's childhood friend, personally goes to negotiate for Eizo. Eizo promises her, 'It's okay, you have nothing to worry about. I'll risk my life to protect you.' But her brother-in-law sees them meeting at a hotel for an assignation."

Mr Ishihara's strong obsession with childhood friends seems to be the bone marrow in the structure of his novels.

*Book cover, "The Life of a Man Called 'I'" by Shintaro Ishihara.*

As I recall, in The Life of a Man Called ”I” (Gentosha, 2022), Mr Ishihara introduced an anecdote about a relative who saw him coming out of a love hotel with his future wife. He was still a high school senior at the time. (P 102) From that experience, he learned firsthand that a love affair could sometimes lead to unintended consequences. In his new novel, though, the fates of the two involved in affairs of the heart took a dramatic turn.

Plot Twists

"Well, then, Nishiwaki and Eizo, the shrewd yakuza, came up with an agreement that, if Eizo agreed to burn the promissory note, Nishiwaki would hand over the golf course franchise. Of course, it was meant to be a deception from the beginning. Nishiwaki intended to deceive Eizo and oust him. But Eizo is not a fool. He made a color duplicate of the promissory note and even had it notarized."

Curious about who ends up owning the franchise, I asked, "Okay, then, what happens to the company's ownership?"

For whatever reason, that short phone conversation wasn't enough. Mr Ishihara gave me another call the following day, October 14.

He was in Zushi, and we talked on the phone from 9:12 PM to 10:04 PM.

"Nishiwaki doesn't think that it's a good idea to pay off the bank loans by selling off its golf courses. With the likelihood of capital gains from price rises and the structure of the franchise business, just zeroing out the debt is not enough. It's worth more than that."

Then Mr Ishihara added an unfathomable remark, "That kind of thing doesn't work in this day and age. They just won't wait for you, you know."

Fate of the Promissory Note

We spoke on the phone again on October 31. It was a long call, lasting until 5:19 in the evening.

The company's structure was more concrete. A person named Takeda was the chair, as a dummy placeholder for Nishiwaki. Eizo's wife, probably the woman who ran off with him, becomes the president.

The value of ￥13 billion JPY (about $82 million) was also set.

"Nishiwaki borrows money from the bank to buy golf courses. Eizo gets his hands on the stock certificates of Nishiwaki's company, makes a different company, acquires the golf courses, and demands that Nishiwaki repay the bank loan. Of course, he got the shares from his childhood friend. It means that Eizo has acquired the golf courses free and clear of any encumbrances."

Mr Ishihara was in a very talkative mood.

"But Nishiwaki finally got back the promissory note."

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(To read the book in Japanese, please visit the publisher's website.)