At the end of December 1989, the Nikkei index rose to nearly 39,000 points.
Someone opened a beer in the lounge that day.
The host on TV smiled and talked about 40,000 points, and the people next to him were already discussing when 50,000 points would arrive.
A young man who had just joined the company asked me if I would regret it if the index really reached 50,000 points.
I said of course I would.
Who would not regret it?
Watching others make money while having only a few coins in my own pocket, how could I possibly have any detached state of mind?
I just did not expect that that was actually the peak of the mountain.
After spring began the following year, the initial changes were very small.
First, stocks were no longer as easy to rise as they used to be.
Then the people from the bank came less often.
Later on, a few people who always talked about stocks in the lounge started not watching TV.
Whenever the TV turned to financial programs, they went to smoke.
At that time, I was doing on-site administrative work at a warehouse that supplied materials to construction companies.
In the past, at the end of every month, drivers had to queue up to wait to unload goods, and truckload after truckload of cement, steel, and pipe fittings were sent to the construction sites.
By spring, two long-term clients suddenly requested delayed deliveries.
In May, another one was cancelled.
By June, a batch of building materials piled up in the innermost part of the warehouse had not been claimed by anyone for over a month.
The company president still said it was only temporary.
In July, wage arrears started.
I was all too familiar with this kind of talk.
Before the accident at the Osaka factory, I had also told others that it was just a temporary cash flow crunch.
The first things the company cut were temporary workers.
Then the night shifts were stopped.
Then, even regular employees who had worked there for over a decade began to be called into the office.
The changes happened too fast for people to get used to them in time.
The year before, people who waved ten-thousand-yen bills on the streets of Ginza because they could not hail a taxi were already calculating whether they could buy a train commuter pass for one fewer zone the following year.
The glass doors of real estate agencies were plastered with price-reduction advertisements.
The people who once told everyone that "Tokyo land will never drop" started explaining what adjustments were, what a technical pullback was, and what the continued existence of long-term value meant.
I had heard all of these words.
Back when the factory was losing money, I was also very good at inventing words.
Calling a decrease in orders a temporary fluctuation, and calling a cash flow shortage the growing pains brought by expanding operations.
Only later did I realize that when people love inventing such words the most, it is often precisely when they no longer know what to do.
As for how long those words could hold up, I soon saw it with my own eyes.
Kono came to find me that summer.
I almost did not recognize him.
His suit was still the same one, but his watch was gone.
His hair was a bit messy, and he stood at the warehouse entrance asking me if I could lend him one hundred thousand yen.
I was stunned for a long time.
Two years ago, he had even asked me if I wanted to follow him to get rich.
"The house will not sell."
He sat next to the vending machine, clutching an unopened can of coffee in his hand.
"The bank is still collecting interest. The company is also failing. The second apartment was bought too high back then, and even if I sell it at a reduced price now, the money from the sale will not be enough to pay off the loan."
I asked about the first one.
He smiled faintly.
"The first apartment was used as additional collateral for the second one."
After hearing this, I did not know what to say for a long time.
In the end, I lent him thirty thousand.
That was all I could pull together at the time.
When he left, he repeatedly said he would pay it back.
Then I never saw him again.
Later I heard from others that he returned to Saitama.
His father's printing plant was also hounded by the bank for debts because it had guaranteed him.
I did not know what ultimately happened to him.
At that time, I still thought Kono was just having bad luck.
In business, there are always people who make money and people who lose money.
Buying a house at the peak, and then running into poor management by the company—though such a thing was unfortunate, there was nothing difficult to understand about it.
But before long, I found that the number of unlucky people seemed to be growing.
First, the people I used to drink with stopped talking about stocks, and then a few regular clients in real estate suddenly disappeared without a trace.
Construction companies began delaying pickups, construction sites requested pushing delivery dates back, and even the company president, who used to love urging us to stock up on more materials, started asking if already-ordered goods could be returned.
I gradually developed a very uncomfortable feeling.
What Kono encountered perhaps was not all that special.
It was only later that I learned people would lump the changes of those years together and give it a very simple name.
But standing on the streets of Tokyo in 1990, no one would suddenly receive a notice on a certain day telling you that the boom had ended.
All you could see was one person after another around you starting to run short of money.
Bosses began delaying wages, banks no longer chased people for loans like before, construction sites stopped, and goods in warehouses went unclaimed for longer and longer periods.
The people who were discussing which plot of land to buy next month the year before were already calculating how long the cash in their hands could hold out a few months later.
It was also at such a time that I felt, bit by bit, that what was happening before my eyes was probably far bigger than Kono's individual failure.
In the past, I always understood "bankruptcy" as a failure of judgment.
Contracts signed incorrectly, too much money borrowed, business running at a loss, and finally the house confiscated and the company belonging to someone else.
Only after I truly stood at the bottom did I find that management was not so simple.
When a company fell, the first thing to disappear was of course the boss's money, but matters would not stop there.
Wages could not be paid, so skilled workers would leave; material suppliers could not get payments, so the next factory might also face shortages; half-finished engineering projects sat there, and after a new contractor took over, they still had to re-inspect and reorganize manpower.
Originally the books were only short by tens of millions of yen, but dragging it out for a few months meant the money finally needed to be poured in might have multiplied several times over.
Laying off one person was the same.
Sitting in the office in the past, what I saw was how much labor costs had been reduced.
Later, after actually working on-site, I learned how long it took for a newcomer to replace a veteran worker of ten years who left; why a truckload of goods was sent out two hours later than usual after a foreman familiar with warehouse locations was dismissed.
These things were rarely written into that initial cost-cutting spreadsheet.
But in the end, they all turned into money.
I did not feel because of this that a company should not lay off workers, nor did I feel that managers should support everyone.
When a business could not hold on, the places that needed to be cut still had to be cut.
It was just that ever since then, whenever I saw words like "cutting labor", "closing factories", and "halting procurement", I would habitually think one step further.
Just how much was actually saved?
And how much more would be spent afterwards?
The past me only knew how to calculate the former number.
I went to Ueno later on.
Underneath the viaduct, more and more unemployed people lived.
Among them were workers I knew, as well as people who used to wear suits.
There was a man who used to be a site director for a small construction company; at his peak, he led dozens of people in projects, always pinching an imported cigarette in his hand.
When I saw him again, he used cardboard boxes to block the wind, and the leather shoes on his feet had already split open.
After he recognized me, his first sentence turned out to be:
"Tanaka, you are really lucky."
I almost laughed out loud.
A person who was bankrupt, in debt, living in Minami-Senju, and having most of his wages deducted every month—this was the first time someone said I was lucky.
But after thinking about it, I felt he was right.
I really was very lucky.
Because I had already gone bankrupt once in 1985.
By the time everyone fell from the sky, I was already on the ground.
Days on the ground were hard, but at least I would not fall a second time.
It was also from that time on that I was finally able to recall the Osaka factory quite calmly.
Satsuki had of course schemed against me.
To this day, I would not deny this on her behalf.
She knew the exchange rate would have problems, knew that contract was dangerous, and deliberately let me think I had finally gotten an opportunity to break away from the head family.
But she could do these things because she understood the me of back then all too well.
As long as the four characters "independent management" were placed in front of me, I would reach out and take them myself.
As long as someone told me orders would increase more and more, I dared to borrow more money.
As long as the bank was willing to lend, I would treat the loan as others' recognition of my ability.
As long as I made money the previous year, I would feel that the second year it was only natural to make even more.
Later, the whole of Japan did the same thing all over again.
I was just a few years earlier than them.
This discovery did not make me feel much better.
It just finally made it impossible for me to push all the responsibility onto a girl who was only in her teens back then.
All of this was simply brought upon myself.
In the autumn of 1990, newspapers began extensive reports on unemployment, wage arrears, and corporate bankruptcies.
I saw the three characters Saionji once again.
This time it was on a relief announcement.
Saionji took out money, bypassed the bankrupt companies, and distributed a portion of the unpaid wages directly to the workers.
Later, someone organized the Independent Labor Mutual Aid Association to take on new projects for workers who could not find jobs.
Someone in the warehouse held the newspaper and sighed, saying that the Saionji Family was truly wealthy.
Another person said that rich people occasionally doing a bit of good deeds was also for the sake of reputation.
I sat nearby eating the rice balls my wife had shaped in the morning, without chiming in the whole time.
Of course I knew the Saionji Family was very wealthy.
I knew even better that they did not spend money this way in the past.
At least, when I managed the factory in the past, I never thought that a company that had already collapsed still owing workers' wages had anything to do with another group.
I would have said that was the problem of the former management and the bank.
Yet Satsuki reached her hand into it.
I did not know whether she was doing it to win hearts, take over the labor force, or out of some other plans.
Probably a mix of all.
She was never a person who would purely do good deeds.
But the people under the bridge arches who received their wages would not care about the motives.
They only knew their children finally had money to go to the hospital, the rent could be paid for another month, and there was still a place to start working tomorrow.
Looking at that newspaper, I suddenly seriously thought for the first time: if the Osaka factory had not collapsed back then, and if I had kept sitting in the position of Executive Director, what would I have become?
The answer probably would not be very good.
In those years, I would most likely have been like everyone else, taking land that kept rising to borrow more money from the bank, expanding the factory, increasing investments, and treating every price rise as proof that my judgment was correct.
By the time the bank tightened its loans, the mess in my hands would only have been much larger than that Osaka factory.
Thinking of this, I thought of Satsuki again.
She took away my factory, my position, and that little something I most wanted to prove to Shuichi.
Back then I wished so badly that she would pay a price for this, but later I had to admit that if that failure had happened a few years later, the price I paid would probably have been even greater.
This did not make me grateful to her.
She had schemed against me; that fact would never change no matter when.
But I finally could not keep telling myself that I merely lost to Satsuki.
That contract was signed by me, the production expansion was decided by me, and the outsourced factories were also found by me.
Later, the entire Tokyo made similar mistakes all over again, and standing on the sidelines watching for a few years, I finally saw clearly what I had actually done back then.
As for Shuichi...
I lowered my head to glance at the newspaper, and recalled the jobs that, one after another, "coincidentally" fell under Saionji over these years.
Neither of us ever broke the silence on this matter.
Nor was I prepared to ask now.
It is just that after that day, I suddenly did not want to muddle along like this anymore.
Over the years, I had entered construction sites, stayed in warehouses, run deliveries, and done odd jobs in retail stores and entertainment venues.
In the past, I only felt that I was paying off debts; after finishing one job, I would move on to the next.
But if the next job was still going to come, I should at least figure out why it operated this way.
Why goods got stuck in the warehouse, why construction sites were delayed, who a work crew truly could not do without, and where the money saved on the books would eventually be spent back.
When I used to sit in the Executive Director's office, I had never seriously looked at these things.
Now someone had laid them out before me one by one.
Then I would look at them clearly.
I had already lost once.
I surely could not let six years pass and lose in the exact same way as back then.