Let me continue the story of my younger days, which I wrote about in the January issue of this magazine.
After entering the electronics newspaper company, I was assigned to the editorial team of an industrial magazine called Rajio terebi sangyo (The Radio and TV Industry). It was a magazine specializing in not household electric appliances, or white goods, but so-called brown goods. There were about 130 pages in total. The editor in chief, a chap called Murata, had graduated from Musashino Art University; he was around 40 years old at that time.
The magazine team was quite separate from the newspaper team, and Murata used to discuss production directly with the president. I was 23 years old and a complete novice. Everything I was told to do, I just obediently said “Yes!” and tried my best to pick up editing skills from Murata.
Around that time, I was jotting down my thoughts a lot in the notebooks that I mentioned before. Sometimes I wrote as many as 10 pages in an evening. In my high school days, I used to cram notes on both sides of sheets of paper, but that was creative thinking, not everyday thoughts.
I was also good at drawing pictures, even before I entered elementary school. In the spring of my first year in elementary school, I remember four or five children in my village carrying me home on their shoulders and then asking me to draw a horse, so I quickly drew a picture of a galloping horse on a large white sheet of paper. At elementary and junior high school, I always won the top prize in drawing competitions. In my third year at junior high school, I served as a judge for the first-stage screening in a sketch contest, after which our art teacher chose the gold, silver, and bronze prizewinners.
Murata recognized these talents and quickly asked me to do some manuscript writing and layout for the editorial work. He would often leave the office around three o’clock in the afternoon and not return that day. Eventually I ended up doing the final proofreading myself. The final proofreading meant going to the printing company to make a last check before plates were prepared for printing.
At around six in the evening the phone at the printing company would ring, and Murata would ask, “How’s it going?” “I’m nearly finished,” I would reply, “so you can go home.” But I frequently ended up working until 11 at night.
One morning Murata was called over by the president. Standing in front of his desk, Murata asked, “What’s the matter?” “What’s the meaning of this?” the president shouted gruffly. There was a typo in the newly printed magazine. “Oh,” replied Murata. “That’s Wada’s job . . .” And he shouted angrily at me, “Look what you’ve gone and done!”
I apologized, but at the same time I felt that Murata’s anger at me was rather unreasonable. After all, he was never there at the printing company to help with the final proof. “Useless fellow!” the president said. I sensed then that I wasn’t trusted, and I thought to myself that once I had learned the ropes, I would move on to another company.
It turned out the reason why Murata was forever leaving the office around three in the afternoon was that he had a side job. I found out about it when I was asked to help once. He was giving a talk to about 10 young manufacturing company employees about the results of some market research. I distributed materials for the talk, which sparked my own interest in market research.
That evening Murata treated me to a meal and admitted that he had a side job. He told me that it was okay to work on the side and thereby earn a bit more to make up for the poor salary at the company. “Really?” I thought to myself. I was dumbfounded. And I realized then that although there were only four of them, the newspaper team had overwhelming power in the company. (To be continued.)