Ura Hello Work 11- SOKAIYA!!
11 - SOKAIYA (総会屋 – literally ‘shareholder meeting merchant’)
RISK:***
SALARY:****
HARD LABOR:***
ILLEGALITY:****
I’LL HAVE TO ASK YOU TO NOT PUBLISH OUR INTERVIEW
The deadline for this book was the end of May. Around the beginning of May, I got a phone call from Mr. Abyss (not his real name), the Sokaiya. I’d sent him a fax of our interview for fact-checking, and his response was: “We’re in trouble.”
To mess with the sokaiya （corporate blackmailers）, Japan’s corporations – more than 2,000 in all – all try to hold their annual sokai (shareholder meetings) at the same exact time. And this year, the time was less than a month after this book was scheduled to come out. “It’s bad for business if you publicize our activities right before the big meeting. So, I’ll have to ask you not to publish our interview, please.” But the page numbers had already been decided – if I canceled his chapter, there would be 10 blank pages in my book!
I tried to explain this to Mr. Abyss, but he said, “It’s better to not publish it.” At first I figured this was just one of his sokaiya tricks: he wanted some money or something else from me. But then he didn’t ask for anything, and he didn’t budge from his position. We went back and forth like this without resolving anything, so I arranged a face-to-face meeting.
He told me his conditions: “The names of everyone I mentioned have to be replaced with pseudonyms. Also you have to cut everything where the timing of your publication might mess up business. Change the details to the point where, everyone we’re extorting, they won’t be able to recognize themselves if they read it.” Naturally I was against it, but at length it became clear that I still had enough “permissible” material to finish my book, so I gave in. In the end, the interview did shrink from 10 to 8 pages. But Mr. Abyss pressed on, piling more and more conditions: “Don’t print a description of anyone’s face OR what they look like.” After hammering out these kinds of final details, I received permission to print the interview in its current form. But be advised, there’s important things missing. This racket goes deeper than I can tell you.
WHAT IS A SOKAIYA?
“I don’t like to waste time or mice words. Putting it briefly, sokaiya is exortion. Extortion and blackmail. But on the other hand, it can also mean being a bodyguard. In other words, we can make the sokai (shareholder meeting) run rough or we can make it run smoothly. It’s all up to the company. I guess you haven’t heard of the bodyguard part – we don’t do that one so much anymore. Basically, when legitimate shareholders try to ask problematic questions, or they try to vote against what the management is proposing, we shout over them: “No objections! No objections!” And the meeting runs smoothly – if the corporation pays us, that is! This type of work we call YOTOU (与党, from a political word meaning, ‘the ruling party’). On the other hand, there’s also YATOU (野党、meaning ‘the opposition party’) work: we show up to the sokai and ask questions about corporate scandals, or the private behavior of the CEOs! Or we can just try to waste everyone’s time with long, persistent, irrelevant questions. . .
Or we’ll complain that their last-years ‘achievements’ are a sham, that the company is losing money and lying about it. That their new business plans are going to be a disaster, that management has lost their minds.
“You put yatou and yotou together, and the total is ‘sokaiya.’ Company A pays us ‘support money’, so we’re their yotou. Company B doesn’t pay us, so we’ll turn into yatou at THEIR meeting. But frankly, our profession is in decline since the new laws, so there’s not a lot of sokai meetings turning into riots recently.”
What to you mean, your profession is in decline?
”There’s less places that are safe for us to do it. Plus, less fellas are doing it – back in the bubble days, there were 1,000 or 2,000 of us. Now there’s around 100 left, and that number includes Yakuza ‘made men’, unaffiliated free-lancers, veterans, and new guys ( Now that I think about it, it’s kind of complicated).
“The problems started in 1981, with the passage of the Revised Commercial Practices Act. To put it simply, the revision was designed to shut us down! It was actually the first time the law acknowledged our existence – before that we had impunity! The reason for that was, the corporations knew that we were a useful ally from time to time, when the legitimate shareholders became a problem. But the Revised Act changed all that! It made it illegal for companies to give sanjoukin (賛助金 ：support money) to us. That is, now the executives AS WELL AS the extortionists could BOTH be charged.
“That took food off a lot of guys’ plates. On top of that, they closed another loophole: before, if you owned even one share of stock, you could go to the sokai. Nowadays, you have to own a considerable amount of stock. Small gangs got shut down, forced out. That mostly just left the mobsters and the veterans like me. Also, the name of the hustle changed. ‘Sokaiya’ were no more. Now we were ‘professional stockholders’ or ‘special stockholders.’ (, プロ株主= pro kabunushi … 特殊株主 =tokushuu kabunuchi) As far as I’m concerned, that law is just part of the larger mafiyaka (マフィヤ化 : mafiazation) of the Yakuza that’s been going on for years! What I mean by that is that Yakuza have traditionally had very obvious jimusho (事務所 : offices), just like other businesses. They were part of society. But since the police have been cracking down, this has driven Yakuza further and further underground, where they become more dangerous and uncontrollable. It’s becoming more and more like the foreign Mafias, less connected to the traditional Japanese ways, and more and more dangerous for society.”
So how do you extort the money?
“You have to have some sort of pretext. Like maybe you’re selling office plants. Very expensive office plants. Or you’re renting ‘uminoie’ (a sort of temporary beach house, wood frame and cloth walls). . . very expensive uminoie. Of course, even this sort of extortion is still illegal, but a lot of the people working at our front companies don’t know this! (ed. Note: front companies: the workers who actually install the office plants or build the uminoie.) Some of them think they’re making an honest living!
“There’s over 3,000 publicly-held companies in Japan. On the average, each company has a staff of ten people whose job it is to repulse us sokaiya. That’s a total of 30,000 people nationwide, to deal with 100 of us! We call them ‘tantousha’ (担当者= person who is responsible for something). Out of those guys, maybe one in a hundred is so concerned with having a ‘smooth’ sokai that he’s willing to play ball. We can take advantage of him.
“Of course we never directly say, ‘You should buy our uminoie! You have to buy a membership in our very expensive golf club, or else!’ – that would defeat the whole purpose of having a front company. We go to the office and ask to speak to the general manager. He’s scared to talk to us, so he’ll send out the tantousha. That’s their job. So we sit down ,and it turns into a waiting game. We just make meaningless small talk about ‘How’s business recently?’ We just try to wear the guy out! If he’s ready to play ball, he will ask US something like, ‘So can we help you with anything?’ And we will respond with something like, ‘Well, recently we’re leasing oil paintings that companies can use to decorate their offices. If you know of any companies that want to brighten up their office environment, please let us know.’
“If the tantousha is a weak person, that’s all it will take. The subject of the sokai meeting will never even come up, let alone any threats. They’ll lease some of our paintings from our front company, and we will have ourselves an anmoku no ryoukai (暗黙の了解; unspoken understanding) that we leave them alone. But you have to have the heart of a true sokaiya to pull things off in such a grand fashion.”
I WAS BORN WITH THE SOUL OF A EXTORTIONIST IN ME
What kind of heart does the sokaiya have?
“Sokaiya is a racket that exists only in Japan! Lots of countries have their little mafia or their gang or whatever, but those gangsters can’t find a way to make millions just by intimidating a sokai meeting! We’re the only ones! It has to do with the Japanese national character. As a people, we have historically placed a great value on sumuuzu (‘smooth’) or harmonious interactions. So to the average investor attending the meeting, if it’s over quickly without interruptions, then he thinks the company must be doing great! On the other hand, if the meeting drags on and on like a marathon, he will assume that the company, not us gangsters, is to blame: because the meeting is not smooth. I’m not talking about sokaiya who are yelling like Yakuza, threatening and saying they have pictures of the chairman fucking the mail-clerk. I’m talking about us politely stalling the meeting and making it go long, no more. That’s all it takes for the average Japanese investor to think that the company must have done something wrong. Sales must be off. Better to sell the stock, just to be on the safe side. And the corporation knows that the investors think this way. That’s how we get our power.
“In fact, after the Revised Commercial Practices Act was passed, a bunch of us got angry and decided to disrupt certain high-profile sokai more than ever. Not for money – as that would be illegal - but just to teach the companies they needed to respect us. I joined in this protest myself. Of course the sokai turned into a total circus. But that was good for us, because the mass media really picked up on it. The more articles they do, the more afraid of us the companies get. Because the reporters ALSO think that the company must have done something wrong if the sokai gets out of control. As annoying as we are when we ‘marathon’ the meetings, it’s even worse for them if they tell us to shut up and go away. See, if the chairman doesn’t painstakingly correct all of our innuendos and rumors, the reporters will go ahead and write them up as fact. So the chairman helps us make the meeting run long!”
What kinds of statements do you make when you are doing yatou (‘opposition party’) work?
“It depends on the sokaiya! Some guys just yell a lot, intimidating through force. But real sokaiya generally sit down beforehand and study the company thoroughly. We look for weaknesses: rumors, scandals as well as legitimate problems. Our goal is to make the chairman admire our research, even if he despises us personally: ‘I can’t believe you knew about that!’ kind of thing. Put another way, if you just talk nonsense, conspiracy theories or filibuster, eventually you’ll get shouted down by the legitimate shareholders. But if you ask serious questions, the chairman can’t evade them.
“But nowadays, this kind of well-prepared, slick sokaiya is hard to find! Not because speaking out-of-turn at sokai has become illegal – it hasn’t – but because it’s now illegal for the companies to pay us sanjoukin. In the past, the more infamous you were, the better business was. Now it’s the opposite! Nowadays, if you start to get too high-profile, the police will arrest you right before the June meetings, just to make an example out of you. Actually, the police are being stupid, if you ask me. They’re arresting the yellers, who really aren’t that well-connected to begin with. The real high-rollers live in the shadows, and never get arrested.”
Is it true that the majority of today’s sokaiya are either Yakuza or uyoku (right wing, militia-like groups)?
“I can’t deny it. It used to be different, but the stricter laws forced everyone else out, so the police made it this way, really."
(Mr. Abyss’ discussion of his own ‘relationship’ with these groups has been cut at his request).
"The corporations deal with Yakuza and uyoku differently. But recently, the police are the most dirty of all of us! They’ve stopped us from selling our ‘bulletins’ (some sokaiya print industry magazines, bulletins or pamphlets (very expensive ones, as it happens) and ‘request’ that the companies buy the entire print run). They’re really getting all up in our turf. They’ve started coming to the sokai, even! Not only does that cramp our style, but by coming to the sokai, the cops make a lot of personal connections with the executives. So recently, a lot of them retire early and go to work as tantousha or sokaiya-management consultants. And they charge the companies almost as much as we do! It’s police extortion if you ask me. You can check the hiring records of the corporations if you don’t believe me.”
WE’LL STAY IN BUSINESS, MARK MY WORDS!
What direction is the sokaiya business headed in from now on?
“Recently, corporations have to share more information with the public. They are more open and transparent. Sokai meetings, too! In other words, we have fewer and fewer chances to do our business. But on the other hand, the bigger the company gets, the more it starts to fray and unravel at the seams. It is harder for the corporations to keep hidden things hidden. Until recently, our business was like, ‘Find some dirty laundry and then run to the sokai and sell it for protection money.’ But we don’t target sokai meetings so much any longer. We aren’t quitting – we are just changing targets. The new techniques can be used year-round, and it’s harder for the cops to catch us. Basically, that Revised Commercial Practices Act did us a favor by weeding out the lames. Now it’s only us smart guys, and we’ve all gone underground. As long as there’s secrets that people are hiding, we’ll stay in business, mark my words!”
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This book gets better and better!
I like this chapter. I mean, there’s a bunch of English info about sokaiya on the net, but this gives a lot more detail and makes it easier to understand.
Once again, major props to our intrepid honyokusha!! Thanks for your efforts!!
oops, that should be honyakusha.
Really interesting stuff. It’s funny how confusing a lot of this is as a westerner.
@Riley: as a translator, there’s always the issue of “How much background information should I include even though it’s not in the text?” Fortunately for you guys, I’m not a pro and can pretty much put in whatever I think will help.
Randomly pooped blob of trivia: A Finnish word “ura” means career.
http://fi.wiktionary.org/wiki/career