Blue Eyed Salaryman

Why on earth would anyone give up a life on the open road for the regimen of a vast Japanese conglomerate? And is it really so different in Japan from everywhere else?

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Niall Murtagh spent his twenties on the open road: hitchhiking to Istanbul, crossing the Atlantic in a home-built yacht and trekking through Patagonia. In 1986 he drifted to Japan where he made an extraordinary flip by settling down. He jumped in at the deep end and joined one of the most traditional and conservative companies in the East: Mitsubishi. He smiled when he read the company rulebook but stopped smiling when he realised the rules applied to him too. He was instructed not to walk around with his hands in his pockets, shown how to choose the correct place to sit at a meeting and given the words of the company song for studying after work. He learned the etiquette for offering and receiving business cards, the staff canteen rules (take one portion of vegetables, one portion of rice and finish eating by the time the bell rings) and the regulations for the company dormitories for new recruits (regular room checks, no noise, no females). His work impressed his bosses and he became a permanent employee - a lifer. In time, the corporate escalator moved upwards and he was promoted to manager class - the first westerner to reach such heights in the company inside Japan, they told him. He had realised the Japanese Dream: a traditional wife, a cosy apartment in the company housing block and a bicycle to get to work. He thought about moving on but when it came to saying sayonara, the time was never right. With his shiny suit, his attache case and a good dose of humour, Niall Murtagh describes a world that is an utter mystery to most westerners.