Georgina Noakes meets Toyoo Mohri

Georgina Noakes meets Toyoo Mohri, Gard representative in Tokyo

LIKE many Japanese who have spent time working in the west, Toyoo Mohri has an adopted English name - in his case, Tom. He is one of several ex-Sanko executives whose faces are familiar throughout the shipping and commercial markets of Tokyo.

We met for lunch at The Palace Hotel adjacent to the Royal Palace in the heart of Tokyo. I have met Tom before, and know that he is full of fun and not averse to writing the odd piece of poetry. But today we focus on how he got involved in shipping and ended up as Gard's representative in Japan. Gard set up in Japan in 1991 and it mainly serves the larger Japanese owners and operators, most of whom are registered in Panama or Liberia.

Tom was born on Kyushu Island, just to the south of mainland Japan, where he grew up, until his high-school days. "My childhood dream was to work in shipping. There were two types of training for seamen. In junior school I wanted to go to a high school for seamen, but my teacher and parents advised me to go to university and take a degree in navigation, which I did."

Tom's first step in shipping was to go to sea. However, he does not wax lyrical about his adventures on the high seas, and he was very happy to be back on dry land after only just over a year. "I did not enjoy my time on ore carriers going mainly to the Persian Gulf and Australia," Tom said. "In fact, it was a miserable time and a completely different life-style to what I had seen in movies and read in novels because loading ports were in remote places and discharge times were very short."

"Fortunately for me, it was the shipping boom of the early seventies, and Sanko was expanding so quickly at that time it decided to bring some of the people ashore from its ships to run the company. It was a big relief for me to be behind a desk, and it was an exciting time to be in the industry," said Tom. The exchange rate was strong, and all shipping companies were involved in ambitious newbuilding plans, including Sanko.

"We were involved in pioneering new ideas that no other shipping company had done before," said Tom, such as, "ordering new ships on a large-scale discount basis with new designs that offered the most efficient transportation of cargo yet seen."

But by the late 1970s, the landscape had changed dramatically. Tom describes what happened. "A severe drop in gross income, with oil prices falling from $35 a barrel, and the quick appreciation of Japanese Yen against foreign currencies forced shipping companies to reschedule their rebuilding programmes. The oil, shipping and freight markets peaked and thereafter went rapidly downhill. Nobody wanted to buy new ships any more, and the mood of the market changed considerably." For someone who had been involved in the process of Sanko's newbuilding contracts and control of the fleet, these were testing times for Tom.

Nevertheless, Tom viewed his time at Sanko as one of the most enjoyable of his career from a commercial view point and because it also offered him the opportunity to live in London with his wife and two daughters, now in their twenties but just five and seven at the time. With sushi bars opening everywhere, Japanese food is today enjoying a boom in the UK and abroad. Things were different twenty years ago, however, when the capital had maybe just two or threeJapanese restaurants. "The biggest difference for us in England was the food," Tom recalls.

"We already knew people in London and I thought I would be able to communicate with the English," Tom continued. "However, I was wrong. People spoke to me as an English person, not as Tom Mohri, who is Japanese. This led me to ask myself, "Who is Tom Mohri?" My contacts were friendly and eager to develop relationships, they tried hard to understand what Tom Mohri had to say and paid me special attention."

"I would be visiting a City law office and would just begin to understand what was being said when some cockney slang would be introduced into the conversation and I would say, "Stop! Please speak to me in normal English and speak slowly - I cannot understand you!"

"My wife communicated intimately with our neighbours in Bellsize Park without speaking any English at all - people were so kind and would take my family shopping and invite our children out. I have many happy memories of living in England."

What advice would Tom give to westerners who are visiting or working in Japan for the first time?

"We have to try to understand one another. The Japanese nature is different. You have to understand our mind. We have a different corporate system, especially in shipping. In Europe or the States, a company is controlled by an owner. In Japan a company is controlled by a group of seniors. Therefore, if foreigners want a response or an immediate financial return from a Japanese company, this is difficult for us to understand. We are slower at making decisions, and the majority of the board is always required.

"For example, in a sale and purchase deal, it can sometimes seem to us that a foreign broker requires a decision 'tomorrow at opening time' - that is the western way. So my advice is to take it slowly. If a broker were to read and understand the Japanese way of thinking, then they will probably do very good business here."

"Traditionally, Japanese businessmen like agreeing a contract. But when circumstances change and a foreign party wants to change the contract, they must remember that Japanese people always want to keep to the contract. In Japan, a contract is a contract, and it is not easily broken. Some westerners appreciate this attitude - and some do not"

When not dealing with the usual workload of P&I business for Gard, Tom can be found sailing two or three times a month on his 34ft cruiser, which he co-owns with nine friends. "I have a happy time at sea now," Tom muses. "Maybe this is some recovery for me from my long days at spent on the tankers."