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ARTICLES:
Eurasian Experience
Working
in Japan By Misasha Suzuki June 2003 Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the senior Japanese managers approaching my cubicle in the Legal/Compliance division of the bank, and he didn't look very happy. He stops in front of my desk and proceeds to discuss, in very loud Japanese, how unhappy he is with certain disclosure requirements for reporting that the bank just put into place. Suddenly he stops. "Is your husband Japanese?" he asks, pointing at my name plaque which reads "Misasha Suzuki". Confused, I look at him. "No," I answer, "my father is." "Oh. Then you are Japanese. And therefore you understand how important privacy is to Japanese." And he marches off. When I was a senior in college, I decided that I wanted to go to Japan to work after graduation. Having grown up in Los Angeles as the daughter of a Japanese father and an American mother, I would spend the school year in California and some summers in Japan, but because we didn't speak Japanese at home, my discovery of Japan was really a very individual activity that I did on my own, taking language classes and learning about my other culture through my visits there. For this reason, I really wanted to seal my "Japaneseness" by living there, by myself, for a period of time. So, I attended the DISCO Career Forum, which is known for recruiting Japanese nationals who have gone to college in the United States and who want to return to Japan, and proceeded to get a job as an internal consultant with a large American investment bank/securities firm. I had spent the previous two summers in Japan working for Japanese companies, and I knew I didn't want to do that again, for a variety of reasons, mainly having to do with me being mixed-race and female, so I figured American was the way to go. Little did I know that American banks can be just as Japanese in certain ways as Japanese banks. While the front office staff (traders, etc.) was more often than not foreign, the middle office and back office staff, where I worked, were almost entirely Japanese and acted like they were working in a Japanese company. It was a hard realization for me, an American-educated, half-Japanese young female, just out of American university, as I struggled against various parts of the system for the two years that I worked in Japan. One factor that set me apart from the other "local hires" (I was considered a local hire, even though I wasn't, because I was a Japanese citizen), was my appearance. Due to the fact that I don't particularly look Asian, Japanese would immediately assume that I was foreign. When I revealed that my last name was not Suzuki because I was married to a Japanese, they would all proceed to give me the same 30-second reaction of eyes opening, stepping back, and various expressions of doubt/disbelief that I had come to expect as if it had been choreographed and taught to the entire nation. I used to joke that I should print my brief life story on the back of one of my meishi (business cards) so that it would save everyone involved a lot of time trying to figure out what my background was. Another factor which set me apart was the fact that I came from America. When I got to the bank, there was very little support put into place for people who were considered "local hires" but who had to relocate from the States. After a six-month prolonged battle with Human Resources (perhaps the most Japanese part of the entire company), I was able to increase certain parts of the hiring package that would be offered to the classes of the company hired after me, such as reimbursement for airfare from the States and a longer company-sponsored hotel stay while the new hire was looking for housing in Tokyo. While there were parts of the bank that I realized I would never understand, starting from the exceedingly Japanese orientation I was given with my "new hire class" for the first three days of July when I arrived at the bank (we bowed whenever a new presenter gave us information, whether it was how the Equities division of the bank worked or how we use our phone system to transfer calls interoffice) to the anti-change mentality of the middle office that I found when working on a global general ledger switch project, there were parts that I loved. I really enjoyed the responsibility that the bank gave me, even as a young, partly foreign female, as well as the travel opportunities (I got the chance to work and live in both Singapore and Hong Kong) and the wide mix of colleagues that I had the pleasure of working with (especially the hilariously sarcastic British and Singaporean teammates that I had on one project). Being half also gave me a unique position within the office, as it was often me who would play "cultural liaison", which was an interesting role, as long as no one was really upset with the "other side". I guess that,
upon reflection, my time in Japan, especially as a new graduate
from college, made me a lot tougher and prouder of who I am. I felt
that I was often challenged on a variety of levels - being female,
being young, and being half - and acquiring that toughness and pride
was an important part of my self-discovery. Now that I'm back in
the States and near the end of my second year of law school, all
of the difficult memories of my time at the bank have nearly faded,
leaving me only with the good parts about working in Japan. In fact,
I'm going back to Japan this summer as a summer associate for an
American law firm. I also spent the first summer after law school
also in Japan, working for a Japanese law firm. Thus, while I may
distance myself physically from Japan, it doesn't seem like my work
keeps me that distant - and I think I like that. It reminds me of
who I am and what I have been through to get me to this point. About
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