Overview

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 sayonara, the time was never right.

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9781861977892

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Praise for the Hardback edition of 'The Blue-Eyed Salaryman' 'Hilarious' Daily Mail 'Astonishing' Libby Purves, Radio 4 Midweek 'Fascinating' David Thomas, Sunday Telegraph '...A rare inside look at corporate life in Japan, one that is worth more than a dozen business-school studies...' Bloomberg

Please remove your shoes and please put on your office slippers and learn from a foreigner how to become a lifer in a mighty Japanese conglomerate. Globetrotter Murtagh, born in Dublin, settles down and discovers how to succeed in business in the world's most evolved corporate culture. After a suitable graduate education, Muruta-san (his Japanese alias), is issued his Mitsubishi business cards-a testament to his existence. He lodges in a Mitsubishi dormitory, dons his Mitsubishi jacket. He confounds the Mitsubishi eye exam, not calibrated for blue. He attends meetings and lectures. He stays late and keeps his desk tidy. Proficient in the language and married, after a successful courtship of her parents, to clever, pretty Miyuki, Muruta does his best (as required by the Mitsubishi rulebook). He moves from city to city, as necessary. He assumes the suitable salaryman style, paying due obeisance to the honor of the corporation. Muruta becomes a permanent employee-a lifer-as well as a permanent foreigner in a land particularly bewildered by foreigners. (A touch of xenophobia may be evident in a place where people politely remind him that he may have forgotten to go home.) What exactly he does for the firm seems less relevant than the way he does it. People in Mitsubishi always do what they say they'll do, as long as it's in the rulebook. Of course, Muruta eventually become Murtagh again. He paroles himself and renounces his lifetime commitment to the corporation. His sometimes cynical, always waggish, text refers to customs like proper bowing angles and to corporate flags and anthems. He says nothing concerning hara-kiri. An anthropological business book made in Japan. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Niall Murtagh was born and grew up on Dublin's northside. After graduating from University College Dublin in 1979, he travelled slowly across Europe, Asia, Australia and Latin America, working along the way but taking time off to earn several degrees, including diplomas in Japanese and French and a doctorate in artificial intelligence. He has lived in Japan since 1986, initially as a Japanese government-sponsored student, later as an ordinary employee of Mitsubishi. He has written for various publications, in both English and Japanese, on travel, technology and corporate culture.

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