Satoh Tomiichi is a busy man. As the successor of his father's multimillion-pound company, he has neither the luxury nor leisure for love - and certainly not the distractions that come from it. But when a crucial project requires him to provide more...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
AT the risk of sounding insufferable, Satoh Tomiichi is just a little bit tired of all the awards.
It's not because his face gets splashed around the newspapers a lot. It's not even because of that viral TikTok video which crowned him the "hottest CEO of London". (If Lewis could hear his thoughts right now, he would have pointed out, "Actually, I believe it's pronounced hawt.") A video that was basically a girl comparing his face against a series of other CEOs — half of whom are in real estate like Tomiichi is, and many of whom he knows. Suffice to say things got awkward really quickly, and now any statement Tomiichi makes that has even the slightest ounce of gravitas in it is met with a chuckle and the sentence, "Well, if London's hottest CEO says it's so, then it must be so!"
No. The real reason Tomiichi is tired of the awards is because every time he's presented with one, he's obliged to make a speech.
Which is bad enough as it is, but there's also the feeling that he's expected to make a good speech. There's a sort of breathless anticipation every time his name is called, an anticipation that settles like pressure on his shoulders. Even now, as he ascends the stage in this banquet hall full of white men, he can feel it. The way everyone settles into their seats, interlacing their fingers as they prepare themselves to listen. To a story perhaps, about immigrant grit and rising above discrimination, filled with inspirational one-liners on the noble values of tradition, honour, and etiquette. A story that starts with something like: my earliest memories are of lying on a tatami mat in the sweltering Japan heat, while my mother in her white kimono makes sencha behind the shoji screen ...
Unfortunately for the masses, Tomiichi's earliest memory is eating Jammie Dodgers while watching Where's Wally?
Which, he's discovered, is a wholly unsatisfactory opening. Apparently it isn't socially acceptable for someone who left Japan at the age of three to have his upbringing be one of primarily English culture. Sure, there are some aspects of his lifestyle which reflect his birth country: his favourite breakfast is still ichiju sansai, for example, and like any true-blue Japanese youth he once was unabashedly obsessed with One Piece. But these tiny anecdotes are simply not enough.
The truth is clear, Tomiichi thinks as he stops in the middle of the stage. He simply isn't the kind of immigrant his audience is looking for.
What the people are after, Tomiichi knows, is a man like his father. A man who left Japan with his wife and new-born son with nothing more than five pounds in his pocket. Who built Satoh Property Group ground up with his bare hands, crafting it into a successful, respectable business before handing off the gold-gilded reins to Tomiichi.
That'sthe kind of immigrant they're looking for. The kind who has a book-worthy life story; the kind journalists and award hosts and publishing agencies are tripping over themselves to have.
Tomiichi's story isn't that kind of story. He's painfully aware of this. If Julius Caesar was summarized by I came, I saw, I conquered, then Tomiichi's is I came, I lived, I existed. Fifty years from now, when someone puts his obituary into the newspapers, Tomiichi has the strong feeling that there will still be margins left for advertisements.
