Free Web NovelThe drinking session with Yamasaki Hideo had been quite enjoyable. In particular, the story of how he had amassed such enormous wealth had given me a great deal to think about.
“So that’s how you came to know Chairman Masayoshi Son.”
“That’s right. Masayoshi’s father was the one who gave me a job.”
Masayoshi Son’s father had left Joseon with his own father and come to Japan.
After liberation, he returned to Korea, but finding it impossible to make a living, he headed back to Japan with his family just a year later.
He had a remarkable instinct for business and did anything that made money. Entering the private lending and pachinko industries, he achieved considerable success.
Back then, Yamasaki Hideo had joined as one of his employees and learned the trade there.
“After the president collapsed, I took over all of his business. Masayoshi was still young at the time.”
Yamasaki Hideo’s business acumen had been even sharper than Masayoshi Son’s father’s.
His pachinko business became a massive success, and what began in Kyushu soon expanded nationwide.
I had already known most of this from looking into Masayoshi Son, but I had not known that Yamasaki Hideo had once worked there before taking over the business.
“Didn’t the yakuza interfere heavily?”
“What would be the point in even saying it? In those days they came to see me almost every day. I had to pay them a portion of the profits. Every time I opened a franchise, I had to first go negotiate with the local yakuza in that region.”
In Japan, pachinko was a business that generated enormous money.
The yakuza often ran pachinko parlors directly, so rivals disappearing without a trace was far from uncommon.
He downed a cup of sake, then rolled up his upper garment.
“Here, here. And lastly here.”
He pointed in turn to the two scars on his abdomen before finally indicating the scar over the left side of his chest.
“Those are stab wounds.”
“You can tell. Especially this one—I truly thought I was going to die.”
As he absently touched the scar on his chest, a bitter smile appeared.
“It was a wound given to me by the friend I trusted the most.”
“The friend you trusted most?”
Yamasaki Hideo nodded.
“That hurt more than the scar itself.”
“To stab your own friend... May I ask why?”
“Well now. Who knows what it was anymore. He’s no longer in this world, so there’s no way to ask.”
Muttering bitterly, he drank another cup of sake.
“That incident made me decide to quit the pachinko business. Have you ever heard of Nakajima Tenkichi?”
“Yes. I know the name. The pachinko godfather of Korean-Japanese descent. His Korean name was Jeong Dongil, wasn’t it?”
There was a reason I remembered him.
Nakajima Tenkichi had once been the richest man in Japan.
“Good. Then this will be easier. Nakajima was the owner who supplied me with pachinko machines. I handed over all of my business rights to an entrepreneur he introduced me to. That man was Chairman Han Chang-woo, the one called the Emperor of Japanese pachinko.”
Seventy percent of the pachinko business had once been controlled by Korean-Japanese operators.
Because there were only so many occupations available to Koreans who faced discrimination in Japan, they had no choice but to take on work in the shadows.
“I’ve heard of Chairman Han Chang-woo as well.”
Chairman Han had also maintained deep ties with Korea.
He had even been deeply connected to the slot machine case I once used through Oh Hyun-woo to imprison the Cheonsuman brothers.
“I liquidated every one of my businesses and poured everything into real estate. And then, would you believe it, property prices rose day after day. I was lucky.”
Calling it mere luck felt far too simple. freeweɓnøvel.com
The timing of Yamasaki Hideo’s investments had been almost unnervingly perfect.
When luck keeps repeating, it becomes skill. When failure repeats, it becomes habit.
“After putting most of my assets into real estate, I came here and secluded myself. That was when Masayoshi Son came to find me.”
And so the story finally reached the point where he met Masayoshi Son.
“I already knew he had founded SoftBank. Like his father, he had an exceptional instinct for business. But I never expected that child would come to seek me out.”
Masayoshi Son had founded SoftBank in the 1980s, during Japan’s golden era.
“He bluntly told me to invest.”
“Was this during SoftBank’s early founding days?”
“No. He said he had fallen gravely ill, stepped down as CEO, and was recuperating. By the time he miraculously overcame the illness and returned to the company... SoftBank was on the verge of collapse.”
Ah. That time.
The period when Masayoshi Son had been diagnosed with chronic hepatitis and effectively given a death sentence, only to return and find that the employees he had trusted had betrayed him.
A series of failed new ventures had left the company with more than 10 billion yen in bank debt.
Those same employees resigned, left SoftBank, and founded new companies that poached its clients.
The humiliation he endured then had likely become one of the greatest foundations for the man he later became.
“He asked me to invest 10 billion yen. In exchange, he said he would give me half of SoftBank’s shares.”
It was still a huge amount today, but back then 10 billion yen was staggering.
“I thought about it for a long time. No matter how grateful I was to Masayoshi’s father, investing in a company that was dying was not something that made sense.”
“That’s true. I wouldn’t have been able to invest so easily either.”
“But Masayoshi said to me that if he had money, he would make SoftBank the greatest company in Japan. He asked me to trust him. I liked the look in his eyes. So I decided to invest. That relationship has continued until now.”
A relaxed smile settled on Yamasaki Hideo’s face under the soft lights.
“Chairman Son says there isn’t a Japanese businessman alive who hasn’t borrowed your money at least once.”
“That too was luck. Not long after I liquidated all my real estate, the bubble burst.”
“You sold all of it before the bubble collapsed?”
“Yes. Then everyone came running, asking to borrow the overflowing cash. Why let money sit idle? I lent it to corporations and collected the interest.”
So this was how he had ended up holding such overwhelming liquidity.
Japan’s soaring real estate prices of the 1980s had come crashing down in 1990.
The stock market plunged. Real estate followed.
Deflation hit, money stopped circulating, # Nоvеlight # and companies unable to pay bank interest collapsed one after another.
If he had liquidated all his real estate before the bubble burst...
Then the power of the cash he held would have been beyond imagination.
Banks had tightened lending, raised rates, and desperately tried to claw back loans.
“Amazing. That wasn’t luck. You simply have a remarkable eye for the tides of the era.”
“Ha ha ha. Let’s just call it luck.”
“I think I finally understand why someone like you is not widely known to the world. You weren’t running businesses openly anymore.”
“Well, those who know, know. Once I quit the pachinko business, I cut ties with politicians and even the yakuza. That may be why even fewer people know.”
This old man had overcome crisis after crisis purely through instinct.
It was enough to inspire awe.
“Incredible. I’d like to borrow some of your luck.”
“Ha ha ha. Aren’t you the luckier one? I hear you’re a man who succeeds with every investment and knows no failure.”
“Well, I suppose my case is a little different from yours.”
With a small chuckle, Yamasaki Hideo shrugged.
Then, after glancing up at the moon for a moment, he turned toward me.
“We should get up now. The night has grown very deep.”
That was how our conversation ended, and with it, the drinking session as well.
* * *
My meeting with Yamasaki Hideo left me with many things to think about.
At the same time, he had shown me a path for how I ought to live.
For several days I remained shut up in the hotel, thinking and rethinking the road ahead.
But in the end, I could not come to a conclusion.
I decided to take my time and turned to finishing the final task of my schedule in Japan.
— Muhyuk. All those buyout funds really do have Vodafone behind them. Those bastards have no intention of acquiring anything.
“Really? Are you sure?”
It was information Han Gyeongyeong had dug up through a great deal of legwork, but suspicion was always necessary.
— Yeah. One hundred percent. No, one thousand percent sure. They don’t even have the money to acquire it. Those bastards already poured it all into other investments.
That meant the funds’ liquidity had completely dried up.
“All right. Can you send me the materials?”
— I’ll send it by email.
“Thanks, hyung.”
— Don’t mention it. We’ll talk again later.
By the time I ended the call with Han Gyeongyeong, the timing was perfect—we had just arrived at SoftBank headquarters.
I headed straight for the chairman’s office to meet Masayoshi Son.
“President Kim, welcome.”
“There’s still time, right?”
“Yes. About thirty minutes.”
The moment we sat facing each other, I got straight to the point.
“It turns out Vodafone is behind the funds that entered the bidding.”
“What? Are you certain?”
“The information came from the United States, so it’s reliable. With the free cash they currently have, there’s no way they can acquire Vodafone. This looks like nothing more than a trick to raise the sale price.”
“Ha, those scumbag bastards!”
Masayoshi Son gritted his teeth in anger.
I asked Chief Ma, who was standing behind me, to hand me the laptop.
Opening the inbox, I checked the email Han Gyeongyeong had sent.
Attached were the financial statements of the two funds in the bidding war, along with files detailing their movements.
After reviewing them, I turned the laptop toward Masayoshi Son.
As soon as he finished reading, he slammed the table hard.
“Damn it. President Kim, what do we do now?”
“Let’s bring the acquisition price down.”
“We’ve already exchanged numbers unofficially to some extent. If we overturn it today, there’s no telling how they’ll react.”
“Even so, let’s come in strong. I hate playing the fool. If our competitor had been real, I would have swallowed any price. But this isn’t that.”
After a brief moment of thought, Masayoshi Son nodded, anger still lingering in his eyes. freewёbnoνel.com
“Then how about lowering it by about ten percent—to 1.8 trillion yen?”
There wasn’t enough time to give an immediate answer.
“Let’s go in first. We can respond depending on how the situation develops.”
“Ah, it’s already this late. Let’s move.”
We headed for the conference room.
Not long after we arrived, the representatives from Vodafone entered.
“Welcome, Bill Morris.”
“Ha ha. Let’s finish this today, Chairman Son.”
After exchanging greetings with Bill Morris, the president of Vodafone Japan, and the executives, the negotiations began in earnest.
What began in a cordial atmosphere quickly became a tense tug-of-war.
I remained silent for a long time, simply watching them negotiate.
“If today’s talks fall through, we’ll sell elsewhere. The staff from Cerberus and Providence are already in Tokyo.”
Bill Morris struck first.
He brought up the competitors to pressure Masayoshi Son.
“Ha, President Bill Morris.”
Masayoshi Son pressed a hand to his forehead and sighed.
Perhaps mistaking it for surrender, Bill Morris pushed further.
“The figure your side proposed is 1.8 trillion yen. Two trillion yen! We will not sell to SoftBank for anything less.”
That was when I finally stepped in.
“President Bill Morris?”
As the one seated all the way in the corner, the moment I spoke, everyone’s eyes turned to me.
“Let’s send everyone else out and speak among ourselves.”
Bill Morris looked baffled.
“And who exactly are you to say that?”
“Well, we can talk in front of your subordinates if you’d prefer, but I don’t particularly want to. What will it be?”
Bill Morris looked toward Masayoshi Son.
With a nod, Son said,
“Let’s do that, Bill Morris.”
“What exactly are you trying to do?”
“If you don’t like it, then get up and leave, President Bill Morris. We’re the ones with nothing to lose.”
