Rebirth in Japan: The Heiress Who Conquered the World

How heavy is a bag of cement?

It seems many people would not know such a thing.

The division of labor in modern society is truly a great invention.

It spares many people from heavy labor, and everyone has their own role, allowing them to focus on their respective part of the work.

I was once also a member of those who ”did not have to engage in heavy labor”.

But not anymore.

The first time I truly knew how heavy a bag of cement was, it was after I had already reviewed countless factory reports and signed hundreds of contracts.

Sitting in the office in the past, cement was just a line of numbers in the engineering budget.

How much it cost per ton, how much transportation fees accounted for, whether to increase loss allowances during the rainy season, and having the accountant explain the discrepancy at the end of the month.

I had also been to construction sites, of course I had.

The car door would be opened for me in advance, the soles of my shoes would step on newly laid wooden boards, and the president in charge of the project would follow closely by my side, telling me all the way how smoothly the progress was going.

When the workers saw me, they would take off their hard hats, bend over, and shout ”executive director”.

I had never asked whether they could still straighten their backs after bending over.

When it was my turn to carry it myself, I finally knew that when fifty kilograms pressed down on the shoulders, the first thing to hurt was not the shoulders.

It was breathing.

The moment the bag of cement landed on my body, my chest felt as if it were being pressed down by a hand.

After walking a dozen steps, my lower back would start to ache, and the soles of my feet would also go numb.

When reaching the side of the mixer, one could no longer care about posture, thinking only of unloading the goods as quickly as possible so that the lungs could open up again.

When the foreman urged me to hurry up for the first time, I almost turned around and cursed at him.

That was the reaction I was most familiar with in the past.

If someone made me unhappy, I would let him know who he was talking to.

I had even thought of the beginning—’Do you know how to write the three characters of Saionji?’

But at that time, I was wearing a set of work clothes bought from a secondhand store, and ”Tanaka Ken” was written inside my hard hat.

Saionji Kenjiro had gone bankrupt.

That man’s house was sealed by the bank, his car entered the auction house, and his watch and cufflinks were exchanged for stacks of cash that were quickly taken away by creditors.

In the end, even the surname Saionji became something that could not be casually spoken aloud.

If those loan sharks knew that that man still had an older brother who was the head of the family, as long as they heard this surname, they would feel that another layer of oil could be squeezed out of that person.

So I lowered my head and swallowed back the words that had already rushed to my lips.

”Understood.”

This was the first sentence Tanaka Ken learned at the construction site.

When I moved into Minami-Senju, there were only six tatami mats in the room.

The landlord handed the keys to my wife, repeatedly emphasizing that the toilet had to be shared with the other three households in the corridor, and baths could only be taken at the public bathhouse on the corner of the street.

She stood there nodding, holding an old leather suitcase filled with clothes in her hand.

That suitcase was originally bought when we went to Hawaii, and the corners still had airline luggage tags attached to them.

Looking at it, I found it dazzlingly harsh.

That night, I asked her to tear off the luggage tags.

She did not ask why, sitting on the tatami mats and slowly tearing them for a long time.

The glue had already stuck into the leather surface, finally leaving a lighter-colored mark that could not be wiped away no matter how hard one tried.

I got angry, sat down with her, and wiped that mark clean... or probably clean.

That night, both of us cried.

In the past, we had servants to organize our clothes and drivers to remember every itinerary.

Nowadays, she went to the pachinko parlor during the day to clean up cigarette butts spat on the ground by others, and when she came back at night, she still had to soak my work clothes in a wooden basin.

After cement dust was soaked in water, it would turn into a layer of white paste stuck to the fabric, which could not be rubbed clean by hand and could only be scraped off bit by bit with a brush.

Once, when I saw her squatting there scrubbing the cuffs of my trousers, I suddenly asked her why she still had not returned to her maiden home.

She paused for a moment and said that her maiden family also owed money.

This was naturally a lie.

Her father had long passed away, and her older brother ran a clinic in Nagoya.

Although it could not be considered wealthy, supporting her alone should not be a problem at all.

She stayed probably just because I was her husband, or perhaps because she was unwilling to let others see herself being driven back by a man of the Saionji Family.

At that time, I was still very good at interpreting other people’s choices as caring about saving face.

After all, as long as I admitted that she was suffering along with me, I would have to admit that I had failed her.

I could not do that yet.

During the first few months, I thought about the main family every day.

The person I thought about the most was, of course, Satsuki.

That night, I was dragged across the entryway by people brought by Fujita, one of my shoes fell off, and my socks stepped on the ground, full of rainwater and mud.

She stood on the second-floor corridor, holding a bear in her arms, looking down at me.

To this day, I still cannot tell whether there was a smile on that face.

When people reach their most disheveled and miserable moments, they always end up remembering even more cruel details for themselves.

Perhaps she was just standing there, perhaps she really made that bear wave at me.

But in my later dreams, she would smile every single time.

I hated her.

I also hated Shuichi.

When I first worked at the construction site, every time I carried a bag of cement, I would curse them in my heart.

Fifty kilograms, it took forty-seven steps to walk from the material stockpile to the mixer, and I probably walked more than a hundred trips a day.

By night, my shoulders were so swollen that they could not even touch clothes, so I would lie in that room the size of six tatami mats and curse them from our grandfather’s generation all the way to Satsuki’s future marriage.

Speaking of which, would Satsuki get married? I really could not imagine the scene of that girl getting married...

Forget it, what does this have to do with me?

Once I got tired of cursing, I would fall asleep.

This actually cured my intermittent insomnia.

The people at the construction site only knew my surname was Tanaka.

Sometimes they would ask what I used to do.

My hands did not look like those of someone who had done rough work since youth; when I first went there, I could not even tie knots properly, yet when moving things, I always loved to direct others on how to place them.

An old worker named Sakamoto watched me for a few days and concluded that I was probably a Section Chief in a small company before running away to work as a temp because of some trouble.

I did not explain.

”Section Chief” was already a very decent-sounding status for me at that time.

Sakamoto taught me how to support the bottom of the bag with my knees, how to shift the weight from my shoulders to my back, and also taught me to check whether there was floating mud on the scaffolding boards on rainy days.

When he said these things, he always wore an impatient look, as if he suspected that if I died too quickly, it would drag down the progress of the whole group.

Two months later, an unfixed wooden board fell from the second floor.

It was he who pushed me away.

The wooden board hit his right hand, breaking his index finger.

The site manager had someone send him to the hospital, and the next day began calculating whether his salary could still be deducted from this month’s labor costs.

I heard them talking about this in the temporary office, pushed the door open, and said that work-related injuries should be borne by the company.

The manager raised his head and asked what kind of thing I thought I was.

I opened my mouth and once again almost blurted out my own name.

In the end, I only said that the wooden board’s fixation checklist was signed by the site director, and yesterday afternoon someone had also reported a lack of clips on the second floor.

If the responsibility was pushed onto Sakamoto, he would go to the Labor Standards Inspection Office, and I was willing to testify for him.

The manager stared at me for a long time.

That was the first time Tanaka Ken argued with the administrative staff at the construction site.

The result was not glorious; I was transferred to the most exhausting unloading group and worked night shifts for twelve consecutive days.

However, Sakamoto’s medical expenses were paid by the company, and he also received a portion of his salary during his recuperation.

After he came back, he invited me for a drink.

The two of them sat in a small shop under the overpass, and he picked up his wine glass with his right hand, of which only four fingers could move, and smilingly asked me whether I used to be a union person before.

I said I used to manage a factory before.

He thought I was joking and laughed so hard he almost spat out his wine.

I laughed along with him.

That was the first time since bankruptcy that I felt the name ”Saionji Kenjiro” was somewhat ridiculous.

I really had managed factories.

The wages, raw materials, machinery, and orders of hundreds of workers all moved forward after I signed my name.

I once felt that I understood them very well, because every New Year I would bow to them, during summer condolences I would issue an extra box of beer, and after someone was injured I would have my secretary send a fruit basket.

But it was not until Sakamoto lost a finger that I first realized how many different ways a work injury report could be spun once it entered the office.

Improper operation, failure to follow protocol, personal negligence, temporary worker assuming sole liability.

Every single explanation sounded reasonable and was backed by forms to prove it.

The person sitting in the office needed only to check one box, and what Sakamoto’s family ate for the next three months would change accordingly.

I had probably signed things like that in the past as well.

I could not remember.

That was what truly made me feel miserable.

I tried hard to recall, but the only things that popped into my head were totals, percentages, and end-of-month loss ratios.

I remembered the monthly labor costs of the Osaka factory and how much profit would be lost if overtime pay went up, but I could not remember if anyone behind those numbers had ever lost a finger.

I started to lose the nerve to curse at Satsuki.

Of course, that did not mean I had forgiven her.

I just occasionally remembered that when that contract was placed before me, Shuichi had asked about production capacity, while Satsuki had asked about breach of contract damages.

Back then, I thought they were cowardly and believed that real businessmen had to be willing to gamble.

If that piece of paper had determined only my house and car, I might have been able to keep thinking that way.

But when that factory ground to a halt, hundreds of people lost their wages all at once.

Many of them probably ended up living in places like Minami-Senju, too.

The construction project wrapped up in the spring of the following year.

When the final paycheck was issued, the debt management agency took most of it first.

The person in charge of deductions told me that my next job was already lined up: night shifts at a warehouse in Shinagawa, paying a bit less than the construction site, but steady long-term work.

I asked him why he was finding jobs for me.

He said that the creditors naturally wanted me alive, as dead men do not pay back debts.

That made complete sense.

So I went to Shinagawa.

The warehouse was stacked with boxes of white T-shirts, with ”S-Style” printed on the outside of the cardboard boxes.

Back then, I did not know how wildly popular that brand would eventually become; I only knew that the inspector was almost obsessively strict about stains and stitching.

If even two defective items were pulled from a single box, the entire batch had to be re-inspected.

As I stood beside the conveyor belt watching boxes of clothes shipped from Shanghai pass by one after another, I suddenly remembered the gardening shovels from the Osaka factory.

Back then, I had said that they were just tools for digging dirt and that Americans would not be picky.

Yet the young inspector in this warehouse would reject an entire batch of two hundred garments over a single loose thread.

I asked him if it was really necessary to go to such lengths.

He countered by asking me why a customer spending thirty thousand yen should accept a stray thread on behalf of the company.

I was rendered speechless for a moment.

After working there for four months, the warehouse cut back on night shifts, and I was transferred to a store in Shinjuku to handle pre-opening haulage.

On the day the sign was hung up, I stood across the street and looked at it for a long time.

S-Collection.

It was still a Saionji property.

After that came a freight yard in Shibuya, a construction site in Sagamihara, and a distribution center in Chiba.

Every job ended for a reason, and every arrangement went through a different agency.

Some said the project was finished, some said the creditors wanted me to earn a bit more, and others said temporary workers were meant to go wherever the work was.

Taken individually, every single one of these reasons made sense.

Put together, however, it seemed too much of a coincidence.

I was still unwilling to admit that possibility.

The first time I truly grew suspicious was in Sagamihara.

That day, after hauling the last cart of cement, I looked up and saw the rendering outside the construction site.

In the exact center of the white square building were the letters UNIQLO in red.

When Tadashi Yanai arrived on site, I hid in a spot beyond the reach of the searchlights.

He walked right past me without recognizing me.

That was normal. Back then, I had lost over twenty pounds, my face was burnt dark by the sun, and the dirt under my fingernails could not be washed away.

But I recognized him, and I knew who stood behind this store.

Standing in the shadows, I suddenly mentally reviewed all the jobs I had worked over the past two years.

The construction site was a subcontract under Saionji Construction.

The Shinagawa warehouse stored goods for Saionji’s apparel company.

The Shinjuku store was a property under Saionji Entertainment.

The Shibuya freight yard handled deliveries for UNIQLO.

Even the cleaning job my wife eventually found was managed by a property company acquired by Saionji.

Tokyo is a huge city.

Big enough that someone could live their whole life here without ever running into their older brother.

Yet every time I changed jobs, it was as if I was walking a lap around the outer wall of the Saionji compound.

I finally had to admit that this could no longer be called a coincidence.

That night, I took the last train back to Minami-Senju.

Reflected in the train window was a middle-aged man wearing a battered hard hat; I stared at him for a long time, barely able to find any trace of my former self.

I thought about visiting the main residence the next day.

I wanted to stand in front of the gate I had been kicked out of and ask Shuichi whether he had arranged all these jobs for me.

In the end, I did not go.

Because I suddenly grew afraid of the answer.

If he said no, it would prove that I was truly just hauling goods and building structures for Saionji, without even enough value to warrant a second glance from them.

And if he said yes, what was I supposed to say?

Thank him for not letting me starve to death, or demand to know why he would rather have me carry cement for two years than lay it all out clearly?

Something else was even harder for me to accept.

If Shuichi knew all along, then Satsuki most likely knew as well.

I once thought that after throwing me out the front door, she would never think of me again.

But perhaps on some roster submitted to the head of the household’s office, the name ”Ken Tanaka” had been there all along.

She saw it.

And she said nothing.

When the train passed through Ueno, only a few people were left in the carriage.

I rested my hard hat on my knees, my fingers brushing against the name written in black ink inside the brim.

Ken Tanaka.

I suddenly felt that this name was not as unpleasant as it had seemed at first.

At least he earned his own wages to support his wife, and had fought to get medical expenses covered for a worker who lost a finger.

Saionji Kenjiro had never accomplished a small matter like that before.

As for what Shuichi was actually thinking, or why Satsuki allowed all this to continue, I decided not to ask for now.

We brothers were never good at speaking plainly from a young age anyway.

And the people of the Saionji Family probably loved letting others figure things out on their own.

Oh, right, there is one more thing.

My name is Ken Tanaka.

Tanaka is a surname you hear everywhere.

There are Tanakas in train station announcements, Tanakas on payroll rosters, and if a foreman yells the name from below the scaffolding, two or three people might turn around at once.

For someone who went bankrupt, was in debt, and did not want others to know about his past, using this surname was very fitting.

As for ”Ken”, it was what I kept from my original name.

Why I kept that specific character was something I had not thought about deeply back then.

Probably, when a person is thrown out of their home, no matter how resolutely they speak, their hands will subconsciously cling to something they refuse to let go of.

It was only later that I realized what I had truly cast aside was ”Jiro”.

Jiro meant the second son, Shuichi’s younger brother, the person standing beside the main house who always wanted to prove he could hold his own.

Much of what I did in the past was probably connected to those two characters.

I wanted people to know that a man from a branch family could manage a factory; I wanted Shuichi to admit I was not inferior to him; I even wanted that little girl to understand that she had no right to treat me as a useless uncle.

But Ken Tanaka does not need to prove any of that.

He only needs to show up to work on time, pay off his debts on time, and remember to bring home a half-priced mackerel for his wife.

When he wakes up the next morning, his shoulders can still lift, and his legs can still walk the distance from Minami-Senju Station to the construction site.

The character ”Ken”, it turns out, could be this simple.

To live, to work, and to take care of the people by one’s side.

After making mistakes, not letting others bear the burden for you.

Being able to do just that is already no easy feat.

So—

My name is Ken Tanaka.