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Chapter 94 part 1 – 1929 Executive Meeting

Today is the day of the Ootori Group’s executive meeting—the Hououkai.

Even though it’s in a separate room, I am, in a way, attending the meeting.

The new school year has begun, and at only nine years old, I should normally just be going to elementary school.
However, being both a noble and part of a financial conglomerate, I am expected to study and learn far beyond that.

On top of it all, I am treated as the “Dreaming Miko” of the Ootori clan, so I’m regarded as practically a full-fledged member.

Still, it’s only practically. 

Since I’m a child and bear no legal responsibility, anything I propose or suggest can only be put into action under the accountability of my great-grandfather or grandfather.

That said, the adults in the clan are fully aware of this.

And because those proposals are achieving great success and taking us to even greater heights, at least within the clan, my position is rock solid.

No matter what anyone says behind my back, no one in the clan can openly speak against me.
With an ever-increasing flow of dollars into the clan’s personal “wallet” or “vault”—to the point that even the word enormous feels like an understatement—resisting me has become a moot point.

I can understand why Uncle Genji once called me “something unfathomable.”

Whether they acknowledge my abilities or not, to nearly everyone outside the Ootori adults, I must seem like an incomprehensible existence.

That’s why I never appear in public, and though I’m rumored to be the “Miko of Ootori,” outwardly I live as just a child.

So I don’t show my face at the Ootori executive meetings either. This time as well, I’m only here because Great-Grandfather told me to just listen in, and I followed his instructions.

Besides, I myself don’t want to appear in public if I can help it. More than that, I don’t want to be around gatherings of adults.

Because, seriously—it reeks of tobacco.

In this era—actually, even up to around the middle of the Heisei period—Japanese people, especially adult men, smoke a lot.
Particularly from before the war up through the postwar years, the smoking rate is extremely high. 

There are even statistics saying that in the early Showa period, 80% of adult men smoked.

Since I was an around-forty woman in my previous life, I have more tolerance for tobacco than people born in the later Heisei years, and the amount the Ootori adults smoke doesn’t bother me too much.

But everything has a limit. When there are this many people, it’s a different story.

Even at this executive meeting, there are hundreds of middle-aged men eating luxurious meals while casually chain-smoking.

There is a designated smoking room, but no one bothers to use it in a “gentlemen’s gathering.”
Well, I guess it can’t be helped given the number of people, but once dinner is over, the ceiling area becomes so clouded with smoke that it looks like an actual fog bank. 

It’s ridiculous enough that I feel like calling it a spectacular sight or a majestic view instead.

“Why do they all love smoking so much, I wonder.”

“Rather than like or dislike, isn’t it considered a gentleman’s refinement?”

From a separate room with a window overlooking the banquet hall below, Shizu and I gaze down at what is, in a sense, a spectacular view.
From their side, they can barely even recognize that there’s a window, and unless we approach the window ourselves, they can’t see us at all.

Since this is an Ootori-owned hotel, it has these kinds of special rooms. It’s technically a VIP room, and apparently, if you pay a fitting amount, even outside guests can be guided here.

Right now, it’s just me and Shizu in the room. Everyone else is down in the banquet hall that I’m observing.

“Gentlemen, huh. At least when it comes to smoking, I’m glad I wasn’t born a man. If I ever gain real power, I’ll absolutely ban smoking during meals.”

“Please do so.”

“You’re not against it?”

Caught off guard by Shizu approving one of my usual selfish remarks, I glanced over at her.

Shizu wears her usual composed expression.

“There’s a smoking room, after all. Even if the meal is over, I don’t think smoking during meals is very gentlemanly.”

“Well, you’re absolutely right. Still, this executive meeting seems to be a success.”

“Yes. Just as the head of the family said, it seems to be a good opportunity for deepening relationships.”

And yet, in some organizations, once the mid-level executives unite to a certain extent, they can manipulate the top and move things forward.
It sounds good if you call it “bottom-up,” but it’s actually a bad kind of bottom-up.

The current Imperial Japanese Army is a prime example of this, and apparently the television industry during the bubble era to the early 21st century was similar.
Needless to say, both are bad examples. 

The worst part is that these mid-level people who act on their own never take responsibility. 

There’s nothing worse than people who either won’t or can’t take responsibility taking it upon themselves to steer an organization.

In that sense, the “strategist” figure that Japanese people for some reason adore is the same. If you think about it, there’s no position as irresponsible as that.

And right now, I’m in a similar position.

Setting myself aside, things would be easier if everything was based on equal relationships and mutual agreements. But what we have instead is a combination of elements with poor compatibility.

It’s said this kind of system only works in an island nation. Concepts like “reading the room” or “unspoken understanding” only function because of shared values and ways of thinking—what you might call a “single-ethnicity” society.

That’s why, once it falls apart, everything goes to ruin.

And when it comes to advancing something new in Japan, the most important thing isn’t wealth or lineage. Having both certainly helps, but neither is primary.

More than anything, the most important thing is the political skill to lay the groundwork behind the scenes. In fact, it’s not an exaggeration to say that groundwork is everything. If you keep trying to do things on your own, you’ll almost certainly get stabbed in the back.

Even I, at the very least, always discuss things with my great-grandfather and grandfather, who is also my nominal father.

In my case, even if I wanted to act on my own, I don’t have the authority to give orders, and there are really only those two with whom I can coordinate in advance. 

Still, I make the effort. Even for the bullet tours, unless it’s an emergency, I always get approval beforehand.

The bullet tours themselves are like an extension of groundwork—meeting with people on-site unofficially.

Independent action and consensus. If I were to give the most intuitive example from Japanese history, it would be Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu.
Of course, that’s an oversimplified and exaggerated division of their personalities and historical records, but it serves well enough as an illustration.

Japanese people, almost instinctively, try to eliminate those who enact extreme changes on their own. It’s a kind of conservatism, often described as “farmer mentality” or “island nation mentality.”