“SKIRTS In THE BOARDROOM? But this is Tokyo!”

Synopsis

 SACHI…..

 “Why is it that Mother fights so hard for me to go to the best cram schools, the best high schools and now the best universities in Japan and then she tells me it’s all right to get a mediocre job after graduation and just concentrate on finding a good husband after which I can quit my job and spend the rest of my boring life caring for him and my two predictable children, boy and girl, of course!” she confided in her father on one of their fishing trips.

 “It’s almost as if all that hard work and money spent on my education is just to get me in the right place to find a good husband! Can you see any sense in that?”

 SUZUE…..

“After all, winning the account is all that matters, right?” Takuya, her senior account director, argued and Suzue had seethed at the open condescension in his voice. Hackles up, she had dug her heels in, call her the company bitch but  all the hard work had been done by her and her assistant, Fumiko, chain smoking, caffeine ridden days and nights of merciless research, strategic planning stroking the balls of petulant and demanding lower level executives of the client company who wanted to feel important. No way in hell was she going to hand over all this hard work to a couple of male directors and watch them get all the forefront glory and credit if the pitch was successful.

 TOMOKO….

It had been an awesome day during which Tomoko had broken up with her self centered boyfriend in a calm, orderly and uncluttered manner, then proceeded to negotiate brilliantly for a high value client she had to impress and eventually ended the day by getting a fat fee for that brilliant piece of negotiation.

EMI……

Why was it men in Japan never had to do that and they could be anything they wanted, like her brother. Women had to fight and struggle to be what they wanted, they had to cut through layers of prejudice not only from society but even from families like hers who wanted to push them back to traditional roles instead of encouraging them to surge forward. Whatever a man did, a woman had to work twice as hard to make a point or to prove themselves especially in Japan, where beneath the veneer of high technology and post war economic miracles, traditions, self imposed societal restrictions and even the outdated dictates of the Allied forces after the war still ruled the day!   

THIS IS the smouldering story of four young Japanese professional women from diverse backgrounds and a big score to settle with their female unfriendly society, whose lives converged in Tokyo where they met by chance and started the “four pillars.” 

Well educated, vibrant and ambitious, the four women, Suzue, Sachi, Tomoko and Emi are bonded by their common struggle to break out of the system which traditionally placed Japanese women as the coffee and tea serving ladies of the corporate world.

Emi, from the snobbish upper crust of Japanese society whose family still has the samurai mindset, a well connected marriage is planned for her, Sachi, from a middle class surbaban town in Kyushu and Tomoko from a traditional small town family buried deep in the interiors of Japan, short stints of mindless employment ending in the inevitable “stable” marriages with provincial “salary” men is their fate and  the most controversial of them all, the sultry and defiant Suzue, illegitimate love child of a Japanese mother and a half black American father she never knew, if the Japanese society had its way, most doors should be closing in her face in fiercely homogenous Japan.

But the four women were united in their passionate rejection of their designated destinies to live out their lives in anonymity, irrelevance and rejection

Moving with increasing momentum through the competitive and scratchy worlds of the advertising, media and PR industries to the demanding, male orientated snobbery of a career in law, the four face the grim realities of being women fighting to climb the corporate ladder in a society used to male dominance.

This gripping story is set against the backdrop of vibrant, contradictory and pulsating Tokyo, the capital and heartbeat of Japan and the way life is really led in a country where traditions and extreme modernity co exist in perplexing harmony. 

Through the stormy and sometimes racy maze of boozing at Tokyo’s many bars and discos to the string of men that weaved in and out of their lives to the tune of Suzue’s “expiry date” song and quieter moments of just crashing out of the limelight and bonding with each other, the four self styled pillars of therapeutic support and healing from the spiritual and mental scars of constant corporate and societal warfare.

But it’s not all gloom and doom, the four pillars’ dissection of the men they “cannot live without and yet cannot live with” are told in an entertaining way with great wit and a satirical sense of humor.

There’s Suzue’s ideal formula for a relationship set with an expiry date of two years, tops!

“I would prefer my partner to stay in a separate room and have his own separate bathroom if we have to share a house, but if we can afford it, it’s even better if we stay in separate houses, that way his face won’t be the first I see when I wake up in the morning and the last one when I go to sleep at night! Think of what that can do for a relationship, not being there all the time to get on each other’s nerves and see the worst realities of your partner! Keeps the freshness and goodness sealed in and the expiry date could be extended a bit more!”    she says!

 So is the wicked fun they consistently make of Japanese society’s outdated and failing visions of women either as the nation’s reproductive receptacles and baby sitters or corporate “tea ladies” trained only to bow at the right angles.

SUZUE….

The room would be full of traditional male suits and she could imagine the look on their faces when they realized that the two women at the head of the long shining conference table were not the agency’s “tea” ladies but powerful executives who would be spear heading the pitch.  

SACHI…..

Maybe she was a little under the weather or that scatterbrained receptionist had passed her cold on but Sachi suddenly felt a little down and alone. She had to admit to her sophisticated face in the mirror that deep down, she still believed that men and women did belong together and should compliment each other or even try to grow old together, it was just so hard to find the right fit among the millions of busy scurrying people in Tokyo especially for independent, successful women who intimidated the men looking for pliant women with simple needs to warm their beds, home and hearth.

 Together and yet apart, each woman has her own secret yearnings and dreams and having forced their way into the boardrooms of Japan, what lies ahead for them? Will and can the parallel lines of their ambitions  and personal lives finally converge or travel forever, open ended and unresolved?