Tuesday, September 24, 1985.
In Tokyo, the typhoon had finally passed, leaving behind a sky so clear and blue it seemed almost transparent. Sunlight poured freely onto the glass curtain walls of the Marunouchi financial district, reflecting a blinding white glare that verged on dizzying.
Inside the office of Saionji Industries the blinds were drawn halfway up. A sharp beam of light sliced diagonally across the room, illuminating every drifting speck of dust.
Saionji Shuichi sat behind his large mahogany desk. He had dressed with unusual care that morning: a brand-new navy-blue pinstriped shirt, a meticulously knotted tie, and a freshly shaved chin. He looked radiant, like a king on the morning of his coronation.
Only the rhythmic tapping of his fingers on the edge of the desk betrayed the restlessness surging beneath his composed exterior.
Three telephones stood arrayed before him—one connected to Credit Suisse in Zurich, one to Mitsui Bank's trading room, and one an internal line. Directly opposite him, the green-fluorescent market terminal still displayed Friday afternoon's closing price:
USD/JPY 240.85
That figure was the last calm memory before the storm.
While Tokyo had observed the Autumn Equinox holiday on Monday, the financial centers of London and New York had become slaughterhouses. The U.S. dollar had been cut at the throat and left to bleed under the frenzied selling of European traders. Off-market quotes had collapsed into chaos—some shouted 235, others 230, and a few even panicked at 225. Yet those were hollow numbers.
The true verdict would arrive at nine o'clock Tokyo time.
As the first major Asian financial center to open each day, Tokyo's pricing would set the tone for the global economy for the entire week—and quite possibly the entire year.
"Fifteen minutes left," Shuichi murmured, glancing at his Patek Philippe. His voice was soft, yet in the hushed office it produced a faint echo.
"Father, your coffee has gone cold."
Satsuki sat on the sofa, absorbed in a thick English edition of The Wealth of Nations. She was not wearing her school uniform today; instead she had chosen a delicate white lace dress, her long hair tied back with a navy-blue ribbon. She looked like an exquisite porcelain doll.
She set the book aside, crossed to the desk, removed the untouched cup of black coffee, and replaced it with a freshly brewed cup of Darjeeling tea. The porcelain met the saucer with a crisp ting.
Shuichi's eyelid twitched. He lifted the tea and took a sip. The scalding liquid eased the painful spasms that tension had knotted in his stomach.
"Satsuki," he said, eyes still fixed on the screen, "at what level do you expect it to open?"
"Below 230," she answered without hesitation. She walked to the window and stood with her hands behind her back, watching the traffic crawl like ants far below. "The Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Japan spoke yesterday. Since they signed the agreement, they must demonstrate sincerity. When the market opens, the BoJ will certainly intervene to drive the rate lower. That is the will of the national team; no one will dare catch a falling knife."
Shuichi drew a deep breath.
230.
If the market truly opened at 230, he would enjoy an immediate ten-yen profit margin the moment trading began.
How much money would that represent?
The Saionji family had mortgaged every asset they could raise. With twenty-fold leverage from the Swiss bank, their position was now worth hundreds of millions of dollars. For every single yen the dollar fell, they stood to gain hundreds of millions of yen in pure profit.
A ten-yen drop… Shuichi felt his fingertips go numb—the first warning of an oncoming adrenaline surge.
"8:55 a.m."
The telephone rang abruptly. It was Branch Manager Yoshino from Mitsui Bank.
Shuichi pressed the speaker button.
"Mr. Saionji!" Yoshino's voice crackled with a mixture of excitement and terror, the background alive with shouts and ringing phones. "The off-market quotes have completely collapsed! Just now some Toyota-affiliated funds from Nagoya tried to pick up dollars at 232, only to be smashed through by Goldman Sachs sell orders. Every buyer has now canceled. No one dares to quote!"
"I know," Shuichi replied calmly. "What about my orders?"
"They are all in place!" Yoshino repeated. "That aggressive short position you opened Friday afternoon is now the best-positioned trade in the entire market. If you close it now—"
"Who told you to close the position?" Shuichi interrupted coldly. "Hold every contract. Do not move a single dollar without my direct instruction."
"Yes! Yes, sir!"
Shuichi hung up and lit another cigarette. In the swirling smoke the second hand of the clock advanced notch by notch.
8:58 a.m.
8:59 a.m.
The air in the office seemed to solidify. Even the hum of the air conditioner faded into silence.
Shuichi held his breath, staring unblinking at the green screen.
57 seconds… 58… 59…
9:00:00
There was no thunderous roar—only a quiet flicker.
The previous figure, USD/JPY 240.10, vanished.
In its place appeared a shocking gap-down:
USD/JPY 229.50
It had broken straight through 230 in a single instant—opening ten yen lower.
Even through the thick soundproof glass, Shuichi imagined he could hear the collective wail rising from the Otemachi trading center several kilometers away.
Yet this was only the beginning.
The number did not pause. Like a boulder plunging from a cliff, it carried unstoppable momentum and hurtled downward.
229.00
228.40
227.10
Buy orders had evaporated. The market was flooded with sell orders—exporters selling, speculators selling, even the retail investors who had briefly considered buying the dip now cutting their losses in panic. Leading the charge was an invisible but colossal force: the Bank of Japan itself. Printed yen were being hurled into the market to sell dollars at any cost, fulfilling the nation's promise to the United States while simultaneously strangling Japan's own export engine.
Shuichi watched the numbers leap frantically. His account's net value was soaring at a rate of tens of millions of yen per second.
A minute earlier he had been a fallen nobleman burdened by hundreds of millions of yen in loans. A minute later he possessed enough cash flow to purchase half of Marunouchi.
A dry laugh escaped his throat.
"Haha…"
It sounded like an old bellows creaking.
"Hahahaha…"
The laughter grew louder, wilder. He crushed the cigarette butt into the ashtray, sending sparks flying.
"Do you see it, Satsuki? Do you see it!"
He pointed at the screen, fingers trembling violently, his face twisted in a near-ghastly ecstasy.
"It fell! It really fell! Those so-called economists, those bankers who only know how to read balance sheets—they are all fools! Blind fools!"
He rose and paced the office, his steps so light he seemed to walk on air.
"That idiot Kenjirō still wants to chase orders? What orders! The profit I have made in this single minute is enough to run his worthless factory for a hundred years!"
He snatched the calculator from the desk and began punching numbers furiously, only to hurl it aside in frustration moments later. The leverage had rendered ordinary arithmetic meaningless; wealth was now an abstract, explosive force.
"Is this what plunder feels like…" Shuichi leaned heavily on the desk, breathing hard. His eyes were frighteningly red as he stared at the still-plummeting curve. "Is this… what it means to be the hunter?"
The pleasure surging through him was a hundred times more intoxicating than the finest wine or the most beautiful woman. It was the raw ecstasy of seizing destiny and trampling common sense beneath his feet.
In contrast to her father's loss of composure, Satsuki remained standing quietly by the window. She did not even glance at the frantic screen. Her gaze drifted across the glass to the lush pine forest of the Imperial Palace Outer Garden in the distance. The moat lay calm and mirror-still; a few egrets skimmed low over the water, leaving faint ripples in their wake.
"Father."
Her voice was soft, yet it cut through Shuichi's boiling mind like a clear spring.
"You have lost your composure."
Shuichi shuddered and looked up at his daughter.
Satsuki turned from the window. Her back was to the sunlight, so her face appeared softly blurred in the backlight, yet her eyes shone with striking clarity.
"This is only the beginning," she said. She lifted the teacup and gently blew across the floating leaves. "The current plunge is driven purely by panic. Everyone holding dollars is terrified and stampeding for the exits."
She walked to the desk and tapped the figure 225.80 with a slender finger.
"In a few days, once the panic subsides, exporters will decide the rate has fallen 'enough' and begin buying the dip. The exchange rate will rebound."
Shuichi steadied himself. "Then should we close our positions before the rebound?"
"No." Satsuki shook her head. "We must wait. Wait for the second wave—when the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan join forces and wield the blade of interest rates. We wait until Uncle Kenjirō's factory can no longer pay wages, until the Okura family's construction sites grind to a halt, until the presidents who still believe they can survive begin leaping from rooftops one by one."
She set the teacup down, stepped close to Shuichi, and straightened the tie that had gone crooked during his outburst. Her movements were gentle, yet the words that followed were ice-cold.
"Father, we are not gamblers. We are body collectors. Before the corpses have cooled, do not rush to use the knife—it will burn your hands. We are going to devour them entirely—every scrap of skin and flesh. Don't you agree?"
She looked up at him with a sweet smile, exactly like a young girl discussing her dolls with her father.
Shuichi gazed at his daughter so near at hand. In that instant his earlier frenzy suddenly seemed ridiculous. A forty-year-old man had lost his poise while a twelve-year-old child remained perfectly composed.
He drew a long breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them again the bloodshot veins remained, but the wild restlessness had vanished.
"You are right," he said quietly. He returned to his chair and picked up the telephone. "Connect me to Credit Suisse."
The call went through. Frank's voice on the other end crackled with excitement, words tumbling out like machine-gun fire.
"Mr. Saionji! My God! You are a genius! Our profits have already exceeded—"
"Shut up, Frank," Shuichi cut in, his tone cold as ice. "I do not care how much we have made so far. I care about only one thing. Even if the exchange rate rebounds, do not close the position. Use the current floating profits as fresh margin and hold firm."
He paused and glanced at Satsuki standing nearby. "Also, keep an eye on the U.S. stock market. If any technology stocks are mistakenly sold off because of this currency turmoil, prepare a list for me."
He hung up, then took an expensive box of Cuban cigars from his drawer—cigars he had treasured for years and never dared to smoke. He clipped one, lit it, and let the rich tobacco aroma fill the office.
"Satsuki," he said, exhaling a plume of blue smoke and leaning back in his chair, "what do you suppose Kenjirō is doing right now?"
Satsuki stood at the floor-to-ceiling window, watching the endless river of cars below.
"Probably calling every bank he knows," she answered softly. "Or perhaps… crying among the garden shovels in that warehouse of his."
…
Meanwhile, in Osaka, at Saionji Heavy Industries.
The door to the factory director's office was tightly shut.
Kenjirō sat slumped on the floor, the telephone receiver dangling in mid-air, emitting a monotonous busy signal.
Moments earlier he had called Mitsui Bank, Sumitomo Bank, and even the credit unions he normally scorned. No one had answered. Or rather, no one was willing to take his call. Every financing section chief was locked in meetings, calculating how badly their dollar holdings had shrunk, and quietly placing export companies like his on high-risk lists.
Outside the window the factory machinery continued to roar—injection-molding and stamping machines running at full capacity to meet deadlines. Each roar consumed ever-more-expensive imported raw materials to produce goods that had been profitable only yesterday and were destined to lose money today.
"Stop…" Kenjirō's lips moved, but no sound emerged.
If he halted production now it would constitute a breach of contract; the 300 percent penalty would destroy him. If he continued, every item sold would bleed red ink. The rate had already broken 230, and at this pace 220 would not hold either.
Death lay on both sides.
He had reached absolute despair.
The office door burst open. The American representative, Smith, stormed in waving a fax.
"Mr. Kenjirō!" Smith's face showed no distress over the falling dollar; instead he looked grimly determined. "Headquarters has just instructed us to demand additional performance bonds due to the violent exchange-rate fluctuations. Otherwise we must question your ability to deliver!"
"Performance bond?" Kenjirō looked up with glassy eyes.
"Where would I find money now…"
Smith sneered and slapped the fax onto the desk.
"That is your problem. The contract is explicit: if the seller's financial condition deteriorates, the buyer may demand security."
His gaze swept the luxurious office and finally settled on Kenjirō's gold watch.
"If there is no cash, collateral will suffice."
Kenjirō stared at the tall American. The man's face seemed to distort before his eyes, turning into a man-eating demon.
He remembered that day in Osaka when Satsuki had asked innocently, "If we make money, can we make triple?"
No.
It was not triple profit.
It was triple loss.
Even his life would be devoured.
Suddenly Kenjirō seized the ashtray from the desk and hurled it at the American.
"Get out! All of you, get out!"
The ashtray struck the wall and shattered into fragments.
Just like the once-bright future of the Saionji branch family.
…
Back in Tokyo, at Saionji Industries.
The sunlight remained bright and clear.
Satsuki stood by the window, watching a lost butterfly collide with the glass and then flutter away in confusion.
"The first domino has fallen," she thought, silently marking an X in her mind.
The next few months would be the most chaotic, painful, and frantic period in Japan's postwar economic history. Countless people would go bankrupt; countless others would lose their jobs. Yet countless skyscrapers would also rise, and countless bottles of champagne would be uncorked in the glittering nights of Ginza.
The phantom of the bubble—gorgeous, multifaceted, intoxicating.
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.
And for the Saionji family, sitting atop a massive short position in the U.S. dollar, this was nothing less than the Golden Age.