Kotaro Wakao's Fun

Kotaro Wakao, young, rich, potent Japanese businessman sported a little with Manhattan newspapermen last week. Overworked, he was in the U. S. as part of a half-year furlough from affairs.* Energetic he took his relaxation by studying U. S. factories that he had not seen a decade ago. At that time he studied at Columbia University. Courteous, he visited and thanked bankers who this spring sold $70,000,000 bonds of the Tokyo Electric Light Co. (TIME, June 18). Kotaro Wakao's father, Shohachi Wakao, is Tokyo Electric's president. Discerning international bankers see the son, now 32, some future day succeeding the father. Last week reporters stopped him for an interview. He gave it: "I have been impressed, when I walked into the offices of corporations at Boston, Schenectady, Chicago and New York of the importance assumed by the private secretary of the chief executive. Often I have mistaken the secretary for the president of the corporation. His suavity and pomposity have forced from me the most excessive politeness, whereas when I met the president I have been induced to give him only perfunctory attention, as if he were a person of no importance. The American private secretary is unique. He is unique and efficient, seeming to assume all the responsibility for the corporation by which he is employed./-

"In Japan the private secretary is subservient. When you enter an office you recognize him by his servility. The head of the Japanese firm assumes all the importance. It is a tribute to the American business man that he is democratic. The more important his job the more at ease he is."

*He is president of the Toyo Muslin Co. (10,000 employes), of Bagnall & Hilles Co. Ltd. (distributor of General Electric Products in Japan), of the Tokyo Commercial Bank, of the Mitsubiki Company (importers of sugar, rubber, iron, steel), of a dozen lesser concerns.

/-Very few U. S. private secretaries have mounted to the top of business. Among those few are: Samuel Insull, John Jacob Raskob, Edward Bok, George Bruce Cortelyou.