Any business journalist in Japan who has spent a chunk of time covering Asia’s inscrutable economy has at some point, I suspect, found him or herself trapped in a farcical exchange with a miffed company flack demanding corrections, retractions or toady bootlicking. In Japan, translations, or mistranslations, are a common trigger for these bad-tempered tantrums. They go something like this:

Flack: ”He didn’t say that.”
Journo: “He did.”
Flack: “HE DIDN’T.”
Journo: “DID DID DID.’’
Flack: “DIDN’T.’’
Journo: “DID DID DID TIMES INFINITY.”
Flack: “DIDN’T DIDN’T DIDN’T TIMES INFINITY PLUS ONE.”
Ad infinitum …

During a decade as a journalist here, I have been accused of gratuitousness, even deceit. I have shouted at PR officials, and they have bawled back at me. We have ignored and harassed each other in equal measure. The most puzzling encounter I had, though, was at the start of my career, when Nissan Motors made a big brouhaha over the use of “it.”

Back in early 2000, Bloomberg News had just hired me to cover Japan’s airlines and sundry transport companies as a member of their Asian transport team. With only a year as a reporter at a competing newswire,
I was inexperienced but eager to please. So when my editor one morning asked me to match a piece about Nissan Motor Co. from the Nikkei,
I grabbed the phone, dialed up the Nissan public relations office, and waited for someone to pick up at the other end.

In 2000, French carmaker Renault had only several months earlier bought into Nissan, then a troubled automaker that had become a byword for paralyzed Japanese management. Carlos Ghosn, though in place, had yet to unleash the shock therapy that would drag the auto company back to profitability. Its flacks were not the professional charmers who spin the Nissan story today.

One of their predecessors answered my call, and after a quick chat, I had a comment. Though not quite confirming the news carried by Nikkei’s English newswire, it was enough for a quick story. I tapped out a few short paragraphs, placed it in the editors’ queue and forgot about it.

An hour later my phone rings. I put the receiver to my ear. At the other end is the Nissan spokesman and he’s madder than a dog in a sack. Why, he demands, did you put “it” in the comment? “I didn’t say ‘it,’” he insists.

(The comment was innocuous, so much so that my brain reassigned the brain cells storing it to something more useful years ago. Though the wording has faded, it was something harmless along the lines of “We are considering it.’’)

“It?’’ I reply. Unsure if he’s being serious, I hesitate to say more. “But it’s English – I have to put it in or it’s grammatically wrong,’’ I finally blurt out. Technically he was right. Like most people speaking Japanese he didn’t use a subject or identify the object. He just implied it.

With only a few weeks on the job and still unsure of myself in the bureau, I was hoping he would lay off without causing a fuss. But he was just getting warmed up. Several more minutes of pointless did-didn’t arguing ensued. Unsatisfied, he demanded to move up the chain of command and my editor joined in the debate. Happy with the translation, the editor denied him a groveling apology and refused to update with a correction. I was relieved for his backing.

Next into the fray went the Japanese co-bureau chief, and the same circular discussion started over. A veteran of the Nikkei, he did after a while manage to soothe the irate flack.

Worried that I may have blacklisted Bloomberg at Nissan, I decided a couple of days later to visit their office in the hope of making up. Arriving alone, I was outnumbered by a gaggle of flacks. There were no fisticuffs or cross words, and we politely exchanged name cards in one of those stark fluorescent tube-lit meeting rooms that Japanese corporations seem to favor. Still, when I left I made a mental note to bring along reinforcements next time and to meet on neutral ground if I ever had to bury the hatchet with any other grumpy spokesfolk.

Nissan today would, I doubt, get in a tizzy over subjects, objects, prepositions, commas, periods, clauses or colons. The PR at many Japanese firms, particularly those that are global, has improved dramatically in the past decade. But beware, with 4,000-odd listed companies out there, the finicky flack still lurks. ❶