Girl in a Box Read Online Free Page A

making.
    â€œYou know,” I said loudly into Michael’s ear, “we could talk about our business and nobody would hear anything.”
    â€œIncluding me,” he shouted back, hitting my ear with a light shower of sugar. “But I’m glad you’re in the mood to work. I brought some reading for you. Maybe it’ll take your mind off the discomfort.”
    Michael reached into his briefcase and drew out a thick folder, which I took reluctantly. So much for the John le Carré novel I’d hoped to spend my time reading.
    The first page said “secret,” and I felt a slight thrill to realize that I was authorized to turn the page. “Secret” didn’t carry as much weight as “top secret,” but still, for somebody as new to spying as I was, this binder had a lot of spiritual, as well as physical, significance. My government trusted me with this material. And I knew that once I turned the page, I would be venturing into a world as foreign as Japan had been for me, so many years ago.
    Michael’s face disappeared behind a copy of Foreign Affairs, which was shielding something completely different that he was reading, so I started in on the binder. Section one was a description of a complaint that Treasury had received from one Warren Kravitz, a senior partner at the Asian headquarters of Winston Brothers, an American investment banking firm. A copy of a letter from Warren Kravitz outlined his theory that there was no reason for Mitsutan to be worth more than its competitors, based on a numbing array of facts and figures, most of which were buried in fine print in fifty pages of attached material.
    â€œWhat is Warren Kravitz’s problem? Does he want to be a PI or something?” I asked Michael.
    â€œThere’s no problem. He just made a complaint. It’s every citizen’s right to do that.” Michael said right into my ear, “From this point on, no real names spoken in public, please.”
    â€œThe last time I complained to Treasury about anything, I was nine years old. They didn’t make my dad raise my allowance.”
    Michael cracked a small smile, but put his finger to his lips. Apparently, as loud as the background noise was on the plane, the topic was still too classified for discussion. I turned with more interest to a second set of documents: a history of retailing in Japan. I learned that although Mitsutan had formally opened for business as a department store in 1911, it actually had a much longer history. Its founders had opened a kimono shop in Tokyo in the late 1700s, during the prosperous Edo period. Mitsutan’s elegant silk robes for men, women, and children had been popular enough to bring the shop owners considerable fame and the capital needed, in the early twentieth century, for the expansion into the store that I knew. Mitsutan was not the first depaato on the Ginza; it was built on the heels of Mitsukoshi, Matsuya, Isetan, and Matsuzakaya, all famous kimono makers who were blazing new trails. Japanese women were starting to wear yofuku —Western dress—and retailers were developing ambitions eight stories high.
    Business dropped off during the war. Mitsutan and its neighbors went into sleep mode and then emerged in the postwar reconstruction, selling the luxuries for which people longed after having spent years in near-starvation. But the original department stores faced competition from a new group: upstart department stores started by companies that owned railway lines. These transportation conglomerates were tight with the new Japanese government and managed to get the zoning to build massive stores next to busy train stations throughout Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, and other major cities. The new stores—which included Parco, Tokyu, and Seiyu—were full of luxury goods, sometimes at cheaper prices. In my family’s opinion they lacked the centuries-old knowledge of customer sales and ritual.
    Both types