National Tide 1980.

Mud and rocks fell together.

These words aptly describe the current extremely sluggish economic situation in Japan.

In mid-November 1990, despite the fact that Chiyofuji, the most handsome Yokozuna in the history of Japanese sumo, achieved his 1000th career victory.

With a record of 13 wins and 2 losses, they won the Makuuchi Championship for the 31st time, causing a sensation throughout Japan.

However, Japan's economy has failed to achieve the same impressive results as the real-life inspiration for Street Fighter—the sumo Yokozuna, who was known as "undefeated in a thousand wins."

There were no positive signs whatsoever, no news to be happy about, and financial scandals were piling up.

Following the exposure of the Sumitomo Bank scandal, similar scandals have also broken out at Fuji Bank, Kyowa Saitama Bank, and Tokai Bank.

For example, the Fuji Bank Kanda East Station branch, which is adjacent to the Bank of Japan headquarters, was found to have four forged "deposit certificates" totaling 2.3 billion yen at the beginning of the Ministry of Finance's investigation.

The non-bank financial institutions that provided guarantees for these loans were also found to have engaged in improper financing practices.

Subsequently, officials from the Ministry of Finance discovered similar cases at the Hibiya and Akasaka branches of Fuji Bank.

Among them, the Akasaka branch alone discovered a total of 46 forged deposit certificates issued through improper channels, with a total amount of 257 billion yen.

This figure not only shocked the authorities, but also shocked the top executives of Fuji Bank, not to mention the Japanese public who learned the truth after the media reported on it.

As a result, the banking sector became the worst-performing sector in the Japanese stock market in November.

Amid these ominous financial omens, the Japanese economy resembled a patient suffering from dysentery, with endless diarrhea.

All markets continued their downward trend, plummeting uncontrollably.

What once seemed like easy profits in the speculative market has now become a painful poison, with trillions of dollars of wealth evaporating.

Whether it's a business or an individual, anyone who has invested money in this financial disaster is now suffering terribly and barely surviving.

So far, EIE Group is not the only Japanese company with close ties to Ning Weimin that has fallen into operational difficulties.

At this time, Hanwa Kogyo was also in a precarious situation due to banks closing off financing channels and huge losses caused by excessive speculation.

Especially after the financial report was released, rumors began to circulate in the stock market that "the company misappropriated funds" and "illegal operations caused huge losses," which seriously threatened the survival of Hanwa Kogyo.

As a result, Shigeru Kita, president of Hanwa Kogyo, had to urgently convene a shareholders' meeting and invite media reporters to refute the rumors.

At the meeting, he went so far as to vouch for the company's shareholders with his life.

"This company was founded by my brother from scratch, and I love it far more than any of you here today. Now, what our company needs to solve its current problems is unity, not division. Therefore, I hereby guarantee with my integrity that if Hanwa Kogyo truly has the financial irregularities circulating in the market, and has misappropriated even a single yen from the company's accounts, I am not only willing to relinquish my position as president, but I am even willing to accept the death penalty for it. I ask for your continued support so that I can lead the company out of this predicament. My goal is to use two years to adjust the existing business and restore Hanwa Kogyo's profits to double-digit percentage growth."

Only in this way could the situation be stabilized, and a relatively relaxed respite be gained once again.

However, in the end, the general trend is difficult to change.

Since Japan's national destiny has come to an end, even if Japan's large corporations try their best, they can only struggle to survive and barely survive. How can they talk about rebuilding their glory?
Hanwa Kogyo's Kitamo is nothing more than playing delaying tactics and making empty promises.

This can even be seen from Zhao Chunshu's desperate plea for help when he called Hong Hanyi, expressing his eagerness to see Ning Weimin.

Even the Yakuza, who don't follow the rules, are struggling to survive in Japan these days, let alone small and medium-sized enterprises and ordinary people who follow the rules. Their ability to withstand risks is naturally even lower.

This shows just how anxious and uneasy the Japanese business and financial circles are today.

No one believes tomorrow will be better; the business environment across society has become unbalanced due to the economic downturn and financial scandals.

Therefore, the aftermath of this stock market crash is completely different from that of "Black Monday" in 1987.

The consequences of Japan's economic shock are not just terrifying people and causing speculators to panic and sell at a loss.

This trend inevitably began to spread to the Japanese domestic consumer market, causing a decline in demand for luxury goods.

Business at upscale restaurants and nightclubs has plummeted, and while there are more people looking at international brand products in shopping malls, fewer are actually buying them. Demand for luxury cars, which were once in high demand, has almost come to a standstill, leaving a large number of unsold luxury cars piling up in dealerships' garages.

The Japanese art market, in particular, has been hit harder than ever before.

In the past, artworks possessed both "aesthetic value" and "investment value," and many people bought paintings to "preserve and increase their wealth," or even regarded artworks as "part of their asset allocation."

In December 1989, Sotheby's released its "Million Dollar Ranking".

The data shows that in the previous month, nearly 60 artworks in the Japanese art market sold for more than five million US dollars, and another 300 paintings sold for more than one million US dollars.

At the time, this was hailed by the global art world as a "billion-dollar frenzy."

Just a few months later, Japanese paper maker Ryohei Saito purchased Van Gogh's "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" for $82.5 million and Renoir's "Bal du Moulin de la Galette" for $78 million.

He also purchased a Renoir sculpture for $1.6 million, claiming he would place it in his backyard.

It can be said that during Japan's economic bubble period, the prices of French Impressionist paintings increased more than twenty times because Japanese speculators became the main force in the global art market.

During the same period, the Dow Jones Industrial Average in the United States did not even double.

However, by the end of 1990, with the Japanese economy clearly declining, a large number of Japanese investors withdrew, and the global "liquidity" of art was also affected.

This "hyped market" inevitably exposes its inherent fragility—it's difficult to find buyers when you want to resell, its investment value fades, and only its "aesthetic value" remains.

Specifically in the Japanese market, the effects are most evident, with many galleries and auction houses already experiencing cash flow problems.

Small and medium-sized artists who depend on these galleries for their livelihoods also have to accept the harsh reality of income interruption, making it impossible for them to continue their lives.

Even Sotheby's, at this point, can't do anything to stimulate demand for art.

Its staff constantly send beautifully produced company publications to potential clients and host lavish banquets before major auctions.

Or they might offer so-called "art property loans" to buyers, guarantee sellers the lowest possible price, and relentlessly emphasize the investment potential of art, publishing their own "art market index" to track price fluctuations in different collecting areas.

All of this, however dazzling, cannot change the fundamental fact that the art market is steadily declining.

Therefore, there was no way to stop the funds that were originally cheering and chasing this market from leaving without looking back.

The way people dismiss artworks is like a scumbag who has just indulged in a relationship waking up and treating his bed partner, who is still lying in bed, as if he's already tired of her.

However, these are not the worst of all. The most fatal thing is that no one expected that Japan's art market, like the financial market, would suddenly expose countless scandals.

Coincidentally, the trigger for the crisis also fell on Itoman Corporation, the same company that dragged Sumitomo into the lawsuit.

It's important to understand that the destructive consequences of the company that tarnished Sumitomo Bank's reputation did not end there, even after it collapsed in October 1990.

In fact, when government officials investigated and liquidated the company's remaining assets in accordance with regulations, people were surprised to find that the appraisal certificates for thousands of paintings purchased by its real estate subsidiary were all forged.

Moreover, these paintings have been used as collateral for loans to circumvent regulations restricting real estate lending.

As a result of this incident, the leading art speculators all fell into financial difficulties.

Many Japanese art dealers have also been convicted of crimes including tax evasion and fraud.

It has to be said that the Japanese art market went from summer to winter almost without any transition period.

Not only did market conditions and prices collapse, but credit also crumbled.

The company, Shiman, which single-handedly destroyed both the Japanese financial industry and the art collection market, was practically the vanguard in shattering the illusion of Japan's bubble economy.

To put it bluntly, this company exacerbated the pain of the complete collapse of Japan's bubble economy, leaving most people unprepared to face a socially devastated environment.

On the bright side, if it weren't for this company's scandal, which shattered the illusion of Japan's economic miracle...

Those Japanese citizens who have been fooled by the Japanese government's rhetoric of "a brief economic downturn in the early Heisei era" are still waiting to see when some of them will truly wake up and realize the truth.

It's really hard to say whether he did good or bad.

…………

November 16, 1990, was a Friday.

As the name suggests, this day should have been a good day to make money.

Logically speaking, for anyone working in the catering industry or running an entertainment venue, the upcoming busiest weekend night should be like the moment when it's finally their turn to be the dealer in a round of mahjong; they should be fully focused and give it their all.

However, given Japan's current near-collapse economic situation, this was an incredibly depressing weekend, making it difficult to have any expectations.

This applies even to nightclubs in Ginza, because only those who are truly in the business understand just how much the Japanese people's high-end spending power has declined and how stingy the wealthy of the past have become.

Chiemi can attest to this point.

As a madam trained by Akakaze and a student personally taught by Maria, she now finally owns her own nightclub.

Also located in Ginza, not far from Akaga, is a club called "Peony".

Even now, dressed in expensive and gorgeous kimonos and working as a Ginza madam, she doesn't feel that her quality of life has improved or her income has increased. On the contrary, she has recently regretted going solo and is filled with anxiety about the future.

For no other reason than that she was really unlucky. She missed the best time to make money by opening a shop and instead encountered the disaster of the bursting of the economic bubble. Moreover, she misjudged the trend of the economic situation—not just a temporary downturn as the government said, but a continuous decline and weakening.

Her shop opened three months ago.

In the early days of the store, some customers came to support it because it was novel.

And then there's Maria, the former boss, who, out of support for her juniors, kept her promise and brought her several waves of generous, high-quality customers.

As a result, after only a few days of initial success, the business was no longer in the "newbie protection period" and began to be affected by the economic downturn.

After the initial boom, her shop's turnover began to decline steadily, getting worse day by day, until it became what it is now, with only about one or two million yen a day, barely enough to keep it afloat.

The persistently high operating costs, the steadily declining revenue, and the increasingly dire economic climate left her with no prospect of improvement, and she couldn't help but worry about the store's future.

She has long lost the high spirits she had when she first opened the business, and is no longer as optimistic and confident as she was when she worked at Chixia.

To give an example, she's like a housewife who's been married for ten years, and has completely lost the unrealistic expectations she had about marriage before.

At seven o'clock in the evening, while there were no customers and the staff were preparing for the opening, Chie Mei spread the ledgers and invoices on the dining table and buried herself in writing a payment request.

She sat in a booth in the corner, checking the customers' bills while writing out payment requests, and then putting the requests into envelopes with names on them.

A graduate of a prestigious university, she wrote very carefully, with beautiful and delicate handwriting. She even scented each letter to win over her clients.

After all, this is related to whether or not you can get the money smoothly, so of course the more exquisite and impressive it is, the better.

This way, customers won't have a negative reaction when they receive the product.

She already knew this when Akagami was working as an intern madam.

Of course, in terms of operating income, her store can't compare with Chixia's, which has a large number of high-quality customers.

She personally wrote down the amounts on the payment requests, mostly ranging from 200,000 to 500,000 yen.

This is because more than half of the customers in her shop are owners of small and medium-sized enterprises. Now, it's considered good if she can get about three groups of customers who spend more than 500,000 yen each night.

Unlike Chixia, which is frequented by big bosses and social celebrities.

A single table of guests can easily spend over a million yuan, and every night we even encounter several tables of big clients who spend tens of millions of yuan.

So when it comes to business, her wishes are actually quite simple.

She would be content as long as she could maintain an average occupancy rate of 50% each day, with about ten groups of customers spending 300,000 yen.

In this way, even if we close on Saturdays and Sundays, our monthly revenue can double to 60 to 70 million yen.

As long as she can achieve one-sixth of Chixia's revenue, she will have no problem surviving.

The question is, how can we achieve such a goal?
Relying on wishful thinking and daydreaming is certainly not enough.

Chiemi rested her chin on her hand, her brows furrowed as she pondered a practical solution.

The current income of her shop is actually supported by the customers she accumulated in Chixia.

The other four PR girls in the store couldn't really help much.

Firstly, they are young and just starting out in the industry, with no connections or loyal customers.

Secondly, the competition in Ginza is fierce. Public relations girls with excellent qualities command high prices and are considered treasures by various shops, making them not easy to poach.

The girls in her shop weren't the kind of beautiful girls whose looks strongly attracted men and whose every move exuded a seductive charm, so they couldn't make customers linger and frequent their shops.

So ultimately, she still lacks a star hostess who can attract a large clientele.

Now that she focuses all her energy on the business, she is too exhausted to deal with customers and is overwhelmed with other tasks.

Therefore, if a store lacks such a person, customers will find it boring.

If there were someone who could win over the guests, share the burden of management, and help Maria improve the club's reputation and popularity, just like I did when I worked at Red Clouds, it would be a completely different story.

Perhaps then she can stabilize the foundation of her business and wait patiently to weather the economic downturn.

However, given her limited financial and personal resources, it seems quite difficult for her to hire such a top talent.

Although she knows many people and has worked with many public relations ladies.

But everyone is driven by self-interest; where would you find a popular young lady willing to follow her?

On the contrary, the more luxurious the bar, the easier it is to attract outstanding talent and gather highly skilled female public relations staff, which is almost a paradox.

Should we concentrate our resources and focus all our efforts on developing one?
But it seems that none of the people around me possess such qualities.

Mitsuko is quite beautiful, but she has a low level of education and lacks experience; she is just a saleswoman in a shopping mall.

Yajiang has a master's degree, so she has the academic qualifications, and she also has a good figure, but her face is a bit...

Akiko, who used to work with me at a nightclub in Roppongi, is quite good at chatting with customers and has decent basic qualities. However, that guy is too money-grubbing and overly vain. Bringing her in would probably cause chaos and a lot of trouble...

Moreover, the key issue is that even if she were to be trained, she would just be an ordinary madam, not a Ginza legend like Maria.

She clearly lacked Maria's charm and shrewdness, which allowed her to keep people devotedly by her side.

What if all that work is for nothing?
It could lead to losing everything...

To be honest, after thinking it over and over, Chie Mi didn't have any good ideas on how to change this awkward, half-dead situation.

After all, she had a weak foundation, no money, no connections, and lacked ability.

This left her feeling quite conflicted, unsure of how to resolve the situation.

Maria used to tell her that opening a shop wasn't that easy. It wasn't just about setting up a storefront in Ginza, hiring a few people, and then waiting for customers to come in and counting the money.

Chixia's prosperity is the result of years of accumulated reputation and meticulous attention to detail in its hospitality.

She initially didn't quite believe these words, but now she's starting to realize that she's really underestimated the complexity of opening a shop...

In conclusion, the actual business difficulties she faced exceeded her expectations and were indeed unexpected.

Her total savings over the years amounted to only 125.68 million yen.

To open the store, she has already spent 100 million yen on various expenses related to Peony, as she owns 60% of the company.

Right now, we need to set aside the remaining money as working capital.

Therefore, she must come up with a plan to bring him back to life as soon as possible!

And we urgently need a sum of money, a huge sum of money!

Otherwise, Chixia, who owns 40% of the shares, might not be in any serious trouble, but she herself would definitely go bankrupt, and her savings of many years would be wiped out.

Just then, the phone rang.

“I’m Maria. Is this Chiemi? You’re already in the store, that’s great.”

"Oh, it's the madam! I didn't expect you to have time to call me. Is there something you need? Do you want to introduce me to some clients?"

Chie was quite surprised when she answered the phone.

What she didn't expect was that her casual joke actually brought her a pleasant surprise.

"Hehe, you're always so clever. That's it. I wonder if it's convenient for you?"

"Oh? Really? I was just joking. That's great. I was worried about the business at the shop. You can come anytime, no problem."

"Let's set the time around nine o'clock tonight. But let me make this clear beforehand: you can't expect to make any money from this customer I'm recommending today, and you'd better take good care of him."

"Of course, how could I charge a new customer on their first visit? I know the rules. But Madam, it's not that I'm jealous, but it seems that Akasaka's business is really good. In this day and age, you still have extra customers to share with me. Sigh, I was just thinking that I wish I were still by your side."

"Are you saying this because you regret it? Do you want to come back? Of course I don't care, but you need to think it through carefully. Are you willing to give all of this up?"

"Sigh, to be honest, I'm really in a dilemma. Only now do I realize how important your past teachings were. Unfortunately, it's too late to regret it, so please, out of consideration for our past relationship, show me some extra care. After all, I'm your personally trained disciple, right? Besides, the other people who came from Chixia opened their shops earlier, and compared to me, they've already made money. Only I've been unlucky, catching such a terrible year..."

"Oh, I knew it, you're just acting like a child again. Okay, enough with the hypocrisy. Let's talk about it when we meet tonight..."

Chie finally smiled after the unexpected call ended.

Today, my luck seems to be really different; there are finally signs of improvement. (End of Chapter)