“Nothing is too small, and if you need my help, well you know we Mexicans are all friendly and peace-loving people. We just want to make our country stronger.”
Starting in April, Kobayashi and the ambassador started hosting getting-to-know-you dinners, initially once a month, then twice a month and by July, once a week—the Friday night soirée quickly became the event to be seen at. All recipients of Kobayashi’s generosity would appear at least once a month, and sometimes once a week. Here, the bait was not Mammon but flesh—Kobayashi ensured there were always at least 30 girls—his “geishas” as he called them; mostly Mexican, with a few bored blonde adventuresses from Europe. Kobayashi had provided all the girls with false, but realistic looking, business cards that the girls could readily pass out to a potential client in full view of the client’s wife or current mistress. Then on the following Monday or Tuesday, the client would drop by, “strictly on business, you will understand Señor Kobayashi,” was the most common refrain.
This worked very well with one minor problem when one of the girls—against Kobayashi’s express instructions—had been moonlighting and caught a particularly nasty dose of the clap from three U.S. sailors, which in the small and intimate circle of Mexico City’s diplomatic elite spread like wildfire. The girl was cured, and then fired. With little difficulty, Kobayashi was able to divert the blame to the ambassador at the Canadian embassy, whose wife was known to be extra-ordinarily ugly.
By July, Kobayashi had established an “institute”—more of a clubhouse actually, but the title on the brass plate outside the double glass doors with the black wrought iron institute monographs (designed by Akiko), was “Mexico-Japan Institute for Trade and Friendship.” The office Kobayashi had chosen had itself made the newspapers as one with the largest and most spacious lobbies—the lobby was a full two stories high. The leading quality paper, El Universal, sent two reporters and a photographer.
In the middle of the back wall sat two receptionists who had been selected because of their height—in flats both were a good head taller than Kobayashi, and they towered over him in when they wore heels; a second requirement was having the most beautiful legs in Mexico City. Kobayashi dressed them in black sling backs and the tightest knee-length black pencil dresses imaginable. From the knees down, visible to all the world, were the finest calves ever to grace womanhood.
Kobayashi paid the two women three times what they requested and expected, and he received complete loyalty and discretion. Needless to say, the recipients of Kobayashi’s gifts dropped by in droves, sometimes singularly, but more often in twos or threes, to crudely ogle and whisper. A few had the courage to request an introduction from Kobayashi, but Kobayashi would simply shrug and tell the requester it was—sadly—not possible.
On the third floor, Kobayashi had hired a team of five people, a salesman who formerly sold Cadillac cars to the Mexico City elite, three lawyers, and an advertising man. All Mexico City-born and -bred, and—apart from the salesmen—all with university degrees. From this group, Kobayashi created what was to become the “Peace, Friendship, And Fidelity Agreement Between Mexico And Japan.” On the 1st of October, the President of Mexico welcomed the Prime Minister of Japan, Mr. Konoe, and both signed the agreement. When Konoe asked Kobayashi about the astonishingly warm welcome he had received, Kobayashi simply told the Prime Minister that all Mexicans were very friendly. What neither premier knew was that the agreement had a secret annex that stipulated that Mexico would attack the United States and would reclaim Arizona and New Mexico if any form—the secret annex was quite clear about this—if any form of hostilities should break out between Japan and the United States. Also stipulated in the secret annex was the provision of 20 million per month to Mexico, in U.S. 100-dollar bills, of course.
Regarding the meeting of the two premiers, the New York Times carried one column, on page eight.
6: Big André’s Suggestion
KOBAYASHI’S COHORT IN MONTREAL, Oonishi by name, could not be more different from Kobayashi—tall, gangling, thin, a chain smoker, never married and a lover of whisky, with or without the “e.” Akiko knew from experience that three small glasses of sake and her husband’s face would glow red like a glowing coal in a winter fire; Oonishi, in contrast, seemed to live on whisky and he was not choosy—Japanese, naturally enough, was his favorite, the 21-year-old Suntory Hibiki as his personal favorite, but American bourbon, Irish and Scotch all were welcome friends to Oonishi. Oonishi’s strategy was the same as that of Kobayashi—buy favors. But Oonishi’s tactic was the opposite. A formal agreement was not possible, especially after Canada’s 1935 trade agreement with the United States. But what was possible was to stir up the embers of the Québécois discontent. Discontent that was often barely hidden, and sometimes not hidden at all.
With Oonishi’s friendly, boozy ways, he was seen by one and all as safe, friendly and unthreatening, albeit a little loud at times. But Québécois in their rough ways did not resent this in the slightest; actually, it made him a welcome change from the Anglos from Toronto and Ottawa with their superior airs. Paradoxically, Oonishi’s French was that of the upper class of Paris, and while this seemed in direct contrast to his plebian manner, the Québécois were quite taken by it, as their French was universally ridiculed by Parisians, as all Québécois well knew. The paradox was rewarded with Oonishi’s nickname—Bien-Aimé, as in Well-Loved, the people’s name of Louis XV of “Après-Moi-Le-Déluge” fame.
“Bien” trolled the bars near the Army transportation depots and near the roundhouses of the Canadian Pacific railroad. Striking up friendships, well lubricated by the unexpected luxury of top-shelf liquors, was simplicity itself—these bars were strictly male and strictly working class. Occasionally—on the anniversary of a mythical ancient festival Oonishi would concoct—it would be open bar all night long, and all bar owners loved the way Oonishi would pay the day before the Honorable Anniversary in American currency. It was child’s play itself for a trained and disciplined agent like Oonishi to simply listen and grade the grumbling of the working men. Most complaints were dreck, but occasionally Oonishi detected a speck of gold. This was the case with Big André, a very short man with big shoulders, and—like all short men—a chip on his shoulder.
In Oonishi’s one-time cipher reports to Tokyo he described how André’s complaints were systemic, not simply operational—into his cups, André would complain about the hated Anglos and the “Yankees” as he always called the Americans, “you know, Bien, the Yankees are the bosses in Canada, it is the fucking Yankees who control Canada, they tell those ball-less wonders in Toronto what to do and the Anglos simply do it. Total piss-ants. We French need to do something, ‘cos the fucking Anglos will do dick.”
Oonishi nodded, said little, apart from agreeing with these words of profound wisdom.
“Yes, many Japanese feel the same way—that the Americans are trying to rule the world.”
“Right! Rule the fucking world, that’s just what those cunts are trying to do; fucking cunts!” André pounded his fist on the bar.