Posted at 2013.09.22 Category : Financial Times
フィナンシャルタイムズ週末版の名物連載は著名人とランチを食べながら話を聞くLunch with FTというものがあります。最近、この連載をまとめたものが本になっています。インタビューもののほうが読みやすい部分もありますし、アウトプットに生かしやすいかもしれません。
そんな連載の今週のゲストはユニクロの柳井社長でした。どこでランチをとるのかと思ったら六本木ミッドタウンにあるリッツカールトンのAzure 45で食事していました。聞き手はAERA Englishでも連載を持っていたDavid Pillingさんです。
Lunch with the FT: Tadashi Yanai
By David Pilling
We are in the private dining room of Azure 45, one of dozens of high-end French restaurants in Tokyo, this most culinary of cities. This one is spectacularly located on the 45th floor of a skyscraper with sweeping views of Tokyo Tower and the city beneath. A cluster of different-sized glass balls dangles above the table, giving the otherwise haute-chic room the air of a 1980s disco. Yanai starts work at 7am and likes to be home by 4pm to spend time with his wife and to practise golf, so the whole company has shunted its schedule forward. Our 11.30am encounter is early even by Japanese standards, where lunch at noon is the norm.
“Just by looking at your face I can tell you’re English,” Yanai announces as we take our seats at the long dining table. “There’s an Englishness about you.” He is almost imperceptibly leaning back in his chair and, as he speaks, his mouth moves less than you might expect, as if he were a ventriloquist minus a dummy. His face is stern, though beneath is a hint of amusement. Every so often, he bears his teeth as he erupts into laughter.
What, I ask, is so English about me? “The whole package. The air of the English is down-to-earth,” he says. “They care about details, there’s a tradition but there’s also a counter-culture, the younger generation versus the older generation and so on. But then that’s well blended into a happy balance and crystallised into common sense.”
It’s not where I would have started the conversation but it’s a fairly typical line of discourse in Japan, where perceived national characteristics remain an important prism through which to view the world. Seeing as we’ve set off down this road, I ask whether the Japanese are similar. One commonly hears Tokyo cab drivers pontificate on the parallels: both Britain and Japan are islands stuck off the edge of a great continental landmass. Yanai focuses on the differences. “I’m afraid Japanese people tend to collective hysteria,” he offers.
生い立ちからユニクロの現状など幅広く聞いていて、ブラック企業と呼ばれている事やバングラディシュの事件での対応も扱っています。“But in my opinion, unless each one of those labourers and all the people in Bangladesh can stand on their own feet they will have no future.”と語っているところを見ると、やはり厳しい人なんだと思います。
In the case of Bangladesh, it also brought death, I press. Although Uniqlo clothes were not being made in the collapsed Rana Plaza building, Fast Retailing has subsequently responded anyway by joining a European-led initiative to improve factory conditions. “Some European people tend to believe that these labourers are being exploited and deprived of their human rights and that, therefore, what they need is a strong union,” he says, waving away imaginary agitators. “But in my opinion, unless each one of those labourers and all the people in Bangladesh can stand on their own feet they will have no future.”
Even at home, Uniqlo is sometimes labelled as a “black company” because of a high, by Japanese standards, staff turnover rate that sees half of all new recruits leave the company within three years. In Japan, too, the brand has become a victim of its own ubiquity. There is a slang term, unibare, meaning to be caught wearing Uniqlo clothes. Part of Yanai’s global push is aimed at reflecting a better international image of the company’s products back into its home market.
In Japan, Yanai is famous for his prodigious wealth, not always a compliment in a country where money can be held in suspicion. His enormous house in central Tokyo has a mini-golfing range in the garden. In a previous interview, Yanai has said he is not interested in money, though he confesses to liking the idea of being Japan’s richest man. How does he square the two? “I would describe myself as a very average man,” he says. “I’m not extraordinary. I don’t think I was cut out to be making all this money. I have long prioritised being fair, doing something good for society.” Surely he has a Van Gogh or two tucked away at home, I goad. In answer he shows me his wrist to reveal a humble Swatch timepiece. “This is the watch I wear every day,” he says. I’ve seen this before, the classic gesture of a billionaire keen to prove that wealth has not erased his down-to-earth origins.
ユニクロについては特に新しい情報はありませんでしたが、お昼の食事代には驚いてしまいました（苦笑）
自分みたいな庶民がフィナンシャルタイムズなんか読んだら場違いかもしれません。。。。（汗）
Azure 45
The Ritz Carlton (45th floor) Tokyo Midtown
Set meal x 2 Y20,000
Hokkaido sea urchin
Chilled mushroom soup, pink shrimp tartare, lobster consommé
Kanazawa seasonal fish
Wagyu beef tenderloin
Grand Marnier baba, chocolate ice cream, chocolate chantilly
Coffee x 2
Perrier x 3 Y1,590
Total (incl service) Y24,396 (£152)
 | Lunch with the FT: 52 Classic Interviews (2013/03/14) Lionel Barber 商品詳細を見る |
そんな連載の今週のゲストはユニクロの柳井社長でした。どこでランチをとるのかと思ったら六本木ミッドタウンにあるリッツカールトンのAzure 45で食事していました。聞き手はAERA Englishでも連載を持っていたDavid Pillingさんです。
Lunch with the FT: Tadashi Yanai
By David Pilling
We are in the private dining room of Azure 45, one of dozens of high-end French restaurants in Tokyo, this most culinary of cities. This one is spectacularly located on the 45th floor of a skyscraper with sweeping views of Tokyo Tower and the city beneath. A cluster of different-sized glass balls dangles above the table, giving the otherwise haute-chic room the air of a 1980s disco. Yanai starts work at 7am and likes to be home by 4pm to spend time with his wife and to practise golf, so the whole company has shunted its schedule forward. Our 11.30am encounter is early even by Japanese standards, where lunch at noon is the norm.
“Just by looking at your face I can tell you’re English,” Yanai announces as we take our seats at the long dining table. “There’s an Englishness about you.” He is almost imperceptibly leaning back in his chair and, as he speaks, his mouth moves less than you might expect, as if he were a ventriloquist minus a dummy. His face is stern, though beneath is a hint of amusement. Every so often, he bears his teeth as he erupts into laughter.
What, I ask, is so English about me? “The whole package. The air of the English is down-to-earth,” he says. “They care about details, there’s a tradition but there’s also a counter-culture, the younger generation versus the older generation and so on. But then that’s well blended into a happy balance and crystallised into common sense.”
It’s not where I would have started the conversation but it’s a fairly typical line of discourse in Japan, where perceived national characteristics remain an important prism through which to view the world. Seeing as we’ve set off down this road, I ask whether the Japanese are similar. One commonly hears Tokyo cab drivers pontificate on the parallels: both Britain and Japan are islands stuck off the edge of a great continental landmass. Yanai focuses on the differences. “I’m afraid Japanese people tend to collective hysteria,” he offers.
生い立ちからユニクロの現状など幅広く聞いていて、ブラック企業と呼ばれている事やバングラディシュの事件での対応も扱っています。“But in my opinion, unless each one of those labourers and all the people in Bangladesh can stand on their own feet they will have no future.”と語っているところを見ると、やはり厳しい人なんだと思います。
In the case of Bangladesh, it also brought death, I press. Although Uniqlo clothes were not being made in the collapsed Rana Plaza building, Fast Retailing has subsequently responded anyway by joining a European-led initiative to improve factory conditions. “Some European people tend to believe that these labourers are being exploited and deprived of their human rights and that, therefore, what they need is a strong union,” he says, waving away imaginary agitators. “But in my opinion, unless each one of those labourers and all the people in Bangladesh can stand on their own feet they will have no future.”
Even at home, Uniqlo is sometimes labelled as a “black company” because of a high, by Japanese standards, staff turnover rate that sees half of all new recruits leave the company within three years. In Japan, too, the brand has become a victim of its own ubiquity. There is a slang term, unibare, meaning to be caught wearing Uniqlo clothes. Part of Yanai’s global push is aimed at reflecting a better international image of the company’s products back into its home market.
In Japan, Yanai is famous for his prodigious wealth, not always a compliment in a country where money can be held in suspicion. His enormous house in central Tokyo has a mini-golfing range in the garden. In a previous interview, Yanai has said he is not interested in money, though he confesses to liking the idea of being Japan’s richest man. How does he square the two? “I would describe myself as a very average man,” he says. “I’m not extraordinary. I don’t think I was cut out to be making all this money. I have long prioritised being fair, doing something good for society.” Surely he has a Van Gogh or two tucked away at home, I goad. In answer he shows me his wrist to reveal a humble Swatch timepiece. “This is the watch I wear every day,” he says. I’ve seen this before, the classic gesture of a billionaire keen to prove that wealth has not erased his down-to-earth origins.
ユニクロについては特に新しい情報はありませんでしたが、お昼の食事代には驚いてしまいました（苦笑）
自分みたいな庶民がフィナンシャルタイムズなんか読んだら場違いかもしれません。。。。（汗）
Azure 45
The Ritz Carlton (45th floor) Tokyo Midtown
Set meal x 2 Y20,000
Hokkaido sea urchin
Chilled mushroom soup, pink shrimp tartare, lobster consommé
Kanazawa seasonal fish
Wagyu beef tenderloin
Grand Marnier baba, chocolate ice cream, chocolate chantilly
Coffee x 2
Perrier x 3 Y1,590
Total (incl service) Y24,396 (£152)
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