Yonai Mitsumasa
If your boss won’t let you go home
Politician | 2 March 1880 – 20 April 1948

You don’t get to choose your parents, and you don’t get to choose your boss.

For the average office worker, dealing with their superior remains an eternal challenge. There’s the type of boss who is generally difficult to approach, but when they drink, they suddenly become outspoken to the point where they don’t even notice from all their babbling how the other party wants to go home already. But then there’s also the type of boss who remains silent, even when they’re drunk.

The former type of boss—while annoying—at least feels familiar in a way. But the latter? Honestly, bosses like that are just scary. You have no idea what they’re thinking to begin with, and now that feeling of “who even is this guy?” is only amplified.

Among all the great men of history, too, there are some whose expressions did not change even when they were drinking. You could never tell what was on their mind. Yonai Mitsumasa, Navy Admiral and once Prime Minister, is a good example.

Just before the end of the war, Yonai held the position of Minister of the Navy for the second time in his career.

Negotiations over the acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration were underway. As the resistance faction and the end-the-war faction were both arguing their sides, it is said that Yonai wouldn’t budge an inch against the resistance faction’s Army Minister Anami Korechika, thus playing a big part in ending the war. But then this is a conversation topic that is going to elicit all sorts of differing opinions, and were we to go down that path we’d never make it back out again. So let’s just leave all that aside.

When he assumed the office of Minister of the Navy in 1937, inside personnel would make fun of Yonai by calling him the “Goldfish Minister.”

The metaphor probably requires some explanation. They called him that because he was a good-looking man, with the implication that that was all he amounted to—his good looks and not much else. (Although I personally can’t help but think, “Hey, at least you guys had politicians who were good-looking.” Such is the sad life of an average 21st century person, I guess.)

One reason Yonai was given such a contemptible nickname is because of his poor grades at the time of his graduation from the Naval Academy. Out of 125 students, he was ranked 68th.

In both the military as well as the corporate world, your Military Academy graduation rank and your company entrance exam results would prove to be surprisingly crucial when it came to climbing the corporate ladder. Typically, if one was hoping to become the Navy Admiral, he had to have been ranked at least within the top ten. Thus, people in the naval forces saw Yonai as someone rather inessential.

But that’s not the only reason he was treated like the epitome of mediocrity. Even more than his grades, it was that silent, completely ordinary character of his that was to blame. Not only was he untalkative, but his hobbies were firstly drinking, and secondly reading. This definitely seemed like a gloomy guy. Too gloomy, even.

I can’t help but feel an affinity for him though. My only hobbies, too, are drinking and reading. When I lived alone, it wasn’t unusual at all for me to do just that starting Friday evening, continuing through all of Saturday and Sunday, before going back to work on Monday not having spoken to anyone the whole weekend. (Why on earth am I sharing this information with you…?)

We’re getting off track here, so let us hurry on.

Yonai was a fast-paced drinker. It is said that no matter how many glasses of alcohol were poured for him, he would just keep emptying them, but then also that he never displayed any disgraceful behavior because of doing so.

In his mid-forties, when he was the captain of battleship Mutsu, he was asked whether a subordinate of his had ever managed to get him under-the-table drunk. “Just one time,” Yonai answered. “I was guzzling down vodka.”

If one was to spend only limited periods of time drinking limited amounts of alcohol, one might get through it without getting totally pie-eyed. But in Yonai’s case, he would often keep drinking until 2 AM and still not feel satisfied, so he would then bring some geisha with him to his lodging just to keep the party going indefinitely. The fact, then, that he says he got blind drunk only just the once in his life? That means he was a monstrous drinker.

(As an aside: after the end of the war, Yonai’s son kept constantly running into his father’s many mistresses in all sorts of places, causing him to be taken aback. The guy must have literally had a different woman waiting for him at every port, like a proper sailor. I mean, he kind of was one.)

Even a boss who is a hard-ass in the daytime can turn surprisingly smooth-tongued with the help of some alcohol. Surely that is exactly what some of Yonai’s subordinates in the Navy back then were thinking, too.

The only problem, of course, was that actually getting the man drunk was no simple matter.

One day, the usually taciturn Yonai invited two of his subordinates out for drinks. Having received such an invitation from their boss, the two subordinates—swelling with excitement like a junior high school boy as he gets out of bed in the morning—figured the man was maybe going to let them in on some inside information.

And so they accompanied Yonai for drinks… only to discover that he remained just as tight-lipped as always.

At first they thought that perhaps he just needed more booze in him. But even as the geisha kept pouring him one drink after the other and as Yonai kept throwing said drinks down his throat, he was still not talking. No matter how much alcohol they dumped into his mouth, he was not going to crack. Deep down they must’ve been thinking, “What the hell is this guy?”

If this was a drinking contest, the two subordinates were confident they were not going to lose. They kept Yonai’s pace as they all gulped down the drinks. But eventually, only the two of them began blabbering about this and that while their boss simply kept quiet, and the pair were forced to admit defeat.

Why had he even invited his subordinates out for drinks in the first place? There was just something eerie about this man.

In Agawa Hiroyuki’s book Yonai Mitsumasa, there is a quote from one of his subordinates.

If you want to get anything substantial out of Yonai, you first have to drink with him face-to-face for around 12 hours straight.

No matter how you look at it, it’s just not doable.

You would start drinking at 7 PM, and finish at 7 AM the following morning. Then—and only then—would he be willing to talk. The question arises as to what exactly he would even talk about after sticking it out for that many hours. But also, what on earth would you be doing for those 12 hours while he’s either keeping quiet or telling you pointless stories? (Although, to be fair, I can already hear the critics scolding me, saying, “Hey, you’re one to talk—you do the same when you’re drinking. You either shut up or you go on about some trivial nonsense!“)

Yonai made a name for himself as a heavy drinker not only in the army, but also at the red-light districts.

At one party, someone offered a reward to “anyone who can get Yonai drunk!”

A battle-hardened barfly of a geisha stepped forth to challenge him. She ended up unable to even hold the pick of her shamisen, ultimately falling asleep with her head in Yonai’s lap. Not one person at the party was a match for him.

What’s frightening is that Yonai seemed to really like alcohol, and when he was to attend a banquet, he would always have a quick drink even before leaving home. “Pre-gaming,” as they call it. Pre-gaming is something I do myself, but it usually ends with me drinking too much. By the time I make it to the party my excitement level will already have reached its peak, and later I’ll remember only the first thirty minutes or so of being there. Yonai really was something else.

However, when an individual drinks this much, one has to worry about their financials. The guy was taking geisha home with him on a frequent basis—no matter how much money he had, it was never going to be enough.

In fact, when he was a vice-admiral, Yonai applied for a 3,000 yen loan from the Navy’s Mutual Aid Agency. To be fair, he was also burdened by his father’s debts. Still, it was highly unusual for an active vice-admiral to be applying for a loan like that. Based on the price index between the years of 1933 and 1935 (which is when Yonai was the vice-admiral), 100 yen would have been just under 700,000 yen in today’s currency. That means that his loan of 3,000 yen in today’s currency would be 21 million yen (USD$142,000).

Yonai refrained from his womanizing ways after becoming the prime minister, but he still continued drinking vigorously. Often he would end up drinking all night, meaning one of his subordinates always had to keep him company until morning. One can imagine how much of a pain it must have been for his chaperones—the guy didn’t even talk, for crying out loud!

Because he was not deemed a war criminal following the war’s end, he then became just a regular person. Life was not easy, but whenever there was a party he would always find his way there—even if he had to do so in a crowded train. People who knew him said that even in his later years, his drinking was “composed and dignified.”

Judged by today’s sensibilities, Yonai would likely not be deemed a “bothersome” boss. Even after attaining such a high position, he was never the type of man to complain about the office being too hot or too cold.

When one becomes a minister, they have to start signing documents with a stylized signature which are usually quite intricate. But when Yonai Mitsumasa created his, he just took the “み” (“mi”) and the “つ” (“tsu”) from his name and slapped them together, deciding that would have to do—otherwise it would have been a pain.

Oftentimes forgetting to do things like changing his badges after being promoted, he was—to give a charitable interpretation—a very placid sort of person. Or—to give an uncharitable interpretation—an exceedingly sloppy person who simply couldn’t be bothered to care about minor details. Today, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. But back in those days? It’s no wonder he was treated like an oddball.

It must have been precisely this ability of his to see the big picture for which he was chosen in a time of emergency and war, even if he wasn’t a part of the elite. He’s the type of person who would never shine during peacetime.

Today, as small-mindedness and sucking up to your superiors run rampant in our society, it seems hardly no one cares anymore about how they might be perceived by others. They don’t care even if they’re at a party and the conversation isn’t going anywhere. So if you happen to have a boss like Yonai in your vicinity, don’t sweat it. Realize that there’s no reason to worry—after all, they’re just a weirdo.

Throw your arm around their shoulder or something as you laugh and say, “Hey, tell me something interesting, Boss!” Surely they will then proceed to tell you. Or, even if they don’t, they probably won’t think anything about your behavior anyway. They’re weird, remember?

Although please note that I cannot be held responsible if you do this and the following month you suddenly receive a transfer order.