Sometimes, making this magazine is fun. Like November 14 when I got to attend the Chamber’s Gala, thanks to Paul Braganza who kindly gifted me the ticket he couldn’t use. I had a great time… but it was a very long day.

Just before the Gala I was privileged to join the sayonara party for Ken Theriault, the retiring head of Costco Japan. Held in a huge ballroom packed with Costco folks from across Japan, as you will read in my profile of Ken on P.20, it was a very emotional event.

I’ve known Ken since about 2002 when I began making monthly treks from the Chiba countryside to Makuhari, Costco’s first Kanto-area warehouse. After running into each other in the aisles and finding out we were both Canadian, Ken and I began
a conversation that continues to this day. That’s why writing a profile of Ken has made this issue such fun.

Let me put Ken’s achievements in context.

When I first moved to Japan in the 1980s, everyone at home asked, “How can you live there? It must be so expensive.” And it was. Partly that was due to ‘endaka,’ the high yen. Even more so though, life in Japan was costly because the economy was egregiously tilted in favor of producers and against consumers. We paid seven times the world price for rice to protect farmers, large supermarkets were restricted to favor ‘mom & pop shops,’ and cheap imports were shut out wherever possible. Banks even turned their ATMs off from Friday evening till Monday morning to prevent people from withdrawing their own cash.

Some of the worst gouging came from wholesalers. An article I read in the late ‘80s, etched in my mind, described the typical wholesale chain for a can of Campbell’s Soup. After 12 layers of wholesalers, the final transaction was six cans to a ‘mom & pop shop’ – on consignment! No wonder life here was so incredibly expensive!

When Ken was setting up Costco’s first Japan warehouse near Fukuoka in 1999, he said that everyone strongly advised him to go through wholesalers. But he refused. Eventually the producers gave in and let him buy direct, and Ken suspects it was because they thought Costco was doomed to fail. With ‘mom & pop’ proprietors now stocking their shops at Costco, and visitors amazed at how affordable Japan is, Ken has had the last laugh.

For that, and for opening Costco’s doors to dozens of Canadian products, Ken richly deserves the CCCJ’s Business Legacy Award which was presented to him at the Gala.

My evening didn’t end with the Gala, but with a midnight ni-ji-kai (after-party) with another farm boy from Saskatchewan, Jon Heese. Son of a Mennonite pastor, and one of 10 siblings growing up in a hamlet near Swift Current. Fast-forward, he ran a bar in Tsukuba until toughened drunk-driving laws scuttled his business. So he became a Japanese citizen and ran for city council. Now he’s what we’d call an MLA in Ibaraki’s prefectural legislature. His remarkable story is coming in our next issue.