FIRST

Behind every meeting in Japan, there is an underbelly of “unspoken agreements.”

About an hour by car from Tokyo, there is a little town called Kiryu.
Our hero, a man who once made advertisements for a living, is hired by Kiryu for the skills a man of his background possesses.
“Will you come up with a plan to revive the town?”

The man conducts a local investigation, identifies problem points, and comes up with a solution.
A plan is constructed, and at last it is the day of the first tentative plan presentation.

In the Japanese business world, the fact is that success or failure in a presentation is often determined ahead of time,
by “laying the necessary groundwork.”
Despite a meeting’s importance, often the actual decision-makers themselves are not in attendance.
When matters outside the limited scope of the story come up, meetings often end with “we’ll have to sleep on it and reconsider.”

Generally in Japanese business, decision-making is avoided at the actual meeting.

Is it possible for our man to weather the storm of this risk-averse Japanese presentation culture and achieve success?