Asia: Again the Rising Sun

"To us he is like a father," say his workers. "I hate him," grimaces a competitor. "He is a statesman," purrs Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan. The object of these vastly divergent judgments: wispy Sazo Idemitsu, 76, the Far East's fastest rising oilman and the prime pipeline through which Soviet Russia pumps its oil into the rapidly expanding Japanese market.

Last year alone, Idemitsu (pronounced Ee-day-meets) imported more than 9,000,000 bbl. of Soviet oil, which Moscow sold to him at roughly 40% below world prices in order to finance purchases of Japanese machinery. Idemitsu cracks the oil at his Tokuyama refinery—the Orient's biggest —and then markets much of it from his chain of 1,500 modernistic gas stations. His competitors, bitter at Idemitsu's price cutting, charge that his operations will make Japan overly dependent on Russian crude. Idemitsu answers that less than 7% of Japan's oil now comes from Russia, and that almost 80% of his own supply is bought from the West, chiefly from U.S. operators in Texas and the Middle East. "I have no interest in politics," says Idemitsu with a soft smile, "but I hope to promote international friendship in the oil business."

Sudden Comfort. Despite his professed disinterest in politics, Idemitsu owes his success largely to a canny ability to ride the political tides. He started with one small retail oil outlet in 1911 and steadily expanded across Japan. Then he followed the invading Japanese army into China in the 19305, pushing out U.S. and British oil companies. It was a wry joke among Japanese soldiers that whenever they captured a Chinese town, the first Japanese civilians to arrive were the "comfort girls"-and an Idemitsu man.

Japan's World War II defeat cost Idemitsu his overseas properties, but he bounced back when the Korean war boomed demand for oil, and in 1953 became something of a national hero by buying oil from Iran's newly nationalized fields in open defiance of the big U.S. and British oil companies. Since then, Idemitsu has become strong enough to challenge anybody. When the Pentagon last Dec. 21 cut him off as a supplier to U.S. military jets in Japan because of his dealings with Russia, Idemitsu called the boycott "an odd Christmas gift," but "utterly negligible." True enough: last year, the Idemitsu Kosan Co. rang up sales of $275 million, second largest of any Japanese oil company.* Of this, the U.S. Air Force bought little more than 1%.

Hung Up to Dry. To Idemitsu, who champions the cause of keeping Japan's "racial capital" intact, all other major Japanese oil companies are somehow tainted because Western companies hold substantial interests in them. Idemitsu stock is owned 40% by the Idemitsu family and 60% by the company's employee welfare fund, which pays handsome benefits to workers upon retirement. But Idemitsu boasts that old workers are never pressured to retire and bad ones are never fired; even chronic drunkards are merely sent to dry out for a few months in a Buddhist monastery at company expense. A devout Shintoist and emperor worshiper himself, Idemitsu keeps a shrine in his conference room for praying in spare moments, and regularly leads new employees in a ceremonial bowing toward the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.