Of course, since the premise was that I would be working away from home, I needed the consent of my wife, Yumi, and two children above all else. In short, the mission that had been given to me this time was a major event in our family's history that would have a huge impact not only on me but on each member of my family.

One of the reasons was that my daughter was already a university student, and my son had just started his life in high school, so they might have had to spend the precious days of youth without their father around. But, in the end, I ended up giving priority to what might be called an irresistible desire in my heart, or a craving for a completely new challenge.

However, if I look at that conclusion from another angle, it also meant that I was ignoring the anxiety, fears, and concerns of my wife, Yumi, about the near future. Of course, there's no turning back just right now, but sometimes I wonder whether this decision to follow only my ego's desires was ethically right or not.

Well, Semarang, where I was assigned, was Indonesia's fifth-largest regional city, located on the Java Sea and about an hour's flight east from the capital, Jakarta. At the time, AST Indonesia was a joint venture between PIONEER and Sumitomo Forestry, one of Japan's leading companies specializing in housing and building wooden materials, and was a relatively large-scale woodworking production company that could produce 1 million sets of speakers per year if it received orders.

ASTI had just under 1,000 employees and was faced with the extremely difficult task of looking after their daily lives and quickly breaking away from its previously unprofitable business operations that had continued until then. In addition, the company had long-term and short-term debt of over US $10 million, including funds for setting up a new factory. Of course, the burden I had to bear was heavier, vaster, and far more complex than anything I had ever experienced before. 

In 2001, around the time of early summer in Japan, I had been working alone in Semarang / Indonesia for almost a year. Fortunately, I had gotten used to life there, and the future of the manufacturing company I was entrusted with rebuilding was progressing smoothly with a few new businesses that I had developed myself, so I felt a little relieved that we would be able to increase sales and improve profits next fiscal year.  

However, at that time, a serious production delay that affected the very foundation of the company's management surfaced. This was ultimately the result of the poor production management skills of the entire company at the time and the lack of communication not only among local staff but also among Japanese staff.

In any case, the discrepancy between the daily production plan and the actual results piled up like a snowball, and naturally there were delays in shipments, which led to a situation where we were causing trouble for both the parent company and our customers.

As for myself, I had to admit that I had left the most important and essential technical issue for a manufacturing company, which was to ensure that the production load and the capacity of the equipment or machines were matched in advance, to others as being outside my "expertise," and that my sensibility for crisis and the required management skills in various aspects were decisively poor. I continued to suffer between the sense of responsibility I felt for the company and the loss of confidence in my own humanity and abilities.

Every morning, I would drive to the company with the Japanese expatriate, but as the car approached a small hill overlooking the company, my stomach would get cold and the vivid tropical countryside, already bathed in the sunlight, would look like a field of ice. I was overcome with fear and anxiety that if I took a wrong step, I would fall into the cold water, as the ice was thin.

In April of that year, my wife and son moved to Singapore, and it became difficult to go to Singapore once a month on weekends, which I had been looking forward to. It was in the midst of this difficult situation that my wife contacted me with a serious request: she wanted to be baptized at the Japanese church she had started attending in Singapore, the Singapore JCF. My wife suddenly thought of Jakarta, which is halfway between Singapore and Semarang, so we could have a leisurely chat for just one day on Sunday. At the time, I was too busy to go to Singapore, so that was certainly the only option.

However, I was worried until the last minute whether we would be able to meet, considering the security situation at Jakarta airport. I still can't forget the scene and the sense of relief I felt when I saw my wife in the arrival lobby of the cluttered and dimly lit Soekarno-Hatta Airport.

It was Sunday, August 12. We spent the whole day in a beautiful and exotic Bali-style hotel near the airport. The rich space was filled with tropical light and the view of the greenery from the window, the story of my wife's rambling life in Singapore and how she decided to be baptized and listening to a tape of a Christian sermon by a pastor filled my heart with richness. Time passed with a strange feeling, as if I was floating comfortably in a different dimension, freed from the anxious and hard daily life in Semarang.

A week later, I went to Japan to explain the production delay to the parent company and apologize. I wanted to clarify my responsibility as much as possible and clarify the future countermeasures, but my words were not persuasive as the production delay was still not recovered, and not only did I receive a natural scolding from the president and upper management of the parent company, but I was also strongly instructed to cancel a new business that I had been working hard on at the time, which had a lot of potential for the next fiscal year and beyond.

As a result, it turned out to be the worst possible business trip. I think that it was a very human or emotional "atmosphere" and "reaction" rather than a rational "judgment" or "intention" of the parent company, which said, "It is extremely arrogant to proceed with preparations for a completely new business direction when the serious production delay problem has not been resolved."

On the way back to Semarang, the strong instructions from the parent company to stop preparing for and investing in new business weighed heavily on my mind, and I left Narita / Tokyo airport in a gloomy mood and stopped off in Singapore to spend the weekend with my family.

However, I could hardly sleep that Saturday night, and I talked with Yumi about my many shortcomings as a husband and father for my daughter and son and about the future of our family. I was at a dead end at the business or the work, and I was forced to face the fact that I was not able to lead my family, even though I should have.

I was made to clearly realize my own powerlessness, and I was completely stuck in life, not knowing what to do from now on and what to rely on. The following Sunday, I attended the JCF service that my wife and son attended. As a completely non-religious "engineer" who believed in rational and concrete things, it was unthinkable for me to attend a church service until then.

The JCF service was held in St. George's Church, an old, calm building from the colonial era of the British Empire, with open windows that allowed me to see tropical trees directly. I have no recollection of the message at that time.

However, after the service, when I greeted Pastor Kataoka, the words "Please let me be baptized" came out of my mouth without me thinking, and tears flowed from both my eyes without any hesitation. The pastor did not say anything at that time, but simply wrapped both of my hands around my hands. The tears flowed endlessly, and strangely, my hardened heart melted, and I felt my shoulders become lighter.

The next day, August 27th, I returned to Semarang on the first flight that arrived at 8:00 a.m. on Monday, but I had two issues to deal with. One was how to respond to the instructions I received during my previous business trip to stop preparing for new business at my parent company. The other was that my wife's baptism was scheduled for September 9th, and it was both my wife's and my wish that I could be baptized at the same time if possible.

However, the condition for this was that I had to submit my testimony to Pastor Kataoka by the following Monday and have it recognized as my baptismal testimony. But strangely enough, the excessive pressure from those things passed, and a sense of hope began to take root in my heart.

Regarding the first issue, the thing I should think about first and foremost as a person in charge of management, and before that as a person, was the 870 local employees who would continue to live in Semarang, and the most important thing was to calmly decide whether we could make a reasonable profit from next term onwards and whether it would be possible for them to continue working, and I came to the realization that it would be okay to simply put my own "noose" on that decision.

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