Traveling through the Tokyo bubble era

Chapter 945: It Won’t Be a Knight Duel

Thursday, June 21, 1990.

The Neon Central Bank announced a hike in its benchmark interest rate for the fourth time since Yasushi Mieno became president, raising the previous benchmark rate to five percent.

Since the first increase in the benchmark interest rate, the Japanese stock market has been completely punctured and has plummeted. It has been falling for more than six consecutive months so far.

Except for a few individual companies, the entire Japanese stock market is in a state of mourning and misery.

Therefore, after the news of the benchmark interest rate hike was released, everyone thought that the Japanese stock market would be pessimistic again and continue to plummet.

What was unexpected was that after the news was released, the Nikkei index rose against the trend in the afternoon, rising by an unprecedented 3 percent.

Such an unexpected market reaction caught the entire financial community off guard and also made everyone have other thoughts.

Has the bubble in the Japanese stock market been deflated?

Is it possible that the downward trend of Japan’s economy is about to be halted?

Is it time for the Neon stock market to recover and rebound?
Is the Japanese economy going to return to its former glory?

For a moment, everyone's hearts were filled with beautiful expectations and fantasies.

……

With this idea in mind, everyone began to wait and see with hope.

However, the market did not disappoint these people.

At the close of the day, although the Nikkei index experienced several fluctuations, it finally maintained a 3% increase.

However, just one day's rise is naturally unable to restore the confidence of investors and the market, so many prudent people are still waiting and watching.

But this did not affect the officials and the media in any way, who personally stepped in to announce that the central bank's measures were effective, and that Japan's economy had bottomed out and rebounded. The next step was to continue its glory and revive the economy.

Then the next day, Friday, came.

As soon as the Tokyo Stock Exchange opened, the market no longer showed the usual green color. Except for a few individual stocks, all other stocks started to turn red.

In just one morning, the Nikkei index rose another 2 percent.

The Nikkei index rose 5 percent in just one day since Yasushi Mieno announced a benchmark interest rate hike yesterday.

This kind of increase was rare even during the peak of the bubble economy.

Such a bull market has also made a number of investors and experts and scholars shout, "It's back! It's all back! The Japanese economic miracle is coming back again!"

After six months of devastation and torture, investors saw the Japanese economy returning to its bubble peak and the hope that they could return to their former good lives.

Although some people are still waiting and watching under the good news, some people can no longer sit still and have begun to rush back into the stock market, trying to catch the ride of getting rich before the rebound.

With this boost, the Japanese stock market is booming.

The Nikkei index, which was about to fall below 20,000 points, was pulled back again.

However, when the time came to June 23rd, Saturday morning.

Just when the carnival in Japan's financial market had cooled down slightly due to the weekend closure, a shocking news that no one expected was suddenly revealed.

Storm Advertising, a Japanese advertising and media giant whose corporate scale and market value have surpassed Hakuhodo and is second only to Dentsu, suddenly held a press conference.

At the press conference, Storm Advertising's president Shota Yoshioka personally announced to all media that Storm Advertising, for the sake of its own business development, has decided to enter the Japanese market starting today.

As soon as these words were spoken, the media at the scene were in an uproar.

A feeling of impending storm came over me.

Everyone realized that a major earthquake in the Japanese business world was about to happen.

Some rookies who have just entered the industry still don’t understand why the expressions of their seniors around them suddenly become so serious.

Because in their view, Storm Advertising is a Japanese company, so isn't it normal for it to enter the Japanese market and develop?
But soon a senior explained it in a low voice.

Storm Advertising was originally established by Dentsu in collaboration with a number of partners in order to expand overseas markets.

Since its establishment, it has strictly abided by Dentsu's restrictions and has not conducted any business in Japan to avoid breaking Dentsu's monopoly in Japan's advertising market.

Although sometimes you can see some Storm Advertising projects appearing in Neon.

But the premise is that these are overseas customers, and the Japanese market is just a by-product of the brand's global advertising promotion.

But even so, these projects must obtain Dentsu's consent and cooperate with Dentsu before entering Japan, and be distributed through Dentsu's advertising channels.

Therefore, although it seems to be an advertising project of Storm Advertising, it is actually operated by Dentsu in Japan.

But now it’s different. Without any notice from Dentsu, Storm Advertising unilaterally announced that it would enter the Japanese market.

What does this mean?
Storm Advertising, the son created by Dentsu, is going to rebel and kill its father, break Dentsu's monopoly in Japan, and engage in an "advertising war" with Dentsu, the monopoly overlord in the advertising and media field.

People in the industry know something about the complex background of Dentsu, and the various legends about Dentsu men are what white-collar workers in New York talk about with great relish.

The original Hakuhodo was known as Dentsu's rival.

But in fact, everyone knows that there is a huge gap between Hakuhodo and Dentsu.

Therefore, no one has ever called the competition between Hakuhodo and Dentsu an advertising war in Japan.

But Storm Advertising is different.

Storm Advertising, which has suddenly risen in recent years, has no presence in Japan, but its development overseas is rapid and unstoppable, and it has become one of the world-class advertising and media giants.

Behind the rapid development of Storm Advertising, there is support from Dentsu as well as resources from other partners.

Among them, the most well-known is naturally the "Yunshang Group" which is also expanding wildly overseas and the support of one of the richest people in the Japanese world.

After all, the support from the Yunshang system itself and the resources from the industries owned by the world's richest man are enough to help Storm Advertising gain a foothold in the international advertising and media market.

Think about these, and then look at Storm Advertising's sudden decision to "rebel" at this time, and the background of its president, Shota Yoshioka, who personally announced it at the time.

A guess immediately emerged in the minds of all the media people at the scene.

Could it be that the "Yunshang Group" was the one who pushed Storm Advertising to enter the Japanese market and challenge Dentsu's monopoly? Could it be that the man behind the Yunshang Group?

If their guess is true, it proves that after the "Yunshang Group" has completely dominated the Japanese entertainment media market in music, television, animation, film, distribution, theaters, artist management... and other fields, it is ready to complete the last piece of the puzzle for itself.

Advertising market.

So, this seems to be a market war between two advertising companies.

In fact, it was a super collision of major forces behind the scenes.

The reporters became more and more excited the more they thought about it. After the press conference ended, they immediately rushed back to write articles, scrambling to report the news.

However, although print media can say more, it has its own lag due to its dissemination channels.

Although television media can report the news first, they are unable to conduct a detailed analysis due to various reasons.

Because the top executives of these TV stations, whether they know it or not, are well aware that once the advertising war between Storm Advertising and Dentsu begins, the biggest battlefield will definitely be in the field of television media.

Therefore, when the war just started, it was not the time for them to take sides.

In this case, ordinary viewers cannot realize the importance of this news when they see it reported on TV.

Of course, ordinary people don’t realize it, but some people can see the trick.

For a time, the good news of the rebound of the Japanese stock market, coupled with the advertising war between the two giants, made the onlookers a little overwhelmed. The sudden declaration of war by Storm Advertising on the weekend was not only unexpected by the media and the public, but also caught Dentsu off guard.

The current president of Dentsu was still resting at home and was not paying attention to the news from the outside world. He only learned about the incident when he received a call from his secretary.

The president of Dentsu, who had not noticed any signs beforehand, was completely stunned and caught off guard after hearing the news.

After all, as the president of the monopoly advertising giant Dentsu, his most outstanding ability is not actually in management.

Because in Japan's advertising market, Dentsu does not need to worry about competition from others.

As the president, what he does most on a daily basis and what he is most capable of is dealing with the complicated relationships between various forces and how to coordinate factional conflicts within the company.

So when faced with this sudden incident, the president of Dentsu was unable to react for a while.

Until the secretary reminded him, "President, you should call an emergency meeting right now."

The president of Dentsu was not a fool after all, so after being reminded by his secretary, he immediately started making arrangements and asked his secretary to notify all the senior executives to attend a meeting.

After wasting an unknown amount of time, the bloated and clumsy Dentsu finally gathered everyone together and held an emergency meeting at its headquarters.

The meeting had just begun when the president of Dentsu angrily asked, "What on earth are our representatives on the Storm Advertising board doing? Why don't they know anything?"

As a result, the senior executive who was responsible for contacting the Storm Advertising board representative was sweating profusely and answered tremblingly.

"We haven't contacted all of our people yet, and those we have contacted also said they were unaware of this matter!"

"Baka! Trash! They're all a bunch of trash!"

The president of Dentsu flew into a rage of impotence.

Fortunately, there were still calm people who gave advice immediately, "It is too late to question the board representatives of Storm Advertising at this time. What we need to do now is to respond to Storm Advertising's actions immediately."

Immediately, a senior executive asked, "What should we do?"

The person who made the suggestion replied, "Of course, stop all cooperation with Storm Advertising, and contact related parties and brands to require them to abide by the contract with Dentsu and strictly prohibit cooperation with competitors."

As soon as these words came out, the president of Dentsu also reacted and added, "And the TV stations, the time slots we have contracted are absolutely not allowed to have Storm Advertising ads appear."

At this time, someone else suggested, "The entertainment industry must also be contacted. Those guys must stand with us and be prohibited from cooperating with Storm Advertising."

But as soon as this man said this, he found that many people looked at him as if he were a fool.

The Dentsu executives looked at him as if he was a fool, thinking that this young man really had no talent, and was brought in through connections, and he still couldn't figure out what was going on.

If it was just a storm advertisement, even if Shota Yoshioka had ten times the courage, he would never dare to suddenly "rebel" and enter the Neon market to engage in an advertising war with Dentsu.

It is obvious that there is a powerful force behind the Storm advertisement.

As for who the supporters are, the media reporters can guess it, so how could the senior executives of Dentsu not guess it?

Apart from Yunshang Entertainment, there is no other company with such strength.

And who is standing behind Yunshang Entertainment.

Everyone looked at each other, obviously knowing everything.

Hideki Hanyu.

Although Hanyu Hideki is young and has only been rising for a short time, his current strength and status are not something that people like them can easily provoke.

To put it simply, the big shots behind many of them, the forces these big shots belong to, and the financial backers who support them behind the scenes, can barely be on the same level as Hanyu Hideki.

The most important thing is that Hideki Hanyu’s identity is too special.

As a writer and other celebrity, Hideki Hanyu has a huge influence around the world and in Japan.

Relying on commercial means and interest transfer, Hideki Hanyu's sphere of influence in Japan covers the entire Tohoku region, as well as parts of Hokkaido and Kanto.

It has also used capital as a bond to build a number of intricate, complex and huge interest alliances throughout Neon, involving politics, business, and both the black and white worlds.

Moreover, the global media he controls give him great influence in public opinion.

What very few people know is that Hideki Hanyu is still in the upper echelons of America and has a terrifying influence that many people cannot understand and has not been confirmed.

When everyone thought about the possibility of facing such a terrifying boss after Storm Advertising's "rebellion", everyone couldn't help but feel their scalps tingling.

The president of Dentsu looked towards a corner of the conference room with some worry. The person sitting there was none other than Yutaro Hatoyama.

After Mr. Murayama retired from Dentsu last year, the only person in the entire Dentsu senior management who had a personal relationship with Hideki Hanyu was Yutaro Hatoyama.

As for the others, they are really not qualified to have anything to do with Hanyu Hideki.

Even when cooperating with the Yunshang Group, the people I meet most often are the presidents of subsidiary companies, and I don't have many opportunities to deal with Hirohashi Asako.

Feeling the gaze of the Dentsu president, Yutaro Hatoyama naturally knew what the other party was worried about.

In fact, Yutaro Hatoyama was completely unaware of Storm Advertising's "rebellion" until Shota Yoshioka announced the news.

After learning about Storm Advertising's decision, Yutaro Hatoyama felt very complicated.

The reason why Hideki Hanyu's Yunshang Group was able to grow and develop was absolutely inseparable from the support of Dentsu in the early stages.

Among them, Yutaro Hatoyama and old man Murayama have both helped Hideki Hanyu.

Just like the Neon Film Academy Awards, if it weren't for Dentsu's support, Cloud Films would not have the qualifications to sit together with the major traditional studios to share the cake.

Even the establishment of Storm Advertising, in which Yunshang was able to become one of the initial investors, was also due to the support of Dentsu and their internal "friends".

Now that Storm Advertising has "rebelled", to put it bluntly, it is a betrayal of Dentsu.

Failure to inform Yutaro Hatoyama in advance was a betrayal of his friend by Hideki Hanyu.

But now, Yunshang Entertainment has become the overlord in the Japanese entertainment and media field.

Hideki Hanyu has also grown into a full-fledged player.

Not to mention Yutaro Hatoyama, even Yutaro Hatoyama's cousin must give Hideki Hanyu enough respect.

However, just when Yutaro Hatoyama was filled with the complex feeling of being betrayed by his friends, sad yet powerless, Hideki Hanyu called.

On the phone, the first word spoken by Hanyu Hideki in his textured voice was.

"Feel sorry……"

The timely phone call and the initial apology immediately made Yutaro Hatoyama feel much better.

After the apology, Hideki Hanyu truthfully explained to Yutaro Hatoyama the purpose of Storm Advertising, the reason why Storm Advertising had to be done, as well as his own position and ideas.

After listening to this, Yutaro Hatoyama realized that the "rebellion" of Baofeng Advertising was not a sudden idea, but a long-planned one.

He also understood that his friendship with Hideki Hanyu alone was not enough to stop this "advertising war" from happening.

The war between Storm Advertising and Dentsu involves so many forces and has such a huge impact that it is far from as simple as it seems on the surface.

Feeling the gaze of the Dentsu president, he recalled what Hanyu Hideki had said to him on the phone before.

Under everyone's expectant gazes, Yutaro Hatoyama slowly spoke.

"Hanyu-san, please let me convey a message to everyone.

What Storm Advertising is doing with Dentsu will not be a knightly duel.”

(End of this chapter)