Nomura Unhappy With $100,000 Salary, but Enjoys Port’s Success
Mention the fact that Shuji Nomura is one of the highest-paid employees of the city of Los Angeles, and he responds with exasperation. “Yeah. So I hear.”
Nomura is paid just over $100,000 a year as the Japanese representative of the Port of Los Angeles. Another $159,000 is allocated each year to cover the rent for his office in Tokyo and to pay for some expense account lunches and business meetings.
A gregarious cheerleader for the port, Nomura, 58, apparently embraces his job with enthusiasm.
But in a city where a box of cornflakes costs $4.97, and baby-sitters charge $12.97 an hour, the subject of his salary turns him uncharacteristically glum.
“I am--what shall I say--disgruntled?” Nomura said Thursday, glancing quickly at his boss, Albert B. Fierstine, director of marketing for the port. Fierstine responded with a sympathetic look and Nomura, emboldened, continued.
“Never a rise in my salary for the past five years,” Nomura said. “I’m trying to be patient because this job is a very exciting job.”
A native of Japan, Nomura operates the port’s only full-time overseas office, a job he has had for the past six years. During that time, the dollar has fared poorly against the strong Japanese yen.
Tokyo’s astronomical housing costs make it necessary for Nomura, his wife and three sons to live in an outlying area of the city. His daily round-trip commute takes three hours on packed trains.
(A recent survey by Business International, a Swiss business information firm, showed that a two-bedroom apartment in a good residential area of Tokyo costs the equivalent of $3,243 to $12,160 a month. Purchasing a residence is practically out of the question.)
“I have nothing to do with the dollar,” Nomura lamented. “I’m living on the yen.”
Nomura made the comments about his pay in response to a reporter’s questions Thursday. The exchange was a momentary cloud in a day that turned out to be a particular triumph for Nomura.
He had been the architect of an elegant reception hosted by Mayor Tom Bradley and the Port of Los Angeles at the Imperial Hotel, one of Tokyo’s finest. Among the 150 people invited were the top officials of Japanese shipping, exporting and utility companies.
Like the father of the bride at his only daughter’s wedding, Nomura beamed with pleasure as he surveyed the room. All the right people had shown up and most stayed more than the obligatory 15 minutes. Earlier in the day, there had been some concern about the turnout, he said, as executives called around town to find out who planned to attend the affair.
Port officials credit Nomura with helping to bring Los Angeles to the forefront of Pacific Rim shipping.
“He’s one of the best organizers to be found in this country,” Bradley said Thursday as two days of back-to-back meetings came to an end. “He’s been a great asset for us here in Japan.”
Takashi Takeda, editor of Shipping and Trading News, a Japanese publication, said, “Everybody knows Nomura-san. He’s a very influential man in Japanese shipping circles. He’s a very tough negotiator.”
Nomura courts clients and potential clients, investigates the backgrounds and needs of Japanese companies, and tries to keep port officials and staff from making blunders that could offend the protocol-conscious Japanese.
It was Nomura who, for example, taught port officials always to carry their business cards in expensive leather cases and to present them in an elaborate, two-handed gesture, said Port Director Ezunial Burts.
It was also Nomura who smoothed over a potentially serious flap with the Sony Corp. last January after seven containers packed with millions of dollars in electronics products were stolen from the port in San Pedro, Burts said.
Nomura’s immediate trip to Los Angeles to help assess security at the port sent a signal to Sony, Burts said, that the problem was taken seriously.
