Mr. K and the Z Are Back

Yutaka Katayama, better known as “Mr. K” to generations of Datsun and Z-car fans, has been waiting a long time for this. The Z, which he fathered in 1969 as president of Nissan USA, is back this week after a hiatus of six years.

The first of the Z sport cars was the famous 240Z, with a six-cylinder engine that basically was the same as the four-holer powering the Datsun 510s of the day. The 260 and 280Zs and the 280 and 300ZXs followed, with the line discontinued in 1996. This time around, the car emerges as the 350Z, the most powerful yet.

On a sunny spring day, Mr. K and I journeyed together to Nissan’s Oppama plant in Yokosuka, 31 miles south of central Tokyo. This is the plant where the 350Z will be assembled.

Mr. K, 92 years old, has been my friend ever since I wrote a modest piece two years ago about my beloved 1972 Datsun 510 station wagon, which has cruised more than 300,000 miles and still is going strong (Highway 1, July 19, 2000).

Somewhat to my surprise, I received dozens of e-mails from Datsun fans on both sides of the Pacific.

One came from a Mr. Katayama in Tokyo. He introduced himself as an “old salesman struggling with a new computer.” My story brought back good memories, he said.

It was only when I saw his e-mail address--mr.k@drmteam .com--that I realized this was the legendary Mr. K, who so successfully marketed Datsuns and Z cars in the U.S. in the 1960s and ‘70s.

I had thought he was dead, but here he was, still alive and active. He had retired from Nissan in 1977, shortly after he was yanked back to Tokyo and placed in an office so small that it shocked visitors from America.

As he aged in retirement, his legend continued to grow. Scores of 510 and Z-car clubs sought him out. They wanted his presence at Datsun/Z functions and his autograph on memorabilia. They still do.

Rather quickly, Mr. K and I became close. We dine together when I vacation in Japan, a nation with which I have a decades-long association. We get together when he visits Los Angeles. I’m an old man myself, now 70, but still young in Mr. K’s eyes. He has become an unlikely father figure to me. He was born in 1909, just two months after the birth of my biological father.

In 1999, Mr. K--long retired from Nissan but even more influential than before--made a sales pitch to Carlos Ghosn, then the new president and chief executive of the company.

“Bring back the Z,” he urged.

It was an easy sell. When Ghosn was with Michelin years ago, he drove a Z and loved it. After taking over at Nissan, he wondered why there was no longer a Z car. He promised Mr. K that a new Z would come out within three years.

Exactly three years later, Ghosn made good on his promise.

The original 350Z production goal at Yokosuka’s Oppama plant was set at 2,500 cars a month. But advance sales were so brisk that the figure was doubled.

For me, the very name “Yokosuka” reeks with nostalgia. As a young Navy officer nearly half a century ago, I became quite familiar with the port. My old warship, a Fletcher-class destroyer that survived eight Pacific War battles, steamed in and out of Yokosuka over a three-year period while I served as her communications officer in the ‘50s. I was now returning to the exotic seaport of my youth.

More to the point, Yokosuka is where the Japanese battleship Mikasa is enshrined. The Mikasa, Admiral Heihachiro Togo’s victorious flagship in the Russo-Japanese War of the early 20th century, has a tenuous but naggingly constant relationship with the Nissan Z car.

A pacifist if ever there was one, Mr. K becomes uncomfortable and a little defensive when the Z car is associated with a huge Japanese military triumph. “Love cars, love people, love life” has been his personal motto for decades. But he understands why the matter keeps coming up. He knows he started the rumor in 1969 when the 240Z burst onto the scene.

Back in 1905, the Russian Baltic Fleet steamed along the Chinese coast, bound for Japan, determined to teach the uppity Japanese a lesson.

Issuing orders from the sand-bagged bridge of the Mikasa, Admiral Togo positioned his fleet to meet the Russians in the Strait of Tsushima between Japan and Korea. He hoisted the international naval “Z” flag, which in this battle was a coded signal meaning “Let every man strive to the utmost.” Togo’s superior seamanship enabled the Japanese to smash the Russian fleet and win the war in a shockingly short time.

Fifty-five years later, in 1960, Katayama, then 50, was headed for America to market Nissan Motor cars. His older brother, a fan of Admiral Togo, gave him a Z flag, wishing him well in a foreign country.

Datsun sales were slow at first. Masataka Usami, 75, of San Juan Capistrano, who in those times was Mr. K’s right-hand man, recalls that sales often totaled only six Datsuns a month.

“We knew the names of all Datsun owners and we would rush to their homes in the morning if the cars wouldn’t start,” he said. “They fed us breakfast.” Usami became “Mr. USA” to Katayama’s “Mr. K.” The monikers were easier for Americans to remember.

Sales picked up as Mr. K assumed the Nissan USA presidency in 1965, then rose sharply with the debut of the 1968 Datsun 510. The 240Z sports car, for which Mr. K badgered Nissan management for years, came out in late 1969 in the midst of vigorous Datsun 510 sales. As the spiffy cars spilled onto a San Pedro dock, Mr. K, always a salesman, pulled out his brother’s Z flag as a motivating symbol: Let every man strive to the utmost--to sell 240Zs.

In defiance of his Tokyo superiors, he and his colleagues pried off Nissan-blessed Fairlady emblems and replaced them with 240Z badges. In effect, Mr. K renamed the car for the American market. The numbers indicated the size of the engine, 2.4 liters in this case, and the Z came not from Mr. K’s old battle flag but straight from Nissan’s official project name--Z for “zenith.”

On this fine spring morning, more than 30 years later, a Nissan driver picked me up at my Shinjuku hotel and drove me to Mr. K’s home in Setagaya, another of Tokyo’s myriad wards. Mr. K and his wife, Masako, were waiting outside. He is tall for a Japanese, close to 6 feet, and weighs more than 200 pounds, while she is tiny, probably weighing no more than 100 pounds. They have been married for 65 years and have four children.

Mr. K’s English is good, while the best to be said about my Japanese is that it is improving. So as we rode to the Z factory, we spoke in English as we always do.

The sprawling Nissan Oppama plant is laid out on what once was a Japanese military airfield. General Manager Yoshitaka Shimada gave us an overview of Nissan’s plans to produce thousands of 350Zs per month. “If I don’t meet the schedule ... “ he said, pausing for a moment, at a loss for English words. He drew his forefinger across his throat, a gesture understood in any language.

Mr. K nudged me. “I worked with his father,” he said. It seems that Shinkichi Shimada had run the Nissan Shatai plant on the coast of Sagami Bay, about 18 miles away, where all previous Z cars were manufactured. We laughed about it, my friend and I. Over the years, I too have worked with the children of my peers. It’s what happens when you stay on the job for a long time.

We were shown the Oppama wharf, where as many as 4,000 cars can be loaded onto specially designed ships bound for America or elsewhere. We saw one of the body manufacturing lines in operation. Twelve robots do all the welding and only four human beings supervise. On the assembly line, there were no robots but plenty of labor-saving devices.

At the end of the tour, a prototype 350Z sat gleaming, ready for our inspection. Mr. K liked the overall design. His only reservation was the surface-mounted door handle. He would have preferred inset flush handles but was philosophical about it. “You know how designers are,” he said. “They have ideas of their own.”

This reminded him that the former Z was substantially redesigned in 1979. “I didn’t much like it,” he said. Then he slapped his fingers to his mouth, adding in a lower voice: “Oh, I shouldn’t say that.”

Mr. K has had more than a few clashes with Nissan designers. When the original 240Z was being designed 30-odd years ago, he proved a thorn in the sides of those charged with putting shape to an idea.

He made numerous trips to Tokyo until he was satisfied that the car would appeal to Americans, not just to Japanese designers.

As we were leaving the Oppama plant, Shimada presented us with identical gift-wrapped boxes. They were intriguingly heavy. I eagerly opened mine before we were hardly out of the parking lot. It was a marvelously detailed scale model of the 1932 “First Datsun.” Mr. K, knowing his gift was the same, said: “Oh, good. I don’t have that one.”

That evening, after we got back to Tokyo, there was a hotel dinner hosted by Norio Matsumura, Nissan’s executive vice president of global sales and marketing.

Near the end, Matsumura brought out a contract for Mr. K. He stamped it with his personal hanko, the traditional seal that replaces the Western signature on official Japanese documents. At that moment, Mr. K became a Nissan employee again.

A box of newly minted name cards accompanied the contract. Mr. K beamed, flashing his trademark grin as he handed me the first card out of the box.

“Yutaka Katayama,” it said. “Advisor, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd.”

The Z was back, and so was Mr. K.

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Jackson Sellers is an editorial systems manager for The Times. He can be reached at jackson.sellers @latimes.com.