Corporate environments can, unfortunately, be very similar to schools when it comes to bullying and office politics.

What would you do if you knew that someone in the company was bullying another employee and had been getting away with it for some time?

That is what happened to the employee in this story, so when he got a big promotion, he was able to use his new influence to get him fired.

Check it out.

Land of the rising sun & the real Godzilla

People involved

Me (your hero)

Mr Kawasaki (The villain)

Mr Honda (The big boss)

Mr Yamaha (The victim)

Ms Suzuki (Mr Hondas PA)

This story happened back in 2014, which was my first year in Japan.

I had originally moved to China back in 2012 but was head hunted by this Japanese firm two years into my Chinese contract.

I come from Europe and had gotten a job in the Far East working in marketing.

You see I have a particular set of skills that is quite sort after in Asia, hence the head hunting.

Anyway my first week in the new company I was scheduled to go on a factory tour with all the other new employees, this is where I meet Mr Yamaha.

Mr Yamaha was a young guy fresh out of college and ready to take on the world.

Although I was older than by 7 years or so we got on well.

It is great to work with people who you like.

For a kid out of college he was very mature and very respectful and I must admit I took an instant liking to him.

He did have his flaws, such as he was very naïve, no backbone and had issues with confrontation this is important later.

I should point out that although I am working for a Japanese firm the company is very much an international company which means everybody is speaking English.

That is of course except middle management.

Now Mr Kawasaki enters the story.

Mr Kawasaki at first seemed like a really nice guy, he was not my boss as he was corporate department and I was public relations but he could not speak a lick of English and I could not speak a lick of Japanese.

Somehow we kind of bonded over this for a the first few weeks as we both do a god awful job of speaking each other’s native tongue but I progress quickly in Japanese.

I was lucky to land my job and had the opportunity to take Japanese lessons on company time, which basically meant 3 days in the office and 3 days in a class room.

Over the year I progressed quickly and could start to hold conversations in my 3rd language (My second being Chinese).

Now Mr Kawasaki was Mr Yamahas boss, over the months I had started to notice a big change in Mr Yamaha.

He came into work looking like crap, his suit was always dirty his face always looked tired.

He just looked so bummed out all the time the sad thing is I really never saw him that much around the head office as our jobs both take us in different parts of the country all the time.

So, it was rare to see him but when I did he just looked like crap.

3 weeks had past and everybody in the company was told the company will have its 80 year anniversary party the following month.

Great! Can’t wait for a mass company party should be a good time.

Sounds like fun!

Company party comes up and everybody had a good time, after the main party the sales boys from Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand and France ask us if us guys from Public relations want to join them in a after party?

Yeah! I’m going out drinking with the sales teams, I’ve known from previous experience going out with the sales team usually ends up in the legends of time.

This is where I bumped into Mr Yamaha; he’s young so the sales guys and girls asked him to come along.

He’s also a good looking dude plus a native to the Japan so he was an instant summon to this after party group.

We all had a good time and yes it was a very messy night, all I can remember was making out with a girl from Colombia and pulling one of the sales guys off a girl from Taiwan (I think Taiwan her Chinese for me was a little weird for me so going to assume Taiwan).

Anyway, the last men standing ended up being me and Mr Yamaha and we had a very deep conversation about our company.

This is where Mr Yamaha just let loose with all sorts of information.

Now I’ve been around a while, I’ve even worked for a major car manufacture so I’ve gotten to know people like to complain about their boss but this was with passion and hate.

Mr Yamaha told me how Mr Kawasaki basically bullied him every day.

Telling him how useless he his, how he would not even spit on him if he was on fire.

He even threatened physical violence against him.

I was kind of shocked by what he was telling me and ill be honest It was difficult to believe as I have hung out with Mr Kawasaki a few times and not once did he come across as a bully or even a bad boss but of course please remember my language ability at this time was not on point.

So, maybe I’m missing context to this situation?

Anyway, I go home sleep off my hangover for the entire weekend and go to work on Monday.

Now, I’ve been having a bit of the thing with the chairman of the company PA.

Ms Suzuki, just like the sports bike was smoking hot and hard to handle but I dig it I’m always up for a challenge.

We had a coffee date later that week where I mention about Mr Kawasaki and Mr Yamahas situation and how for me it was difficult to believe.

She laughed and said I had no concept of tradition in Japan, and that Mr Kawasaki is an “old school” Japanese business man and that’s why he’s working in corporate because “everybody in that department has an old mind about business”.

Ok I had no idea what that really means and ask her to fill me in.

She tells me in the old days it was common for the newer members of staff to bend over backwards towards the higher ups and do anything they say without question. “Obey, Obey, Obey” was the quote she used.

She then said it was not uncommon for the newer recruits to do their bosses laundry on a weekend or wash his car that sort of stuff.

Gob smacked by what she is telling me, she then states Mr Kawasaki is a little bitter at head management because he was always passed over for director for two reasons.

This guy sounds pretty useless.

1st he never bothered learning English which meant he could never lead a team of foreigners and 2nd even upper management knew of his old style ways and even they thought it was out of touch with globalization.

You have to remember that upper management in a Japanese company usually consists of old men above 70-80 years old.

I tell her about the bullying and she says she can’t do anything about it but might be able to ear wig it to Mr Honda the chairman but she will need evidence of it going on.

I had to think about this and although I liked Mr Yamaha I was not sure if sticking my neck out for him would be a bad political move on my part.

Not only this but I had not seen anything that would question Mr Kawasaki`s honor as it were.

Few months down the line and Im doing well in my job and up for promotion.

As I am heading to my weekly meeting I bump into Mr Kawasaki and Mr Yamaha on the stairs.

Mr Kawasaki red in the face with anger, clenched fists with a very aggressive posture with little respect for Mr Yamaha’s personal space.

Mr Yamaha was feeble in posture, face and eyes red with tears pouring down his face.

I asked is everything ok, to which both replied they were fine and there was an accident but Mr Yamaha is ok now.

I smelt a lie, I’ve hung out with enough sales & marketing guys to smell lies a mile off but coming from corporate department that usually don’t spin tales it was easy to see they were lying.

I did not push the matter and carried on to my weekly meeting but took note of what I had just seen.

At lunch time I made it my mission to seek out Mr Yamaha and ask what the heck is going on.

How can this guy get away with that?

He told me I had just saved him from Mr Kawasaki as he was about to physically harm him.

I had enough by this point; I’m going to crush this man.

You need to remember the country I am currently living in, if this was a US office or an EU office confrontation would have been sorted out face to face but in Japan people like to do things in a passive aggressive manner but try and avoid confrontation as much as possible.

So, I know if I went up to Mr Kawasaki and threaten to beat him up, all this would do would cause me problems.

I needed another way to destroy him.

Few months go past and I’m now in charge of marketing and directly report to the chairman of the company.

Now how I got this position to some extent can be seen a little suspicious.

You see the Chairman’s PA was also his daughter, they don’t share the same last name so you would never know from the outside and it was known that I was dating her around the office.

(You could argue I slept my way to the top but I would disagree with this as in the beginning I had no idea).

Regardless I was in a position of power and the corporate department directly responds to me now.

This meant Mr Kawasaki responded to me, he did not like this as you could imagine.

He had been working at the company for over 10 years and I was promoted to higher position than him in 3 years.

This guy made my life difficult for months on end, refused to do stuff I had asked (Reports etc nothing dramatic just usual company crap).

Now I know what you are thinking, it might a communication problem as we did not speak he same language.

This was my 3rd year in Japan and by then I had a grasp on the concepts of the language so I can honestly say it was him being a jerk, not a communication problem.

The revenge

Anyway few more months down the line I’m having a dinner and a few drinks with the board members and mention my “disdain” for Mr Kawasaki.

This gained a bit of attention from the board members to which of course they ask why?

Now I could’ve gone down the route of just telling them “oh he’s bullying staff members, refuses to do the work I set for him yada yada yada.”

But, I grew up in a house with a father who was a CEO of his own company and a mother who was a lawyer for contract law so I responded differently.

I said that “this guy would make it difficult for the company to grow in the foreign markets as his way of doing things is very old fashioned and would be difficult to fit in with the globalization of most company’s and this is probably why we keep losing our contacts to Chinese firms.”

I also suggested that he might be better working for the accounting team as that has no effect on our front line business.

You need to remember this is about as passive aggressive I could get.

This is the way it should be.

There are no fights, no anger, just pure venom being spewed out of my mouth about how this guy is going to affect the company’s bottom line.

The board members took notice and listened to not only my complaints about him but my view on how to deal with it.

Weeks later I get a memo saying Mr Kawasaki will be leaving the company to “pursue his own future”.

The bully gets fired and for all the right reasons.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about this.

Hopefully they are still friends.

This person appreciates that he defended the weak.

It was a great story.

Here is someone else from Japan.

I am curious about this, too.

Finally, a workplace bully is held accountable.

We all love to see it.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.