When he got to Japan, Vince found namebrandism in epidemic proportion, not only among his students but also with the whole faculty wherever they happened to hail from. He had soon discovered that namebrand went beyond the product itself and where you bought it was just as important if not more so. He knew he could get the freshest, sweetest and biggest strawberries just around the corner at the local fruiterer who also gave him the cheeriest and most efficient service. But, if he wanted to win hearts, he had best buy smaller ones for five times the price at Isetan or Takashimaya department stores. The strawberries were obviously not the issue here. Somehow bags with Garden Fresh on them simply didn't carry the same aura as Odakyu or Tobu bags. It was Connie who came up with the obvious solution. She advised him to keep a collection of department store bags and wrapping from his regular shopping trips and buy the better produce at the cheaper prices with the better service. All one had to do was to take them out of their Garden Fresh wrappers and put them in exclusive department store bags. It was, indeed, the perfect solution. Connie remembered a lesson when she was trying to find a present for a particularly snobbish friend. She was short on time and these were the days when Australian supermarkets didn't open on Sundays. On that occasion, she had merely bundled a half dozen Harrod's soaps, she had bought for souvenirs several years earlier, into a little basket and covered it with cellophane. The friend had been delighted, although it must have been obvious to the woman in question that Connie and Vince couldn't have possibly popped over to London from Melbourne and back again especially to buy this woman some soap. The solution found, it still rankled Vince that people looked at the label before looking at the product. As if to emphasise the point, he was once taken to visit Yoshiwara Sangyo Scarf Factory in Konan Ward. On the way, they crossed the Okagawa River , which was where the scarves had once been washed. In those days, the waters had been very clear, but Vince was surely not the first person to observe that those same waters looked as if they had been dyed themselves now.
The Okagawa River bespoke a long history of textiles in the area and Vince found the whole business rather impressive. The material was laid on long waxed tables which were tilted 45 degrees. Once the material had been silk and then cotton had been gradually introduced. Cotton and silk require different dyes and, after several cock-ups, Vince was told, they settled on 100 % cotton. Workers went around with screens and dyed each colour separately and gradually the pattern took shape and then gained body. The lighter colours were applied first, so that flowers grew from their mere outlines into full-blooded blooms. Each table was some 25 metres long and there were four on both levels of the factory. Each bench made some 110 scarves or, in this case, 220 handkerchiefs at a time. And this came to a total of 8800 hankies in a day. They were cut by machine and set in a heating room at 105 degrees Celsius.
It was only after the last touch was added that Vince noted the name at the bottom of each handkerchief - Christian Dior, the sort of name that Vince avoided on principle. And here, this factory was comitting an enormous fraud. People would buy these handkerchiefs believing that they were made in Europe and imported, not churned out in a factory on the other side of the Okagawa River.
When he questioned their guide about it, he was told that the factory also produced all the Renoma, Burberry's and Pierre Cardin scarves for Japan as well. The designs were sent over from Europe and for the first six months of every year, 40 different types of scarf were made. In the second half of the year, another 40 patterns were used. The designs came into Japan through their Tokyo office and were distributed throughout Japan under such brand names.
It was fraud, extortion, racketeering, daylight robbery and unfair labour practices, Vince muttered under his breath as he left the Yoshiwara Sangyo factory.
"I don't know why they're allowed to get away with it," he frothed to Connie, later that evening. "They even flaunt it. I mean guided factory tours indeed." "You're not still going on about that scarf factory, are you?" Vince's eyes bulged, "And it doesn't make you angry?" "Well, no!" "But it's fraud, extortion, racketeering, ... it's ..." "... daylight robbery?" "Yes, that too!" "It's nothing of the sort, Vince. It's exactly the same as someone I know who puts Garden Fresh strawberries into Isetan bags." "That's different. I'm not out to make a profit on my strawberries." "Aren't you now? You save a few thousand yen on that scam and I don't see why you shouldn't. Those scarves are far better made here than in Europe anyway and don't you believe that the average Japanese shopper would be relieved rather than incensed that their highbrow hankies were actually Japan-made. I know how you used to go on about buying Australian-made back home." Vince resisted telling Connie that when he had been a lad, Made in Japan had been synonymous with junk. But Connie rarely debated anything Vince said and he knew that when she did, she was always right. The following Monday, he popped over to Isetan during his lunch break in search of some name brand handkerchiefs. If he reeled at the sight of the price tags, he was nevertheless determined to buy one for Connie.
He presented it to her over a bottle of champagne, candle lit dinner.
"What's this?" she laughed, opening the package.
"Just buying Japan-made." "Vince, you shouldn't have!" "There's a catch, Connie." "What catch?" she eyed him suspiciously. ack "Can I keep the bag and the wrapping paper." ge.
Vince loved stories with meaty twists at the end and this one came on a visit to Australia. Vince and Connie had gone to the Grampians in western Victoria and were enjoying the local aboriginal centre, Brambuk. Connie wanted to buy some aboriginal souvenirs for her friends back in Yokohama and was horrified to discover that the tea towels, indeed all the fabric souvenirs, had Made in Japan labels on them. Vince wondered momentarily if Japan was also exporting Christian Dior scarves to Europe. Possibly not, he decided. Archaeologists surmised that the Australian aborigine had walked over from Asia during one of the later ice ages. Maybe, they were originally Japanese.