Chapter 1:The "Dream" of Two Presidents for Cruise Liners

Hikawa Maru Retirement and the Romance Stolen from the Sea

NYK Line had numerous prewar overseas routes to North America, Europe, and other destinations, and was used by some of the world's most famous people of the time. The company had many historic passenger and cargo ships on the world's oceans. As far back as 1922, there is a record of Einstein and his wife boarding the "Kitano Maru" from Marseille, France (October 5) to Kobe (November 17).

The 11,600-ton Hikawa Maru, which made its maiden voyage in 1930, operated between Yokohama and Seattle for 30 years before and after World War II, and in 1932, the comedy king Chaplin boarded the ship. In 1932, the ship welcomed a variety of passengers, including Prince and Princess Chichibu, a Fulbright student, and the Takarazuka Revue. While the ship had the glamorous aspect of a passenger ship, it was also commissioned as a hospital ship during the Pacific War and demobilized immediately after the war's end. In 1953, the Hikawa Maru was once again used as a cargo ship, and has remained a coveted "flower of the North Pacific. The Hikawa Maru was a very important ship in the history of NYK's passenger liners.

However, in August 1960, he regrettably retired. Exactly 30 years had passed since her maiden voyage. Although there was a 12-year interruption during and after World War II, the ship made 238 crossings through the waves of the North Pacific Ocean, supporting the journeys of some 25,000 people. In the year following her retirement, the ship was berthed in Yokohama, her birthplace, as part of the "Yokohama Port 100th Anniversary Commemorative Project. Standing in a corner overlooking Yamashita Park from Yokohama Grand Pier, where cruise ships from around the world dock, the ship has long been a symbol of the Port of Yokohama and has formed the image of a "cruise ship" for the Japanese people.

With the retirement of the Hikawa Maru, NYK withdrew from the cruise ship business, but it was also a time when the company sought a "post-Hikawa Maru" cruise ship building project.

The following description is found in the "Under the Flag of Two Drawings" section of NYK's Centennial History.

_____ Hikawa Maru Retirement? The rumor of the Hikawa Maru's retirement was reportedly received like a tidal wave of voices from both inside and outside the company, asking the company to somehow build a cruise ship once again. Should NYK continue to operate cruise ships or should it choose to withdraw from the business? That is why there was a time in Europe when one could not be considered a first-class shipping company unless one had a luxury cruise ship running on the open seas. Anyone with money can own a tanker. This is because it is a "thing" itself. However, a cruise ship cannot be bought with money. It is the "people" themselves. However, continuing to operate a cruise ship is a way of passing on culture (technology). To discontinue a cruise ship means to abort it. In Japan, NYK is the only company that can pass it on. ___

As it happened, in 1953, seven years before the retirement of the Hikawa Maru, the Tourism Business Council took up the issue of building Pacific cruise ships and brought it to a Cabinet decision. Then, in 1959, the bipartisan "Pacific Cruise Ship Advisory Committee" was formed, and Kakuei Tanaka was appointed its chairman.

With international events such as the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 and the Osaka World Exposition in 1970 coming up, there were growing calls in Japan, both in the public and private sectors, for a new passenger ship as a symbol of Japan as a maritime nation. NYK seized this opportunity and submitted to Chairman Tanaka the "Trans-Pacific Passenger Ship Construction Plan Related Documents," a new shipbuilding plan that the company had prepared in 1959. According to "Under Two Flags," the contents of the document were as follows.

__31,000 tons, sailing speed of 26 knots (*1 knot = 1.852 km/h), top speed of 31 knots, and cabin capacity of 1,200. Two of these vessels will be deployed on the San Francisco and Los Angeles routes. The cost of the two vessels is estimated at 25-30 billion yen.

The Japan Shipowners' Association, the Shipbuilders' Association of Japan, and other industry groups submitted requests for the construction of passenger ships. The Japanese American Chamber of Commerce in Honolulu and Los Angeles also sent a letter of request to the Prime Minister.

The Ministry of Transport (now the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism), with the strong backup of Chairman Tanaka and these requests, drew up a budget plan for FY1959 of 1 billion yen for the general account and 1.375 billion yen for the fiscal investment and loan. If all went according to plan, the first ship was to be completed in July 1963 and the second in July 1964.

However, natural disasters make the dream plan really remain a dream.
In September 1959, a ferocious typhoon hit the Kii Peninsula and the Tokai region, leaving more than 5,000 people dead or missing.
It was the Ise Bay Typhoon. Eisaku Sato, the Minister of Finance at the time, decided to allocate the budget allocated for passenger ships to the restoration of damage caused by Ise Bay Typhoon. Thus, the new shipbuilding plan went with the winds of the Ise Bay typhoon.

NYK leaders had no choice but to decide that the era of jet aircraft had come and gone, and that the time for cruise ships had passed. They decided to retire the Hikawa Maru and withdraw from the cruise ship business. The harsh reality of economic rationality had finally robbed the sea of its romance.

Fateful Encounter with NYK President Kimio Miyaoka

Kimio Miyaoka, then president of NYK, had a fateful encounter with the Hikawa Maru 15 years before the ship's retirement. His grandfather became an instructor at the Naval Academy during the Civil War (1877) and taught Kantaro Suzuki, who later became prime minister, and Mitsumasa Yonai. My uncle worked on passenger ships for Osaka Merchant Marine and was stationed in Buenos Aires, South America for a long period of time. From an early age, his grandfather and uncle often took him to ship-viewing ceremonies and to see Osaka Shosen's passenger ships.

Mr. Miyaoka entered the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo from Shizuoka High School, but it was the middle of the Pacific War. Soon after, he was mobilized as a student and assigned to the Navy, where he was to go on a suicide mission to Okinawa as a navigator. He boarded the destroyer Hibiki, which was escorting the battleship Yamato.

However, the Hibiki was damaged by lightning shortly after launching and was forced to drop out of the escort group of destroyers. You never know what will turn out to be your lucky day.

The "YAMATO" met a spectacular end, and her escorts shared her fate. The Hibiki, which was being repaired in Kure, survived.

The "Hibiki" then headed for the port of Maizuru to escort cargo ships repatriated by the Army from the Korean Peninsula. In Maizuru, Mr. Miyaoka encountered a beautiful white ship he had never seen before. It was the Hikawa Maru, which at the time was on duty as a hospital ship.

The Hibiki laid alongside the Hikawa Maru and was refueled. Mr. Miyaoka and other officers were invited to the Hikawa Maru, where they were given a bath and were served sumptuous meals that were rarely seen during wartime.

For Mr. Miyaoka, the experience on NYK's Hikawa Maru would leave an indelible impression and impression on his mind for the rest of his life.

After the war ended, Mr. Miyaoka returned to school, graduating in 1948. He then took the employment examination for NYK. His encounter with the Hikawa Maru at the port of Maizuru was a major motivating factor.

When Mr. Miyaoka joined the company, the Hikawa Maru was the only cruise ship left in Japan. Thirteen years later, NYK completely withdrew from the cruise ship business. How shocking for Mr. Miyaoka, who joined NYK after following the Hikawa Maru, must have been.

A quarter of a century had passed since the Hikawa Maru disappeared from the Pacific Ocean.

In 1984, Mr. Miyaoka became president of NYK. The following year, the company celebrated its 100th anniversary, and as it approached this milestone year, it launched "NYK21," its long-term strategy for the new century. And as an extension of this strategy, the company dreamed of "launching a cruise ship business. Although 25 years had passed since the retirement of the Hikawa Maru, Mr. Miyaoka must not have forgotten about it for a single moment. It was his dream, and NYK's dream for the 21st century, to build a luxury cruise ship "better than the Hikawa Maru" and sail around the world's oceans.

Let us excerpt from an interview with Mr. Miyaoka that was serialized in the Yomiuri Shimbun from June 13, 1993.

When I gave up the idea of becoming a newspaper reporter due to my mother's opposition, NYK was the first company that came to mind. I was deeply impressed by the swan-like beauty of the Hikawa Maru that I had seen in Maizuru Harbor during the war.

"A question from a reporter: ...... Mr. Miyaoka has restarted his cruise ship business after 30 years.

That's right. I was told, "You're making even more of a loss. But when I asked the opinions of younger people, some said, "Britain and Norway are getting into cruise ships, so if we don't do it now, we'll lose our chance. It was almost a 50-50 split. It was a time when the yen was strong and the situation was unstable, so I was very worried, but I decided that if half of the employees were in favor, I would give this a try. ___

In fact, Mr. Miyaoka's decision to join NYK was vehemently opposed by his uncle, who had already retired from Osaka Merchant Marine. He was told, "Even if you work until retirement, Japanese shipping will probably never recover to its old level.

Mr. Yotaro Iida, president of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, looks back on those days.

When Kentaro Kawamura passed away suddenly after succeeding Mr. Miyaoka and Mr. Nemoto as president of NYK, Yotaro Iida of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. Mr. Yotaro Iida of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (at that time, when he was an advisor to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries) mourned Mr. Kawamura's death in a memorial book entitled "Kazehatami: Memories of the Construction of Modern Luxury Cruise Ships". In the book, President Iida's passion for cruise ships can be seen.

__As a student living in Yokohama, I watched the ships coming in and out of the harbor from Harbor View Hill and thought that when peace came, the era of cruise ships would surely arrive, so I dared to join a shipyard.

However, after joining the company, I was put in charge of a different department.

Time passed, and I unexpectedly became president of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in 1985. That period was truly a turning point in the Japanese economy, when the so-called "Plaza Accord" caused the exchange rate from 240 yen to the dollar to fluctuate to 160 yen in a single year, an extraordinary time that led to the subsequent bubble economy.

It was very difficult for the new president, who had no experience in asamitsu shipbuilding, to get the "red ship" under construction at the Nagasaki Shipyard and Machinery Works, the company's main shipyard.

The people of Nagasaki were all worried about whether the new president would be able to get the "red ship" afloat and in operation. In such a difficult situation, he suddenly thought to himself, "Yes, let's build a passenger ship, which I dreamed of in the past.

It would be a quick way to persuade NYK, which had a long history of doing business with Mitsubishi. Moreover, the president, Kimio Miyaoka, knew the heart of painting. Fortunately, Mr. Miyaoka is also a Tokyo Prefectural First Grade School graduate and a chic of the same age as myself. I thought, "Let's hurry," and immediately offered to build a cruise ship for him.

The reaction, however, was surprisingly cool. NYK's view was that building a cruise ship in Japan today would not inspire confidence in attracting customers.

President Miyaoka was accompanied by Kentaro Kawamura, a smart and articulate general manager of the planning department. At that time, the question was whether cruise ships would really be viable in Japan.

The conversation was tangled at the entrance and did not move forward, but somehow, it seemed to take a year to come to a positive conclusion. How much would NYK be willing to pay for the construction of a passenger ship?
How far would NYK be willing to go in order to undertake the construction? After negotiations between Iida and Miyaoka, both old hands with many dreams, and Kawamura, who was 10 years younger than Iida, we were able to receive orders for the Crystal Harmony, a 50,000-ton luxury cruise ship, and the slightly smaller Asuka, the largest of the postwar class.

We then made efforts to receive orders for "Crystal Symphony," the same model as "Crystal Harmony," but we had to give up the idea due to the influence of the current exchange rate.

Looking back, however, the secret stories about the construction of passenger ships that Mr. Miyaoka and Mr. Kawamura shared with me will always remain as unforgettable memories.

The graceful appearance of the modern passenger liner, which is the culmination of all the technology, is particularly moving, and I am reminded once again of every single frame of the construction process that went on in silence. ____

NYK and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries: The "Bond of Man" between Two Presidents

I believe that NYK was able to enter the cruise ship business because of the strong will of the two men, then NYK president Kimio Miyaoka, who wanted to operate cruise ships, and then Mitsubishi Heavy Industries president Yotaro Iida, who wanted to build the ships, to "build the world's most advanced cruise ship in Japan. I believe it was all about the strong will to build the world's most advanced cruise ship in Japan.

Japan's shipbuilding industry is in the midst of a shipbuilding slump, and the company wants to somehow overcome this recession and improve its image. Mr. Iida of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries was thinking about this every day. Mr. Miyaoka also used to say at the time, "Mr. Iida would cooperate with us. Mr. Miyaoka always said, "Now, Mr. Iida will cooperate with us.

The resonance of Mr. Miyaoka's and Mr. Iida's passion. Without this harmony, NYK would never have been able to launch its cruise ship business in the U.S. market.

On the other hand, Mr. Miyaoka also thought that it was not necessary to stick to Japanese shipyards for the construction of new cruise ships. In fact, he was even concerned that Japanese shipyards, which had not built passenger ships for a long time, might not have the know-how to do so. It was then that Mr. Iida came to visit Mr. Miyaoka.

Mr. Iida had already received information that NYK was moving forward with the construction of passenger ships under Mr. Miyaoka's direction. Mr. Miyaoka and Mr. Iida had known each other for a long time and met frequently at meetings.

It seems that Mr. Iida's purpose at this time was to ask Mr. Miyaoka if he would allow Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to build a new ship.

I was told that Mr. Iida was motivated to join Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in order to build a luxury cruise ship. The year was 1985, one year later than Mr. Miyaoka, who became president. The year of his appointment was 1985, one year later than that of Mr. Miyaoka, who became president of MHI. Unlike the time when Mr. Iida joined MHI, there was no atmosphere within the company or in Japan at that time to build passenger ships.

Still, Mr. Iida did not give up, and he personally went around to shipping companies to obtain orders for passenger ships. MOL received an order for the 23,000-ton "Fuji Maru" from NYK. This may have been one of the factors that prompted NYK to restart its cruise ship business.

However, Mr. Iida was not satisfied with "Fuji Maru" alone. It seems that his biggest target was NYK. After all, NYK had a history of building passenger ships with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries before the war. It must have been Mr. Iida's dream to build a world-class luxury cruise ship for NYK.

At that time, NYK had decided to open a cruise ship preparation office under the leadership of Mr. Miyaoka. It was impossible for Mr. Iida not to get excited.

One day, not long after I went to Mr. Miyaoka and said, "We would love to have you build a new ship for us. I later heard that Mr. Iida himself delivered a model of a passenger ship to Mr. Miyaoka.

The model contained the message, "We would like to build a ship of this model, what do you think? Needless to say, the message on the model was "We would like to build a ship of this model.

When Mr. Miyaoka saw the model, he was not convinced.
It was a 1-meter-long model of the Asama Maru II, a slightly updated version of the prewar NYK cruise ship Asama Maru. He said, "It's hard to ask such an old-fashioned company to do such a thing.

Mr. Miyaoka and his colleagues at NYK had already moved away from the prewar cruise ships like the Asama Maru, and had envisioned a modern cruise ship like the ones used in the United States and Europe. However, I wonder if Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' conception is still the Asama Maru....

The passion of these two presidents is detailed in "Voyage of Brilliance" (Sanae Sato).

It also introduces "Asamamaru II," which Mr. Miyaoka laughed at.
President Iida was going to pick up an order for a cruise ship from NYK and was told that he would bring a model of the ship as a souvenir. An order was immediately sent to Nagasaki to design a replica of the ship.

Engineers at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' Nagasaki Shipyard & Machinery Works wanted to create a new type of luxury cruise ship with a streamlined design and no smokestack.

However, there were internal complaints about the design. In particular, Kentaro Aikawa (later president of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries), who had been studying passenger ships with his subordinates when he was head of the Nagasaki Shipyard & Machinery Works even before the idea of passenger ships came up, was adamantly opposed to the idea.

This is not the kind of ship we want to build," he said. Mitsubishi builds luxury cars, not sports cars.

Look at the Asama Maru. If you take the smokestack off the Asama Maru, it won't look good. Such a half-joking chimney is not good enough.

Mr. Miyaoka is an old-fashioned person, and he would not like it unless the chimney was upright and had a double pull," he said. In the end, he replaced it with a majestic old-style passenger ship model with the Asama Maru in mind, which President Iida had to take with him.

Of course, the "Asama Maru II" was not the only thing that caused Mr. Miyaoka and the other members of NYK's cruise liner business to have concerns about Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

At the time, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries was too little knowledgeable about modern cruise ships. NYK had already considered the Baltuguira Shipyard in Finland as a prime candidate for the construction of a new ship, and had already requested a design estimate. The two companies differed greatly in the content of their design quotations. The high cost of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' estimate was fatal.
Mr. Miyaoka told President Iida.

Mitsubishi is still obsessed with the image of the Asama Maru, so we are going to get quotes from European shipyards as well.

President Iida, in his haste to dissuade them, said the following.

You can't do that. If you do that, the ghost of Yataro Iwasaki will appear at the bedside of Mr. Miyaoka when he sleeps at night. In fact, Yataro Iwasaki created Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK Line) in order to establish a shipping company. Shipping and shipbuilding go hand in hand, and yet the shipping company had European shipyards build its ships. Yataro Iwasaki would have come out of his grave if he had ordered even a passenger ship.

It was no longer a painful experience. After this, however, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is said to have initiated the second most tearful and intense research into modern cruise liners. All in order to win a new shipbuilding order from NYK.

We don't want to lose to Western shipping companies or MOL.

At the time, NYK was facing unprecedentedly large losses in its mainstay container transport business, and to enter the cruise ship business under such circumstances, which required even larger investments and without accumulated knowledge, must have seemed insane to the other directors.

After the decision to move forward with this project was made, Mr. Miyaoka invited us and other U.S. executives to a private room at Imahan, a restaurant in the basement of a building in Yurakucho. At that table, he often shared with us his thoughts on the decision he had made in his heart to enter the cruise ship business.

He said, "When the containership business (NYK's top-priority business) was in the red, it would have been possible for an old-timer like myself, who was president (and later chairman), to make the decision to enter the cruise ship business, which will require huge investments in the future. It was not only nostalgia for the Hikawa Maru that prompted him to revive the cruise business, but also his awareness of the situation of Japanese seafarers suffering from the strong yen (he was carrying out a major rationalization) and of MOL, a long-time rival of NYK.

I believe that if both sides engage in friendly competition and stimulate each other, Japanese cruise lines will be able to capture even a portion of the market that is now dominated by Western cruise ship operators.

As a Japanese shipping company, we do not want to be outdone by Western shipping companies. If we miss this opportunity, future opportunities will be far away. Even NYK's current core business, container shipping, may be replaced by cheaper countries. We need to invest now in areas that will grow significantly in the next 30 or 50 years," he said.

NYK and Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL) have been rivals since the prewar period, competing with each other on the world's oceans. While NYK has handled European and North American routes, MOL is famous for its South American routes.

In 1973, MOL MII completed its last Brazilian emigrant transport service with the first Nippon Maru (Nippon Maru), which made the round-the-world trip, but MOL MII established a new company, MOL MII Passenger Ship, which operated the Nippon Maru and "Shin-Sakura Maru" to continue the cruise ship business.

Furthermore, MOL announced the introduction of a new ship, the Fujimaru. This new ship was not the Hikawa Maru-type liner liner passenger ship that had been envisioned in Japan up to that point, but rather Japan's first "cruise liner" with a strong leisure cruise flavor.

At the time, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL) had begun to form a number of subsidiaries in the long-distance ferry business, far outnumbering NYK in this field. The "Fuji Maru" appeared in the market as if to add to MOL's dominance. It was not an easy task for NYK to be behindMitsui O.S.K. Lines in the cruise ship sector as well. The sense of crisis that NYK felt must have been more than "shudder.

At the time, many of NYK's customers in the cargo transport field did not have training centers. There was a reasonable expectation that there would be demand for cruise ships to be used for corporate employee training, incentives, and other business activities.

If NYK could build a cruise ship "better than Fuji Maru" by combining charter cruises and leisure cruises, it would be able to compete with MOL on an equal footing. For NYK, this was, in a sense, a project that would bring the company back from the brink.