The Chairman’s succession plan through Nishioka Minoru fails

The Chairman’s succession plan through Nishioka Minoru fails when Nishioka backs out of marrying the Chairman’s eldest daughter, ending the Chairman’s effort to make him the family heir. The reversal disturbs the Chairman and leaves the motive for Nishioka’s decision unstated; Sayuri connects it to the possibility that the Chairman has an illegitimate son, but deliberately refuses to confirm whether such a son exists.

The succession arrangement

In the summer of 1956, the Chairman, who had two daughters by his wife but no son, arranged for his eldest daughter to marry Nishioka Minoru. The marriage was intended to bring Nishioka into the family: he would take the Iwamura name and become the Chairman’s heir. The plan therefore joined a family marriage to the transfer of leadership in the company the Chairman had built.

The arrangement broke down at the last moment. Nishioka informed the Chairman that he did not intend to go through with the wedding, undoing the succession plan before it could take effect. The account gives no direct explanation from Nishioka, and the refusal leaves both the marriage and the intended inheritance unresolved.

The Chairman’s reaction

The Chairman regarded Nishioka as temperamental but brilliant. After the withdrawal, he remained upset for a week or more and snapped at his servants and Sayuri without provocation. Sayuri had never seen him so disturbed by anything. His unusually visible anger registers the importance he attached to the plan, while also making clear that the failure was not simply a private disappointment about a wedding: it threatened the future he had arranged for his company and family.

Sayuri’s conjecture and the unanswered question

Sayuri does not claim to know why Nishioka changed his mind. Instead, she sets the refusal beside a recent public scandal: the head of a major Japanese insurance company had dismissed his son as president and handed the company to a younger illegitimate son. That example supplies a possible context for Nishioka’s reluctance, not proof of his motive.

She reasons that Nishioka might have learned that the Chairman had fathered an illegitimate son. The Chairman was known to lament having no son and was deeply attached to his daughters; Sayuri wonders whether he might become equally attached to a son born outside his marriage and eventually redirect the company to him. The succession plan thus appears vulnerable not only to Nishioka’s decision but also to the possibility that the Chairman’s family circumstances are more complicated than the public account suggests.

Sayuri then turns the speculation toward herself, asking whether she really gave birth to a son of the Chairman’s. She does not answer. She says that if she had, she would be reluctant to speak for fear the child’s identity could become public, and concludes that the best course is silence. The episode resolves the failure of the proposed marriage and heirship, but not the more consequential question it raises: whether a hidden son exists and might alter the company’s succession. In withholding confirmation, Sayuri makes uncertainty itself the ending.