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Inside the auction hall, Raja Ahmed Sajjad has finished scoping the merchandise and is doing what car dealers seem to spend most of their time doing at the daylong auction: Napping, playing computer games, reading the paper, or chatting with girlfriends while waiting for their merchandise to go on the block.
What Chinese once were to dry-cleaning and the Irish to the police force in the US, Pakistanis are to used-car exports in Japan. "We are the pioneers of the business. Japanese made the car and we introduced it to the world. Wherever you see a used car, a Pakistani introduced it," brags Sajjad, who serves as vice president of a cultural organization called the Pakistan Association of Japan. It was hardworking used-car dealers, Sajjad point outs, who built the several dozen mosques in Greater Tokyo in recent years.
Sajjad, who has been in the business 16 years and handles up to 100 units monthly, maintains a branch office in Toyama, on the north coasst of central Honshu, where enterprising Pakistani used-car dealers have been known to crowd piers clutching "Buy cars from us!" signs in Cyrillic whenever a Russian freighter calls.
Many other nationalities work the used-car trade, but none so aggressively as the Pakistanis, some of whom spray-paint and recondition cars bought at auction not only to sell to visiting Russians, but even for placement back into the car auctions. Sajjad confirms that illicit hidden repair shops, staffed by illegal Pakistani immigrants, are not uncommon.
Selling used cars in Japan can be a rough-and-tumble business. In early 2004 right-wing thugs in speaker-equipped trucks and with air rifles began harrassing a Saitama used-car auction, seeking payoffs. The attempted shakedown turned into a melee, with racist insults and fistfights.
The auctions draw dealers not only from developing countries, but also from the UK and former British colonies, men of working-class backgrounds who share an infatuation with cars and the adrenalin-raising thrill of the bazaar. Back on the car lot, a portly Brit named Paul Shepherd, whose small firm trades about 150 cars a month, also orbits in a cloud of angst, but for entirely different reasons. He wants to discuss his case of "race discrimination": Filipina hostess clubs in his town have suddenly banned foreigners.
Steered back to the subject of cars, Shepherd is equally dour. He began dealing in motorcycles, exporting 600 a year from Japan at his peak nearly 20 years ago. When conventional distributors cut their retail prices, he had to shift to used cars, but now is looking at abandoning exports altogether to focus on the Japanese domestic market.
"We reckon in a few years the export market will die out," he declares. He turns on the ignition in a pickup and guns the engine. Then a "wow!" from another dealer draws him to the front of the idling truck. Water leaks in an ominous stream from below the cab. Shepherd shrugs.
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Exporting is becoming "more and more difficult," he says, noting that once-lucrative destinations have restricted imports of used cars from Japan or banned them altogether. "All the markets are closing up, so we're moving into the domestic market." He is trying to carve out a niche selling over the Internet to Japanese outside the major cities.
USS operates a cafeteria for dealers adjacent to the auction hall, and the men drift between the two areas throughout the day. Placid amidst the tobacco haze in the cafeteria, Motoaki Hirayama nurses a cup of coffee. He once worked supplying construction equipment for the U.N. When he received orders to Africa, he decided it was time to move on. Looking for a job that would exploit his English skills and exporting experience, he began dealing in used cars ten years ago. He now earns "two or three times" what he did as a salaried employee.
A popular model such as the RAV4 can be bought at auction for [yen]200,000 and sell abroad for four times that much. Even subtracting shipping charges ([yen]100,00 for a car, up to [yen]400,000 for a truck) and time-consuming paperwork, the fees are substantial, particularly considering the near-absence of barriers to entry. While Sajjad says a real business requires at least "two to three million yen" in startup capital and an office, many here start with little more than a cellphone, a place to sleep on the floor of a friend's apartment and a pocketful of dreams.
Japanese have considerably more career flexibility than a freshly arrived Pakistani, but for Motoaki Hirayama, the pure capitalism inherent in trading used cars is as alluring as the potential financial rewards. "With new cars, the distribution outlets are fixed. But the used-car market," he says, "is up for grabs."
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