Issue:
April 2024
The club pays tribute to Hanif, a welcoming presence in the main bar for almost half a century
Hanif-san, the FCCJ’s long-serving waiter, is known to just about everyone for his friendly smile, polite nature, and attentive service. Few people, though, know about what brought him to Japan half a century go from his native Pakistan, and how he became to be such a big part of the club’s family.
The Number 1 Shimbun interviewed the veteran staffer after a party held to celebrate his 45th year of service. Main Bar seats were sold out for the occasion, but that didn’t stop well-wishers from crowding the bar to raise a glass to Hanif.
Messages of congratulation came in by email from various parts of the world, including one from Charles Pomeroy, who in effect became the club’s historian when he compiled the official history of the FCCJ, Foreign Correspondents in Japan.
It was an occasion befitting someone who has given most of his working life to the FCCJ. “Service” is the word that defines Hanif’s attitude toward his job since he first appeared in the Main Bar as a waiter at the Yurakucho Denki Building in 1979. In Arabic, the name Hanif means “upright and honourable” – and that is Hanif down to a tee.
He arrived in Japan in 1974 aged just 22. He was alone, did not speak Japanese or English, and had no job or place to live. Coming to Japan was a leap in the dark for a young man who had never ventured outside his native Kashmir in Pakistan.
Why Japan? Because, Hanif said, it is the Land of the Rising Sun – something and he saw that as an auspicious omen. Flights were relatively cheap in those days, and it was possible to get a temporary visa at the airport. Hanif simply hopped on a plane and came to Tokyo.
He arrived with nothing more than a contact - a senior Pakistani diplomat who had been the country’s ambassador to the United States. That was enough to secure him an introduction to the then Pakistan ambassador to Japan, Qumar Islam.
He was duly offered a job as a messenger at the embassy in Motoazabu. It was a simple job, but Hanif - or Mohammad Hanif to give him his full name - had worked in a cotton mill in Pakistan. And his new job in Tokyo gave him use of an embassy staff car and driver.
Hanif would spend 19 years at the embassy, working as everything from messenger and general factotum to a stint in the visa section He even managed to squeeze in work as a court interpreter thanks to his mastery of Japanese and his native Urdu and Punjabi.
Hanif explains his departure from the embassy with his usual self-effacing humor. The embassy closed at around 5 p.m., so with few friends and nothing to do in the evening, he fell into the habit of frequenting pachinko parlors.
This didn’t help his financial situation, prompting an FCCJ friend who worked for NHK Pakistan Radio to urge him to find a part-time job in the evening to help break his pachinko habit.
“He introduced me to the press club, and I became the first gaijin to work at the club as staff (as a waiter in the Main Bar)” Hanif said.
The FCCJ general manager at the time, Kotaro Washida, agreed to pay a modest hourly rate, while Hanif rented a one-room apartment with no bathroom for ¥18,000 a month. For the next 18 years, he divided his time between the embassy and the FCCJ.
When he finally left the embassy, Hanif negotiated a contract as an employee of the FCCJ, where he served as food & beverage advisor and assistant general manager before he retired at 60, when he reverted to part-time status.
Now 72, Hanif been married twice and has four daughters, three of whom are married, with the youngest, 16, still at school. His children live in Pakistan, which he visits from time to time. He recalls with gratitude the help he received from club members during Dan Sloan’s presidency, with encouragement from the late Pio D’Emilia, who arranged for him to return to Pakistan in 2005 after it was struck by a major earthquake that destroyed his family home.
When Hanif first started working as an FCCJ waiter, he was assigned the Shimbun Alley Bar or, as he calls it, the “stag bar”. He recalled the correspondent Al Cullison, who used to hold court in the cigar-smoke filled bar almost nightly. “He was a great man” Hanif said – and few would disagree.
He also has fond memories of Tom Kermabon, general manager in 2008. “He had very good experience in how to handle members and staff. He instructed staff to get to know members and to call them by name and to take [food and drink] orders from them within three minutes.”
The FCCJ has changed a great deal since Hanif joined 45 years ago. What does he think of the changes? He misses the old Yurakucho Building, he said. “That was a club,” he said. “Everything about the old club … the atmosphere and its furnishings – that was a club.”
He added: “Members are very important to the press club." If members have a particular preference – the way a sandwich is prepared, for example – it is down to the staff to make sure the information is passed on to the kitchen.
A waiter’s duty is to care for members, he said. That is just one reason why so many people came to his anniversary party. Service – and that warm smile – is in his nature.
Anthony Rowley is a columnist and contributor for the South China Morning Post.
