Kyosuke Mori loves a good joke, and knows how to tell one. Since he’s a public relations expert who’s been dealing with hacks on both sides of the Pacific for most of the past five decades, that sense of humor has no doubt helped the master flack keep his sanity.

When Mitsubishi Trading Company hired Mori back in 1964, public relations as we know it today didn’t exist in Japan. At Mitsubishi, the small section Mori joined was in a department called Planning and Coordination that was responsible for putting out press releases and placing ads in the media. The “relations” in public relations was an overseas conceit.

After three years of home office duties, Mitsubishi shipped Mori off to New York to learn all he could about the concept from the masters of the game. During his more than five years there, Mori saw clear differences in the care and feeding of the Japanese and American species of hack. Whenever Mitsubishi issued a press release, for example, the Japanese reporters would jump on it the next day. U.S. reporters, however, might call Mori a week or even a month later. Conversely, when he dropped some intriguing tidbit, the American press hounds would snap it up and then dig for more, while their Japanese counterparts often simply ignored the offering.

But what made the biggest impression on Mori during his New York stint and “changed me and perhaps the company” was his grasp of how certain major corporations in the U.S. conducted PR. In Japan, he notes, companies wanted to keep a low profile. No news was good news. But Mori eventually banished that way of thinking.

“I realized that if you know the facts, you must explain them,” he says. “Otherwise you won’t be believed and won’t be able to maintain credibility or the company’s reputation.”

That proactive stance naturally led to myriad internal battles with different Mitsubishi business groups, he notes, “but we had to keep believing and working to influence corporate behavior.” Fortunately they had the support of the president at the time, Chujiro Fujino, “a great man who said that because we were a part of society, we also had to think about and bear our social responsibilities.”

When Mori returned to Japan in the early seventies, his manager introduced him to the FCCJ. “He would bring me here once or twice a week to eat T-bone steak, something not available elsewhere,” Mori recalls.

When his managers were rotated, Mori was the one who filled out the FCCJ membership application form for the new boss. “It took six or seven months for an application to be approved then,” he says, “probably because there were so many people wanting to join.”

Mori eventually became a member himself in 1992. “It was just so convenient, only 10 minutes away from the Mitsubishi Shoji Building.” That, he adds, explains why so many Club members are Mitsubishi Old Boys.

What does he like best about the Club?

“The PAC (Professional Activities Committee) events,” he responds. “Whenever I come here I’m sure to meet friends, but I want to do more than just socialize, and the FCCJ offers that.” Mori has done good things for the FCCJ as well, helping arrange tennis matches for members as well as trips to the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum and Meguro Museum of Art.

He says he has no special gripes, but would like to have more Japanese dishes on the menu, such as soba. He’d also like to see informal international roundtables organized to discuss topics of interest, his preferred topics being journalism in the age of the Internet and the pros and cons of public relations and advertising.

Mori retired from Mitsubishi in 2003. Now a genki 71, he’s the managing corporate vice president of Asian Advertisers, a company promoting Japanese exports. In his off hours he enjoys playing tennis and composing palindromes.

“You need creativity and humor to succeed in PR and advertising. There was a fine international culture at Mitsubishi Shoji, so I got a great education. And I love public relations!”

For once, he’s not joking. ❶

John Boyd covers technology and business news and events in Japan and Asia and strings for several magazines, including IEEE Spectrum, FPD Today and New York Stock Exchange Magazine. He welcomes new assignment queries: boyd@gol.com.