The Making of an Agent - Chapter 2 (Part 3)

The Don Nomura Story

This book, about super agent Don Nomura, the man who took Hideo Nomo to the Major Leagues and opened the long-closed door door to MLB for Japanese baseball players, was originally published in 1999 in Japanese by Bungei Shunju as

日出づる国の奴隷野球: 憎まれた代理人団野村の闘い

Don Nomura had also begun making money working for the Japanese media in the U.S., interpreting, coordinating and driving people around. It was the time of the infamous Kazuyoshi Miura affair, and there was a huge demand for services of the type he could offer. So now, he was able to use his new jackpot, to buy his wife a house and go into the real estate business. He also built up enough equity to secure a bank loan, with some added help from his new stepfather Katsuya. With the loan from Sumitomo Bank, he now had enough money to put a down payment on an apartment — which he rented out.

The year 1985 also saw the Plaza Accord in which the G-5 countries led by the United States, which was alarmed at the flood of exports emanating from Japan and a trade deficit with that country which had reached $60 billion, engineered and coordinated a rise in the value of the yen against western currencies. The result was a doubling of the value of the yen against the dollar, plummeting interest rates at Japanese banks to spur domestic demand, and an enormous surge in the real estate and stock markets — creating a huge economic bubble that would make Japan the richest country in the world — if only temporarily.