Different Country Roads

Kenneth Crockett is paving business trails from West Virginia�s local office

Before Kenneth Crockett�s arrival to Nagoya in 1995, the average Design City resident�s knowledge of West Virginia was perhaps limited to the late John Denver�s karaoke staple, �County Roads, Take Me Home.� But as director of the State of West Virginia, USA, Japan Office, Crockett is making strides in educating the Japanese about his home state and all it offers for businesses and individuals.

The office, the pet project of well-known Japanophile Senator John D. Rockefeller, D-W.Va., has been open since 1990. Operations officially began after then-governor Gaston Caperton received approval from the state legislation.

�We have three goals, and all in some way tie into the promotion of the West Virginia economy,� Crockett says in his seventh-floor office in the Nihon Seimei Sakaemachi Building in Naka Ward. �The first is to promote Japanese investment in West Virginia. The next is to promote trade with Japan. The last is promoting cultural exchange, at universities, in government and so on.�

A native of St. Albans, he came to Japan in 1988 after graduating from West Virginia University in Morgantown, where he studied accounting and foreign languages. He has never worked in America.

�I remember in about 1985 the importance of U.S.-Japanese business became more visible, and I figured it was just a matter of time before demand for qualified people began to rise.�

Crockett�s first foray to Japan was a two-year stint as an English teacher in Hiroshima. In 1990, he accepted a job as a technical trainer and researcher at Mazda, a position he held for five years.

Then one day he made the call that brought him to Nagoya.

�I was calling here to get information about a company in Nagoya,� he recalls with a smile. �I had no idea that there was a job opening. The guy who answered the phone said, �Oh, you�re calling about the job?� I said, �Yes, that�s right.� I sent my resume and ended up getting the job.�

Spend five minutes talking to Crockett and it will be abundantly clear that the cornerstone of his job description is business development. He pointed out a map of West Virginia displaying international investment, and it looked like a flag-sewer�s convention: Germany, Canada, Switzerland, Norway, France, Britain, New Zealand and a handful of others practically obscured the map.

�There are now about 13 Japanese companies operating in West Virginia,� Crockett says. �The big ones are Toyota, Shinsei Harness, Diamond Electric, The Ten Corporation and Katosei Sakusho.�

With this level of activity, Crockett�s job keeps him busy, including several trips a year back to the Mountain State.

�The goal of these trips is to maintain contact with the businesses there. I�m also trying to drum up export activity and disseminate information about the trips to coincide with [Japanese] delegations.�

His job demands an almost encyclopedic knowledge of West Virginia, a gray-matter goal he is constantly pursuing. �One point of any visit back home is to re-familiarize myself with West Virginia. In effect, I have to be a West Virginia expert; I have to know anything and everything about the state. I get [questions] about demographics, rainfall and snowfall, traffic patterns, or even things like, �What�s the pitch of that mountain?��

This challenge, however, seems to be just one of the many facets of the job that Crockett likes. He says he likes wearing different hats, from the green-billed visor of an accountant doing taxes to the hardhat of a geologist taking surveys out in the field to the coonskin cap of a mountain man out for a day of wilderness adventure.

Crockett says the past four years have been fruitful both in and out of the office, in both Japan and West Virginia.

�We�ve gotten a lot of good things into practice,� he says. �The office moves more effectively and our contact with businesses is up. We started from scratch, a situation where we needed a system to deal with things consistently.�

Helping Crockett is Administrative Assistant Kazuyo Mizutani, his �right-hand person� without whom he says his job would surely diminish into nightmarish chaos. During the course of the interview, Mizutani was busy fielding phone inquiries and more often than not appeared as just a blur running from one side of the office to the other. �She�s been here four years. I know it sounds like a clich�, but I don�t know what I�d do without her,� Crockett admits.

The pair works together at all times. A typical task is arranging and managing delegations from West Virginia, business groups which visit on average about two times a year.

�There was a trade, investment and political delegation that visited Nagoya last year,� Crockett says. �It was received by members of the Nagoya business community, like the Chubu Economic Federation, the Nagoya Chamber of commerce and Industry, and various prefectural governments.�

The next really big to-do with which Crockett and Mizutani will have to grapple is Senator Rockefeller�s visit in early 1998. (He comes to Japan every year to discuss both political and business relationships.) They�ll have to arrange meetings and take care of logistics during his week-long visit to Nagoya and Tokyo.

Rockefeller�s visit embodies what Crockett�s job is about: fostering and maintaining relationships.

�What�s rewarding is that you can really see the effect of maintaining relationships,� he says. �It�s a good practice to keep in contact. It�s cumbersome at times, but these initial contacts develop into long-lasting, mutually profitable relationships.�

To contact the State of West Virginia, USA, Japan Office, call (052) 953-9798.