Posted on: Sunday, August 4, 2002
Banker practices different strokes
By Susan Hooper
Advertiser Staff Writer
Since his retirement in June after more than 40 years in banking, Joichi Saito's attention has shifted from the ups and downs of financial balance sheets to the graceful movements of his calligraphy brush across long scrolls of parchment paper.
Saito, 66, was chairman and chief executive of Central Pacific Bank, a position he had held since 1996. Before coming to CPB as executive vice president in 1988, he had worked for Sumitomo Bank in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Calif., Seattle and Chiba, Japan.
Of the latest phase of his life, Saito says, "Retirement is very wonderful. I can do what I want to do."
On a recent Monday morning at his Makiki Heights home, Saito, dressed in a blue-and-white-checked yukata, or summer kimono, knelt on a red rug in a small alcove off the living room and filled a scroll with bold kanji characters, using authoritative, rhythmic strokes of his wood-handled brush.
The effect was poetic, but the English translation of the fluid lines was not exactly Basho.
"It's summertime, so I need a very nice breeze and a cold beer and a good dish," Saito said with a laugh of the poem he wrote. For most of his scrolls, Saito said, he prefers to copy Chinese poems, because of their "very nice words."
In addition to perfecting his calligraphy, Saito also plans to use his retirement "to learn what I have never tried," including playing the 'ukulele.
But even though he has officially retired from banking, Saito has not completely abandoned the world of finance for more artistic pastimes. He still has customers who call on him for financial advice, and he also does two radio shows a month, one on KZOO and one on KJPN, where he dispenses information on U.S. and Japanese financial markets to Hawai'i's Japanese-speaking community in, as he puts it, "an easy way that people can understand."
Saito had been retired less than a month when, during the stock market turmoil of last month, the shares of his bank's parent, CPB Inc., plunged 18 percent in a single day because of a one-time transaction by an institutional shareholder, according to the company. The upheaval that caused left Saito unperturbed.
"We should not worry about the day-by-day," he said, adding that CPB's second-quarter net income was up nearly 35 percent over the same quarter last year.
"We should look at the span period. One day it's down, the next day it's coming up, but we should not be excited about the day-to-day movement. We should be patient, and we should look at the longer term."
Activities helping Saito take his mind off his former employer include a trip with his family to Seattle last month where, as a retirement gift from the bank, he had the privilege of throwing out the first pitch in a game between his beloved Seattle Mariners and the Texas Rangers. (The Mariners won, 4-1.)
He also is preparing for his first trip to Europe later this month — a visit to London followed by a Baltic cruise with wife Yoko and three other couples.
Asked if he misses the banking life, Saito laughed and said, "Honestly speaking, yes, I miss work. But I think time will resolve this."
He acknowledged that retirement has been known to place a strain on some marriages as stay-at-home spouses adjust to seeing much more of their mates. But his former employer is helping him out in this regard, he says.
"The kindly Central Pacific Bank gave me an office for six months, so I have a six-month adjustment," Saito said. "I understand most of retirees' wives complain about the husband always in the home — too much trouble. So I would like to avoid those kinds of complaints."
