Arai Shinya is Executive Vice President of Summit Inc. and a Director of the Sumitomo Corporation. His fiction, published under the pen name of Azuchi Satoshi, includes "Downstream Industry" ("Shosetsu ryutsu sangyo;" 1981), retitled in paperback as "Supermarket" ("Shosetsu supamaketto;" 1983). Chieko Mulhern is Professor of Japanese and Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the translator of "Pagoda, Skull, and Samurai: Three Stories by Koda Rohan" (1985) and the author of a historical novel, "Amethyst Ring" ("Aoi suisho;" 1985).