The Magatama Doodle: One Man's Affair with Japan, 1950-2004

Born in The Hague in 1932, Hans Brinckmann though keen on writing and poetry from an early age, decided to make a career in banking. Unusually, it proved to be a career of banking in Japan (for the most part). Having joined a Dutch bank as a management trainee at the age of seventeen, he was assigned to Japan the following year, where he lived for the next twenty-four years. Appointed Tokyo branch manager at the age of twenty-nine, and area executive at thirty-nine, he retired to Buckinghamshire in 1974 to write and to continue his Japanese studies. Two years later, he was invited to return to banking and subsequently worked in Curacao, Amsterdam and New York, where he chaired the Institute of Foreign Bankers, and a Dutch-American foundation active in educational and cultural exchange. In 1986 Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands made him an Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau for cultural and professional achievement, notably in Japan and the US. Since 1988 he has been writing fiction and poetry, and has contributed frequently to the Op-Ed pages of Dutch newspapers, often on Japanese topics. He lives in Tokyo and London.