Total Trading International S.A. Tokyo Branch

The attached photos have been selected from the albums of Bruno de Monès, who joined Total Trading International in the Tokyo office from 1971 to 1975 in charge of the management of crude oil sales contracts to Japanese customers, as second to the world director, Bernard de Lamotte. He told us that at the time, to his astonishment and for his greatest happiness, he had no competitors at Total to go to Japan, where at that time there were only a few hundreds of French including a good half of religious. The Japan of that time was for the French a distant country, too different because of language and culture. The French mistakenly thought that Japanese industry copied the West and represented a commercial threat.

As for me, entering TTI in October 1973, FrancePays FranceShow more was for me the holidays and the advanced techniques, whereas we really knew only American products.

* NB: Mrs. Mariko Mishima spoke and wrote remarkably the language of Molière she had studied at the University of Grenoble at the time of the war of 1939-1945.