A Novel based on true stories of Rural Japan
Beyond The Water
How a small factory at the edge of the Seto Inland Sea found its place in the world.
One factory. Twenty-eight people. A phone call that takes away twenty-five percent of everything. And a quiet decision, made against all odds, to set sail.
About the Book
A company at the edge.
A decision to sail.
Mouri runs a small precision manufacturer in a rural town on the Seto Inland Sea. Twenty-eight people. Generations of craft. And a thirteen-year partnership with their largest client that ends in a single three-minute phone call.
When the call comes, Mouri is left with a question every small business owner dreads: where do you find twenty-five percent of your revenue, in one quarter, with no warning? The domestic market has no answer. The numbers, as his sales manager tells him quietly, simply don't work.
Beyond The Water is the true story of what happened next. It is a memoir about discovery: of markets, of people, of the hidden resilience in places the world has forgotten. It is about what a quiet man does when the sea he has always looked at becomes the direction he has to travel.
Written with the precision of an engineer and the patience of someone who has watched companies close, this is a book for anyone who has ever stood at the edge of what they knew and wondered what was on the other side.
From the Book
"Everything I'd been treating as a wall was actually a habit. I'd been selling in Japan because I'd always sold in Japan. Not because Japan was the right market. Just because it was the one I knew."
Beyond The Water · Chapter Five
Free Sample Chapters
Outside The Comfort Zone & The Laundry
The morning a mentor Mouri hadn't seen in years walks into his cafeteria
and asks one question that changes everything: "Does the problem your
machine solves exist only in Japan?"
That same night, Mouri comes home past nine to find his wife asleep
in the laundry. And something shifts.
Two chapters. The pivot of the whole book. Download free, no sign-up required.