ABSTRACT
For thirty-five years in post-war Japan Peter William Hewett, known to his colleagues at Cornes and Company as PWH, projected his enigmatic personality on the Anglo-Japanese business scene. As Chairman from the mid-1950s of the long-established trading house that he ran with an iron, sometimes capricious, hand, Hewett made a major contribution to the growth of Anglo-Japanese trade. The holder of a Military Cross, and with an MBE attesting also to his distinguished war record against the Japanese, he spent his most productive years amongst them, helping to rebuild and consolidate the Anglo-Japanese relationship through commerce. In this he was very successful. At a time when the Japanese market was heavily protected, Hewett showed that barriers could be surmounted profitably and, by that example, he encouraged many British, and other European and American exporters, to develop their Japanese connections. These achievements and his chairmanship of the British Chamber of Commerce were recognized by his appointment as a CBE in 1965. By virtue of his long residence in Japan, he remained a leading, if towards the end of his life increasingly detached, personality in the foreign community at large and among the Japanese who moved in those circles. Yet he was not gregarious, he rarely spoke in public and he jealously guarded his private life. Even now, some twenty years after his death, as he would have wanted, much about the real Peter Hewett remains a mystery.
