His approach, backed by a passion for and belief in what he is doing that shines through in his conversation, has seen him increasingly featured on local television.
His profile was further boosted after the 2001 publication of a ghost-written book in Japanese entitled The Trials and Tribulations of a Blue-Eyed Debt Collector.
He hopes to leverage this to take the company further into the business of credit management and consulting to help people avoid fates like the one that befell the elderly Osakans.
"That's the point of what I'm doing here by giving these seminars, giving people the information to have options that will allow them to make changes," Gan said.
But like many "blue-eyes" who try to change Japan's ways, the grey-eyed Gan has found that not everyone is happy. His opponents, though, have turned out to be lawyers rather than gangsters.
Because of a loophole in the legal system, Gan can operate in a business that lawyers have always thought as much their own as the mob does. Local lawyers' associations have complained.
Gan is unfazed, noting that lawyers often use his services, and ascribes the hostility simply to unwanted competition.
There are some cases that Gan would probably rather have lawyers deal with anyway.
In one, a client assured him the "debtor" was willing to pay promptly and persuaded Gan to reduce his fees because the job would be simple and payments would always be on time.
And so it proved, until the police dropped by to tell Gan he had unwittingly been a conduit for a money-laundering operation.
Payments stopped a short while later. Gan heard nothing more.



