His company's turnover and staff numbers have been ravaged by a decade of economic pain, his modest stock holdings decimated, but builder Kishiro Sone is convinced there can be no retreat from reform.
"Business has dropped like a stone. I used to have six or seven employees and now I have two ... Turnover is perhaps a third of what it once was," said the 72-year-old construction firm manager, sipping coffee in his tiny Tokyo office.
In Tsukiji, a stone's throw from the bustle of Tokyo's massive fish market, Sone explained how times have changed for the house construction business his grandfather started.
Times may be about to change for the worse again if Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi presses ahead with a strict new stance on banks' huge bad-loan portfolios, possibly creating a surge in bankruptcies and unemployment.
Sone has kept going until now partly thanks to low overheads. Like many small businessmen in Tokyo, he lives in a flat above the office. Across the narrow street is a small workshop that doubles as a garage at night.
In the boom years of the 1980s, Sone took on casual labourers to cope with the demand for new houses, as residents of central Tokyo rushed to sell their suddenly valuable land and move out to the suburbs.
Building workers in their distinctive wide-bottomed trousers and split-toed shoes were so common a sight they sparked fashion trends as far away as Europe.
Nowadays most of Sone's work is renovation, and there is just enough of it to keep his two staff occupied.
Koizumi's reforms are likely to make things tougher in the short term for builders like Sone, who comprise around 10 percent of the working population, but he still backs them to the hilt.
"I agree with structural reform. Something has to be done, because people are so afraid for the future they won't spend any money," Sone said.
He blames Japan's banks for creating the country's economic woes, cringing at the thought of more public money being pumped into them, a proposal that new financial tsar Heizo Takenaka is said to favour.
"Spending tax money on them feels like a contradiction. It was bank executives who created the bubble by getting involved in speculation," he said.
Despite his shrinking business, Sone counts himself among the luckier ones, thanks to strict family warnings against borrowing money.
"You could call it cowardice, but it turned out for the best. I know a lot of people who borrowed vast sums of money and now can't repay it," he said.
As president of a 450-member Tokyo trade association for small builders, he is constantly aware of their problems.
Despite his tumbling income and the slide in Tokyo share prices, Sone is upbeat.
"It's a question of attitude," he said.
"I suppose falling share prices will increase banks' losses, but I don't see why they should affect ordinary people."
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