Hi, I am an American and it was when I stayed for work in Saigon, Vietnam, that I met "him".
He was a salesman of a famous trading company in Japan, and boasted that he earned twice as much as the average employees in Japan. In my eyes, however, he hardly deserved his position.

In short, he was far from a man of intelligence. He knew neither what the capital of Greece was nor what language was spoken in Austria. Moreover, he couldn't indicate the location of France on the world map.
I was a bit embarrassed to be asked by him who Tolstoy was.
Less funny but more surprising than the above stories was that, in spite of his job, he was not a good English speaker. It need hardly be added that he had never had any interests in the Vietnamese culture and language.

It seems that, unlike the U.S., one's amount of knowledge is not regarded as important in Japan, or at least, among the businessmen. This is why I was scarcely surprised to hear that PM Suga unfairly dismissed scholars.,