Next Thursday, June 12, Robin Maynard will celebrate his 59th birthday. In October he will mark 25 continuous years of living and working in Japan. Recently he secured permanent residence here. Next year, he said, after 26 years, "I will be the longest-serving-ever insurance expat Englishman in Japan." In counting years and Anglo-Japanese connections, Robin has one particularly arresting claim. His first wife's great-grandfather worked as a trader in Yokohama and Kobe from the late 1800s to 1905. "He was a member of the Yokohama Country and Athletic Club. Our family has a huge collection of period photos and hand-painted postcards," Robin reported. "My son played rugby for YCAC. It was a strange feeling for him to be with the same club that his great-great-grandfather was involved with 100 years earlier."

Robin was born in a village in southeast English, his birth hastened, he said, by a German bomb that was off-loaded in a nearby field. He grew up in the same locality. In common with many of his friends of the time, he didn't know what he wanted to do in life. "One of the old boys from my school happened to be in the insurance business. He thought my character suited me for insurance broking," he said. "I got into it and just plodded on."

For 15 years he learned the business whilst he was in the employ of different companies. Delight took over when in 1978 the Sedgwick Group asked him to be its liaison representative for 18 months in Japan. "It was an astonishing surprise," he said. "They were the days when we were still transacting business without fax machines or e-mail. I remember my very first taxi ride on my first day at the office here. My driver sang 'Rule Britannia' to me."

Robin came with his wife and two very young children. He found the broking industry here lagged behind that in Europe. "I had the excitement of starting up from a zero base," he said. "I was totally absorbed. People say that if a man is happy in his job, the rest of his life goes all right." That proved to be not quite true for Robin. Already well beyond his initial 18 months, he was working on establishing the first British direct insurance broking business in Japan, Sedgwick Far East Ltd., when he found himself a single parent with two small children to care for. "It was jolly tough. It was sink or swim. I found out who my true friends were then," he said. "The payoff has been the strong relationship I have always had with my son and daughter." The son and daughter, now young adults in London, are in different sectors of the insurance business. Japanese-speaking, one a reinsurance broker and the other an assistant underwriter at Lloyd's, they separately specialize in Japanese risks.

From being joint managing director for Sedgwick Asia Pacific Ltd., in 1990 Robin moved to Cornes and Co. The oldest foreign company in Japan, Cornes was established as a Far Eastern trading house in Yokohama in 1861. In the beginning, the company exported silk and green tea. A few years later under its earlier name of Aspinall-Cornes, the company was appointed the first Lloyd's agent in Japan. It still holds this position. Today, insurance and maritime operations make up one of its four main areas of business. Director of Cornes' insurance and maritime group and the only non-Japanese director on the main board of Cornes, in 1999 Robin became also the general representative in Japan for Lloyd's of London. He knew when he undertook the representation that he would be overseeing a period of profound change.

He has always been keen on rugby, a player until his posting to Japan. Soon after coming here he organized a Lloyd's rugby tour to Japan. He believes that Cornes began the first corporate rugby team in Japan 100 years ago. That was three years after records show the first rugby match having been played in this country, between Keio University and the YCAC. Cornes continues its sponsorship of the YCAC team, and Robin continues his touch-line support.

He is now married to Midori, granddaughter of Maj. Gen. Fukushima, who was military commander for Kyushu during Imperial times. "She was brought up by him and his wife because she had lost her own father," he said. The two look ahead to eventual retirement, and have bought their new home in Queensland, Australia. "We expect to spend up to six months of each year there, and the balance in Japan and England," Robin said.