Japanese companies maintain the tradition of trade.

You wouldn't know it, but the world's biggest businesses operate high-grossing offices in Los Angeles. And they don't brag about it.

Rich companies. Quiet. And quite Japanese.

The top-revenue titans of the globe are Japan's general trading companies, the so-called sogo shosha. Beginning with Itochu Co. (aka C. Itoh & Co.), which weighed in at $155 billion revenues in 1991, according to Forbes magazine, the world's Top 5 ran to Sumitomo Corp., Marubeni, Mitsubishi Corp. and finally Mitsui & Co., whose $134 billion easily topped General Motors Corp.'s $123 billion that year.

Their offices are rather boring -- people with phones, computers and paperwork. The big deal, instead, is precisely the big deals: gold, molybdenum, cotton, fruit, oil, sometimes involving million-ton quantities under many-year contracts shipped from the world's four corners. From wood pulp to neckties to missiles, the sogo shosha trade it.

The nine sogo shosha cumulatively do about $1 trillion in annual business, and they field offices in 200 cities worldwide. In Los Angeles, all nine operate out of fairly prestigious downtown L.A. office towers.

Mitsubishi International Corp. does deals from its 25th floor offices of the Security Pacific Plaza at 333 South Hope St. General Manager Akira Tsukada estimates he booked about $800 million in 1992 trades. And Tsukada's operation is just one of 16 that his parent company fields in America.

All together, the L.A. sogo shosha outposts could be billing $3 billion a year, according to industry estimates.

"Teamwork," says Tsukada, when asked to explain the essence of sogo shosha, and how they motivate their octopus-like worldwide structures. Then he quickly adds: "And transmitting information to the proper spot as quickly as possible."

For example: "If we catch some information from South Africa or Beijing, that will be put into the telex, and any (Mitsubishi) office in the world can pick it up within one day."

Market intelligence, indeed, is created and devoured by sogo shosha. In fact, it defines them, because knowledge and people are their primary assets.

"The Japanese trading companies are extraordinarily expert at gathering information in far-away places," says Michael R.A. Wade, president of China Trade Development Corp. in Century City, an Asia-trade consultancy. "They're so big, and they've been around so long, that they have bigger operations than the U.S. government does in many countries."

Modeled a bit after the European trading concerns, like Britain's East India Co., Japanese trading companies date to the 1870s. When Japan resumed international trade after 200 years of self-imposed isolation, they became agents for importers and exporters. The most successful amassed connections and contracts throughout the 20th century. Today, few raw materials or products or parts of products on earth are beyond their grasp and few markets are not spied upon by soga shosha.

"They have information on all the major markets in the world," says John E. Brady, vice president of Western Overseas Corp., an Inglewood freight forwarder.

"They buy and sell jet fighters, atomic energy (equipment) ... they handle anything as long as they can make money on it," says Haya Mizoguchi, vice president of Western Overseas. "Some are stronger in steel (Mitsui), others in textiles (Marubeni)."

"If a petrochemical plant explodes in Amsterdam, for example, and it creates a temporary shortage in butadiene, we can immediately suggest to some buyer in Argentina to buy, because the price is going up," Tsukada explains, sitting in a black leather chair in Mitsubishi's conference room. Hanging on a floor-to-ceiling wood-paneled wall is a simple, framed poster reading:

Corporate Responsibility to Society

Integrity and Fairness

International Understanding Through Trade.

But "international understanding" is not promoted through splashy advertising to the general public or big, bragging P.R. campaigns. Most prefer to find their clients.

"They don't want every crazy to call 'em up and say, 'Hey, I've got a deal you can't pass up,'" says Wade, who had been holding talks with Sumitomo on exporting industrial robots or water jets saws that blast water-borne rubies onto a cutting surface without melting edges.

"We like to seek out the customer," explains Kazuo Usui, deputy general manager of Mitsubishi, which counts food king H.J. Heinz Co. and citrus giant Sunkist Growers Inc. among its clients.

"We like only to make a deal with a reliable guy, who we can keep for a long time, because one litigation can (kill) the profit," he adds. Typically, only a 1-2 percent profit is expected on deals, so giant volume and sure-thing deals are crucial. One Mitsubishi customer alone does $10 million in annual business, for instance.

Requests for interviews with the L.A.-based general managers of Kanematsu-Gosho (USA) Inc., three floors above Mitsubishi in the Security Pacific building), and Marubeni America Corp. on Grand Avenue, were unsuccessful.

Sogo shosha don't necessarily want exposure. Their success has underpinned Japan's export-oriented economy. Unpopular with many political leaders in other nations, super-bold exporting has helped create whopping trade surpluses with the rest of the world -- $107 billion in 1992.

Anyway, how do you explain on a billboard -- the way Honda or Nissan advertises its cars -- that sogo shoshas act as import and export agents; they take title to goods and resell them abroad; and they also sometimes provide financing, marketing, management, document clearing or a host of other services -- or a customized mixture of them?

"The message is too complex," says Stanley W. Epstein, who owns a 20-employee export firm in North Hollywood called American Export Trading Co. and speaks from experience. Epstein's firm is somewhat similar to a Japanese trading company, but no American company has ever built the concept into a multibillion-dollar corporation.

In his only mass-marketing gambit, Epstein sent 16,000 brochures to prospects. "I got no credible response," he fumes.

Many Japanese trading firms take equity stakes in their clients, whether they manufacture guns, mine coal or stamp out semiconductors.

"They're like hidden monsters," says Mizoguchi. "They could own the state of Arizona," he joshes, pointing to a common sogo shosha practice of not broadcasting their holdings.

One local investment made public last year was Mitsui & Co. Ltd.'s $2 million purchase of stock in Image Entertainment Inc., a Chatsworth-based distributor of laser discs. The deal also concerned a joint manufacturing plan.

Still, some say their clout has declined.

In 1981, some 63 percent of trade in and out of Japan was theirs. "Now, more people go direct, and they no longer have as tight a grip as they once did," says Chris Baker, L.A.-based business development specialist at the Japan External Trade Organization , a semi-governmental agency that aids Japanese trade.