Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.

Like Trinculo and Caliban in "The Tempest," the boardroom members of Japan are these days finding themselves alongside unusual companions.

Many could scarcely believe their eyes when news broke Wednesday of a potential management buyout of Seven & I Holdings. Not because of the potential purchase of the operator of 7-Eleven, which seems a predictable move as the company seeks to fend off the advances of Canada’s Alimentation Couche-Tard. It was the identity of one of the potential rescuers that had jaws agape: Itochu, the largest of Japan’s Warren Buffett-backed trading houses.