(FORTUNE Magazine) – Ronald Shaw, 53, president of Pilot Pen in Trumbull, Connecticut, is about to become one of the few Americans who serve on the boards of their Japanese parent companies. In Shaw's case, that's Pilot Corp. of Tokyo (1991 revenues: $570 million). Excluding board members of U.S.-Japanese joint ventures, only a half dozen other U.S. executives, including Michael Schulhof, 49, vice chairman of Sony U.S.A., hold such directorships. As Texas raider T. Boone Pickens, 63, found out, the Japanese are chary with their directorships. Pickens paid $800 million for a 26% stake in Koito Manufacturing, but the company still denied him a board seat after a stormy two-year battle that ended in 1991. Shaw, who worked as a stand-up comedian to help pay his way at the University of Miami, signed on as national sales manager of Pilot's U.S. subsidiary 17 years ago. The company came calling after newspapers reported he had quit a similar position at Bic Pen. Recalls Shaw, who became president in 1986: ''I had left what was then the biggest pen company in America. Pilot was undoubtedly the most unheard-of.'' But, hey, a job is a job, as his wife, Phyllis, had persuaded him in 1961, when he found he couldn't make a living off jokes and answered a sales help-wanted ad by Bic. Pilot Pen was losing $500,000 a year on sales of $1.2 million when Shaw joined the outfit. Today annual sales have increased to $81 million, and the company is ''profitable,'' Shaw says. The things he did to push the turnaround included new products like the razor-point pen and national ad campaigns. Shaw says the profitability of Pilot Pen stems in part from the autonomy he insisted upon when he took the job. To him, that meant few trips to Tokyo, among other things. The Japanese agreed. Among their ground rules: Shaw cannot touch the salaries of the three Japanese executives who work at U.S. headquarters -- typically, they're all paid less than their U.S. counterparts.