Zen in the Executive Suite

On a recent trip to Japan, American Businessman Bruce Neff unwittingly broke a key cultural rule. The Data General manager abruptly chopped an order he had placed with a Japanese firm by one-third. “It was an ordinary procedure that in the U.S. would have taken 15 minutes,” he recalled. But the Japanese were shocked and threatened by the unexpected cutback, and launched into negotiations with Neff that dragged on for three days.

As the Japanese invest abroad, more and more U.S. businessmen will find themselves doing deals with them. The corporate style that works for Americans at home may not go over with their new colleagues or competitors. Neff and many other Boston-area executives are turning to Ikuko Atsumi, 43, a Japanese poet and feminist who has lived in the U.S. since 1981. She is president of the New England Japanese Center, which teaches often bewildered Americans how to do business with her countrymen. Says Atsumi: “To succeed in Japan, the fastest shortcut is to learn Japanese culture.”

The heart of the center’s program is a series of eight afternoon seminars with titles like “The Samurai Spirit in Business Strategy” and “The Concentration Power of Zen in Business.” For $60 a session, executives learn everything from how to drink green tea (slowly, unlike sake, which is downed in a gulp) to where to sit during a conference (not in the first seats offered) and when and where to take off one’s shoes. The students are taught go, a traditional Japanese board game, and are introduced to the psychology behind sumo wrestling. The sessions, which combine lectures and role playing, have been a hit with many managers. Firms that have sent executives to the courses include Digital Equipment, Polaroid and Data General. Edward Colbert, chairman of Data Instruments, a maker of electronic sensors that does $1 million in annual business with Japan, was delighted with a seminar on the Japanese use of silence. Confused by the pauses that cropped up when he traveled with Japanese associates, Colbert learned that what strikes an American as an awkward halt in conversation may be a refreshing respite to a Japanese. Said Colbert: “Now I wonder, ‘What did they think of all my jabbering?’ “

Atsumi, the former publisher of the Japanese magazine The Feminist: Asian Women, went to the U.S. after she was awarded a fellowship to Radcliffe. When she later sought work at the electronics companies around Boston, she was startled to find how little many American executives seemed to know about Japan. Says she: “They know they have a lot to learn, but because they’re so busy, they want some kind of instant pill to learn it.”

Her response was the New England Japanese Center, which she runs out of her home in Stow, Mass. Along with the seminars, the center offers services ranging from translation and language instruction to private lessons in Japanese manners, which Atsumi gives in a den outfitted as a traditional Japanese sitting room. Clients who prefer to let someone else do the deal making can also turn to Atsumi for help. For a fee ranging from $100 an hour to a 10% commission, she will negotiate contracts with Japanese companies herself.