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Ignoring foreign customs can kill a business deal

`Something as seemingly inconsequential as the mishandling of a business card can be a deal killer in Japan.'

The after-lunch business meeting started nicely. The black suits from the New York public relations firm sat on one side. Across the table were the Japanese suits, prospective clients.

Then, during the long pauses for translation, one mind wandered. The lead New Yorker started toying with the lead Tokyoite's business card. Then, almost unconsciously, a convenient corner found its way to the New Yorker's mouth, where a lunch morsel was lodged between incisors.

"I wanted to die, I wanted to get out of that office, I wanted to get out of that building," recalled Peter McKillop, who works in Hong Kong for an American bank. "And he didn't stop. He carefully worked his way around. Upper and lower teeth."

No contract.

Yes, something as seemingly inconsequential as the mishandling of a business card can be a deal killer in Japan. In a traditional country where rules are often bent for foreigners, it pays to know that a business card should not be bent -- that this elegant, portable extension of the soul should not serve double duty as a tooth pick.

To be sure, much of business in Japan has become globalized. In Tokyo, ATM machines, with their little bowing video bank tellers, increasingly speak computer English. Many American business men and women glide through their assignments here, learning only enough Japanese to interact with taxi drivers and restaurant waiters.

But there are limits to the cultural free pass that many Japanese extend to gaijin, or foreigners.

Arriving in Japan without an ample stock of business cards is akin to arriving barefoot, and central to card etiquette is giving and receiving the card with a proper level of solemnity. Cards should be studied, not shoved in a pocket without a glance.

David Satterwhite, a longtime resident who used to give intercultural business training, recalls meeting with a semiconductor executive from Texas who had returned from Tokyo. "She complained: `I was in charge of the delegation, and they wouldn't look at me, they wouldn't talk to me,"' he said.

"Well, she handed out her business card like a card player - she whipped it across the table, stopping just in front of me," continued Satterwhite, who runs business conferences in Japan.

Card etiquette also includes refraining from scribbling little identifying notes on cards, like "short," or "white shirt" or "glasses."

"For Japanese people, this is horrendous," said Kumi Sato, the US-educated president of Cosmo Public Relations. "We think, `Here's this gaijin, writing on our business cards because we all look alike to him.'"

The guiding principle in Japan, a society where 126 million people live in an area the size of California, is harmony. One manifestation of this cultural imperative is an elaborate repertory of bows for greeting people of various ranks and various occasions.

For Americans, steeped in 225 years of revolutionary republicanism, bowing is one abdominal exercise still left out of most aerobic videos. In Japan, they can get by with faking it, inclining their head with a nod and a little upper body motion. Escaping major bowing comes under the cultural heading of letting foreigners be foreigners, within limits.

Likewise, a nondrinking American banker who did a stint in Tokyo in the late 1980s says he got through after-work drinking sessions in the Ginza by passing his hand over his glass and saying kyokai, or church. As long as he kept everyone else's glasses filled, he was not seen as anti-social.
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