cover image On Track with the Japanese: A Case-By-Case Approach to Building Successful Relationships

On Track with the Japanese: A Case-By-Case Approach to Building Successful Relationships

Patricia E. Gercik. Kodansha International (JPN), $19.95 (241pp) ISBN 978-4-7700-1602-7

A ``Miss Manners'' guide for the business person, this primer of proper behavior for Americans living or doing business in Japan may be the most specifically useful such book to date. Drawing on 23 engrossing case histories--some successes, others failures--the managing director of MIT's Japan Program guides the reader through what she identifies as the four critical steps in establishing successful relations in a Japanese business setting: ``know me,'' ``trust me,'' ``believe me'' and ``marry me.'' Gercik, who lived in Japan until she was 22, endows these case histories with novelistic detail, depth and breadth, as well as with a business and cultural expertise that makes each situation gripping. Her analyses of the errors committed or avoided cast brilliant light not only on the Japanese industrial ethic but on many crannies in the broader society as well. In her descriptions the unsuspected pitfalls awaiting foreigners in Japan's rigidly structured insider/outsider society seem daunting, but with such an invaluable book in hand, those with work to do in Japan or with the Japanese must surely succeed. (Sept.)