Culture Shokku in Texas

It sounds like the opening of a Woody Allen movie: a Japanese businessman, togged out in Stetson, chaps and boots, strides into a small West Texas grocery to ask the startled storekeeper if he would please stock fresh squid. Such events, however, have become part of everyday life in the prairie town of San Angelo (pop. 63,884). There, some 30 Japanese executives have adapted to the Texas life-style well enough to make a thriving operation out of an aircraft-assembly plant owned by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Japan's fourth largest industrial company (1970 sales: $2.6 billion). Last year Mitsubishi corralled $16 million in sales and 25% of the U.S. market for executive turboprop aircraft by selling 41 planes put together in San Angelo from parts made in the U.S. and Japan.

Translation, Please. Such success is rare. Japanese industry, of course, has developed an enormous American demand for its export products, but high wage costs have kept all but a handful of Japanese firms from even trying to manufacture in the U.S. Aside from Mitsubishi, Japanese companies own and operate only four plants in the U.S.. and all are experiencing difficulties. The main reason is that Japanese executives in the U.S. tend to base production schedules on the pace of Japanese factories, where workers put in six eight-hour days a week. When Mitsubishi took over the San Angelo plant of a U.S. subcontractor in 1969. its executives made it plain that they would not expect the employees to adopt Japanese habits. They have contented themselves with the work pace that American foremen can get out of 100 Texans who put in conventional 40-hour weeks.

Even with this basic understanding, bosses and workers have experienced some mutual culture shokku. Language difficulties have bothered both sides. Some Texan employees point to office signs exhorting them GOOD COMMUNICATIONS--SAY IT--DO IT--QUICK ACTION and suggest that they be retranslated into Japanese. A Japanese executive was bewildered one morning when an American salesman greeted him by drawling, "How're ya doin'?" Replied the boss: "I not yet doing. I just get here."

Remember the Zero. More seriously, some of the Americans complain that the thorough Japanese sometimes take three weeks to make a seemingly simple decision. As for the Japanese, each of whom expects to spend up to six years in San Angelo, they worry that their children are becoming too Americanized. Two children of a Mitsubishi executive recently returned to Japan and scandalized relatives by forgetting to take off their shoes before entering the family home.

Still, the Japanese and Texans have learned to accept each other with wry humor. Most of the American workers, for example, joke about the fact that their company initially gained fame by making the World War II Zero fighter. But most townspeople respect the Japanese for being "hardworking, intelligent and polite," as a local banker puts it. The fact that Mitsubishi's wages pump $1.2 million annually into the local economy, and that the company expects to increase production in San Angelo 50% by 1972, undoubtedly helps. Some final signs of acceptance: the San Angelo Country Club this month made Plant President Makoto Kuroiwa a member--and he now asks the Texans to call him Mike.

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