Long Workdays

The five-martini lunch

Japanese businessmen last week turned their abundant energies to bonenkai, or forget-the-year parties. In restaurants and nightclubs round the country, hostesses entertained them by purring demurely and pouring drinks. The night ended, many men sped off in rented limousines, often leaving behind bills of $1,500 or more.

This is all part of kosai-hi, literally entertainment expenses. Japan's national tax administration estimates that total outlay for company entertainment during the past fiscal year was $13.3 billion, up 11.2% from the previous year. While the Japanese defense budget is .9% of the country's G.N.P., corporate wining and dining accounts for 1.2% of total national output. Japanese tax law even permits smaller companies to write off more entertainment than large ones, on the grounds that fledgling firms have more need to grease the corporate skids.

In Japan, kosai-hi is the rule. Top executives are expected to spend up to three or four nights a week entertaining--eating in posh restaurants or golfing on lush greens. When a Japanese company launches a new product, its executives entertain prospective buyers to help them reach a consensus fast. Says Ryutaro Nohmura, a leading tentmaker: "Kosai-hi is nothing less than the lubricant for our enormous business machine, the very source of our economic vitality."

Some executives insist that entertaining can be a hard day's night. The president of an Osaka chemical company complains that he is forced to "go completely dry" on weekends. "Otherwise my health would be endangered."

But kosai-hi has its critics. The government earlier this year proposed to levy stiff taxes on corporate expenditures but then relented under pressure from the business community. Its final solution: tax the portion of kosai-hi that exceeds a corporation's entertainment expenditures in the previous year.

That is hardly a radical solution, but kosai-hi supporters explain that the business of Japan is business. Says Tentmaker Nohmura: "A three-martini lunch is fine, but why not make it four or five? Nobody will question the bill so long as it helps business." qed

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