Word: bohnenkai
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...skill at importing and improving U.S. business techniques, have advanced to a new high (or low) state. They have taken to one business practice that has been on the wane in the U.S.: the office Christmas party. The Japanese, who learned the tradition from American occupation forces, call them bohnenkai (forget-the-year parties), and they work diligently at drowning the past in a torrent of alcohol during two weeks of nightly Christmastime revelry with geishas, models and strippers...
...business boom, companies were able to increase their year-end bonuses to employees by 20%, to a national total of $1.4 billion, still have plenty left to pay for parties. One company alone, Yawata, the nation's largest steel producer, spent an estimated $150,000 on its bohnenkai last year. Besides regarding the parties as a safety valve to let their hard-working employees blow off steam, businessmen use them to entertain favored customers and government officials. At other times in the year, such entertaining would be frowned on as commercial bribery, but a bohnenkai forgets that...
...Bohnenkai for upper echelons of executives generally start around 6 p.m. in a restaurant. After enough hot sake has been downed, the businessmen often show off their talents for entertaining-singing, dancing, doing magic tricks. Then come the strippers, dancing nude among the tables to the tune of Jingle Bells and White Christmas. Or, for variety, there may be a pornographic film. This Christmas the women employees at one company rebelled against the men-only rule. The company officials finally relented, with the stipulation that the working girls provide some of the entertainment...
...police hoped that this technique would cause some bohnenkai fans to swear off. But they fear, with considerable justification, that the bohnenkai has become so much of a tradition that by next Christmas, the lessons will be forgotten...
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