It looks like a typical Tokyo watering hole. Large paper lanterns hang from the ceiling-, kimono-clad women glide between the tables delivering beer and witticisms, and a sound system belts out enka songs - Japan's answer to country and western. But after the last salaryman leaves each night, cleaners strip the place of its gaudy trappings to reveal another identity: in the daytime, this is the Nissan Motor Company's office canteen.
In a determined cost-cutting attempt in the face of the high yen, Japan's second largest car company has been tampering with the most sacred of all-corporate Japan's traditions - management's huge expense accounts for entertaining colleagues and associates. Managers have been ordered to confine their night-time wining and dining to the canteen.
It is part of a campaign the company has dubbed: "Let's be stingy." Admonitions to turn out lights are everywhere and the company has trumpeted a deal with a paper converter: the contents of the Tokyo head office's waste-paper baskets are swapped for free supplies of toilet paper. Meanwhile, factory supervisors have even been prevailed upon to give over their Sundays to painting the plant - a job done in previous years by outside contractors.