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What, you may ask, will this do to Brand Japan?

 “Japanese management”, it seems, isn’t quite what it used to be. Images of workers performing calisthenics and Toyota executives giving interviews to inquiring authors and biz school profs is being nudged from the spotlight, at least at this moment, by a perk that, at first, sounds like a old gag on Saturday Night Live:

For the love-sick, Tokyo-based Hime & Company has got to be one of those “great places to work” we’re always reading about.   A company that now gives staff paid time off to hit the shops during sales season, has now announced “heartache leave”.  Enduring a bad breakup?  Take day off an go mope away from your colleagues. Or in the words of the company "Not everyone needs to take maternity leave but with heartbreak, everyone needs time off, just like when you get sick."  Okaaaay.  Jay Chiat, whose ad agency was noted for long hours and legendary work during the “Apple 1984” era, would not have been amused, of course. His shop, and style, drew another kind of employee with another kind of passion. I remember the agency tee shirts that said, “If you don’t come in on  Saturday, don’t bother showing up on Sunday.”  But, wait: the calisthenics were ridiculed, too, but were they really so irrelevant to the camaraderie associated with the success that led to all those books praising Japanese management?  Let’s see if heart-break days and paid-shopping leave follow suit.