Even after decades of cooperation in business and politics, America and Japan still trip over a seemingly simple concept: the apology. Neither culture appears to fully understand what the other means or expects. For instance, most Americans were unmoved by Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda’s effusive apologies in 2010, after widespread reports of malfunctioning Prius accelerators. Japan, for its part, bristled when a U.S. submarine commander didn’t immediately apologize after colliding with and sinking a Japanese fishing boat off Hawaii in 2001.
A version of this article appeared in the June 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review.