Kengo Kubo, a sales consultant who sells Lexus cars in Tokyo, has a special way of opening a car door. He points with all five fingers to the handle, right hand followed by left. Then, he gracefully opens the door with both hands, in the same way Japanese samurais in the 14th century would have opened a sliding screen door.
"The most important thing is to make the motion look beautiful," says Mr. Kubo, standing in a gleaming Lexus show room with live orchids growing out of trickling waterfalls.
The screen-door technique is part of an unusual tactic under way in Japan's luxury-car wars. No. 1 car maker Toyota, behind in the luxury market, wants to fight back by plunging deep into the world of ancient Japanese hospitality traditions.
At Lexus showrooms, sales consultants lean five to 10 degrees forward and assume a warrior's "waiting position" when a customer is looking at a car. When serving customers coffee or tea, employees must kneel on the floor with both feet together and both knees on the ground. The coffee cup must never make a noise when it is placed on the table.
Toyota controls nearly 45% of Japan's passenger-car market, but it is overshadowed by European brands when it comes to luxury cars. Japan's two market leaders, BMW and DaimlerChrysler AG's Mercedes Benz, together sold nearly four times the number of cars as Lexus did in Japan last year, according to CSM Worldwide, an auto-industry consulting firm.
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