"opening the kimono" (1979?, 1984)

[Wilson Gray]

On Jun 17, 2005, at 3:50 PM, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU>
> Subject:      "opening the kimono" (1979?, 1984)
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> Thursday's "Dilbert" strip has Dogbert committing "consult and
> blabbery":
>
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> http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20050616.html
> "Incentivize the resources to grown their bandwidth to your end-state
> vision. Don't open the kimono until you ping the change agent for a
> brain
> dump and drill down to your core competencies."
> -----
>
> Coincidentally, Josh Fruhlinger on "The Comics Curmudgeon" site
> recently
> mentioned the bizarre phrase "opening the kimono":
>
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> http://joshreads.com/index.php?p=342
> Back at the turn of the century, when I was working at a doomed San
> Francisco dot-com, our CEO used to say that everything was about
> "dollars
> and eyeballs." Our job, as he put it, was to "monetize eyeballs." (He
> also
> referred to revealing our troubled financial situation to potential
> investors as "opening the kimono," but that’s a traumatic story for a
> different time.)
> -----
>
> Here's a definition from "The Microsoft Lexicon" (see also Susie Dent's
> _The Language Report_ and Wordspy.com):
>
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> http://www.cinepad.com/mslex_2.htm
> Open The Kimono: A marvelous phrase of non-Microsoft origin, probably
> stemming from the rash of Japanese acquisitions of American
> enterprises in
> the '80s, that has been adopted into the Microspeak marketing lexicon.
> Basically a somewhat sexist

Isn't calling this phrase "sexist" a bit overly PC? Both men and women
wear kimonos and there's no obvious reason to assume that the kimono
being metaphorically opened is one worn by a woman.

-Wilson Gray

> synonym for "open the books," it means to
> reveal the inner workings of a project or company to a prospective new
> partner.
> -----
>
> The earliest cite I've found is from 1984 (via ProQuest):
>
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> http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?
> did=1279765&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=1564&RQT=309&VName=PQD
> _PR Casebook_, Feb/Mar 1984, p. 14
> "Opening the Kimono" in New Business Presentations
> The phrase "opening the kimono" can mean 2 things in the context of
> public
> relations (PR). It can mean being straightforward in client and media
> relations, and it also applies to the issue of how far an agency
> should go
> in new business presentations. The agency should have a sense of
> responsibility to its clients during the time when the new business
> presentation is being conceived. The agency should be particularly
> careful
> not to open the kimono too far and make inflated promises leading to
> inflated expectations, misunderstandings, disappointments, and a jaded
> view of PR.
> -----
>
> In Paul Freiberger's 1984 book _Fire in the Valley: The Making of The
> Personal Computer_, Steve Jobs recalls using the phrase in a 1979
> meeting:
>
> -----
> http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0071358927/?v=search-
> inside&keywords=kimono
> "I went down to Xerox Development Corporation," Jobs said, "which made
> all
> of Xerox's venture investments, and I said, 'Look. I will let you
> invest a
> million dollars in Apple if you will sort of open the kimono at Xerox
> PARC.'"
> -----
>
> But according to one site <http://buzzkiller.net/openthekimono.html>
> the
> expression may date all the way back to the late '60s.
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>