When adopting a martial art, it's common to harbor the hope that it will infuse steel into limpid souls, muscle into flaccid bodies and bring discipline to untrained minds. You get the impression that Jerome Chouchan, the eminently self-possessed regional president of the Belgian chocolate company Godiva, had cultivated a good deal of self-discipline long before he took up the practice of kyūdō, or Japanese archery.
The office setting in Tokyo's chic business district of Toranomon where we meet, with its clean contemporary lines and hum of concentrated energy, seems designed, like the first steps taken in a Japanese tea garden, to alter the visitors' state of mind — to heighten alertness, attention to detail. Today, however, the climate is warm, the atmosphere relaxed, the staff turned out in smart-casual wear. Chouchan appears in a well-cut suit with an open shirt collar.
"Should I wear a necktie, do you think?" he inquires before I take his photo. That depends, I respond, on the image he wishes to project. He decides to put on a tie. The sartorial niceties settled, I am led to a glass-walled room, sat down with a bottle of French mineral water, before slipping into a brisk exchange that is more akin to a structured, highly directed conversation than an interview.