Japanese Apology

You might know that school girl uniforms and goshi goshi towels are Japanese cultural treasures, but what about the dogeza? The same TV program demonstrated the power of this Japanese technique of bowing in apology by flying comedian Tetsuro Degawa to America and putting him in situations where his only defenses were broken English and the dogeza.

First we have him apologizing for breaking the window of a house:

[The narrator claims they got prior permission from the American man's wife to break the window, but it's pretty hard to watch the video and not get the sense that everything was staged and all the people are actors.]

Next we have Testuro walk out of the shower to find a American woman in his bed. She has called her boyfriend and told him that a half-naked intruder is in her hotel room. Watch him cower in fear before the big angry guy in a football jersey:

Finally, having proven that a Japanese man can use the dogeza technique to apologize his way out of two sticky situations, the show has an American man try it out. Testuro finds an American guy who will stay out late drinking and buying video games so he can attempt a dogeza on his furious wife:

Based on these three situations the show concludes that the dogeza is indeed a Japanese treasure!

What do you think? would this actually work in America?

Update: Does this description of Junichiro Koizumi joking with the G8 leaders around sound like a dogeza to you?

….Jacques Chirac, a well-known Japanophile, spoke of the different ways of bowing in Japan depending on who one is facing. Koizumi then came up in front of Bush and said the way to bow before you is this, and fell to both his knees and prostrated himself.