New Magazines Try to Reach Asian Businesses : The fledgling English-language publications seek readers on both sides of the Pacific.

When Business Tokyo hits the newsstands this week, the magazine’s editors hope that its new look, with cover girl Yumi Nakajima, will help attract new readers and signal a new direction for the 3-year-old monthly. Meanwhile, Venture Japan’s fall quarterly is hot off the press and the San Francisco publication is looking to find a niche with U.S.-Japan business people.

Business Tokyo and Venture Japan are among a handful of fledging English-language publications seeking to address the information needs of the growing ranks of men and women doing business with Japan and other Asian countries. Unlike previous English-language publications aimed at expatriates living in those countries, these new magazines are directing their efforts primarily at the North American market.

So far, the emergence of these publications does not signal an onslaught of publishers from either Asia or the United States. Most are the work of individual entrepreneurs, largely from Asia, and the magazines are not yet attracting huge subscription-paying readers.

Thus they are hardly a threat to the depth and scope of the erudite Far Eastern Economic Review nor to the reach of Fortune, Business Week or Forbes, which have increased their coverage of business in Asia.

“Virtually every major American business publication has explored doing an edition in Japan,” said Lee Hall of IntPub Inc., a Chicago magazine consulting firm. “The fact has been that it has been extremely difficult to reach a sufficient number of people speaking one language to make a business or consumer magazine work.”

Different in Hong Kong

He said in foreign markets, readers prefer to read in their first or native language, which typically is not English.

A notable exception has been in Hong Kong, the English-speaking colony of Britain, which is the base of Asiaweek, an English weekly newsmagazine owned by Time Inc. Magazine Co., a unit of Time Warner Inc. Another eight business publications in English, including one magazine called Billion, are originating from Hong Kong.

The new magazines are attracting some readers but it has been tough. Business Tokyo, for example, suspended August and September editions to relaunch what editor-in-chief Anthony Paul calls a “new magazine” with the October issue.

He describes the changes as “the difference between 1950 in Cleveland and 1989 in Manhattan.” The October issue features the 26-year-old Nakajima surrounded by consumer goods, including Godiva chocolates, Ballentine’s Scotch whiskey, Kodak film and Estee Lauder cosmetics. The cover story calls Japanese women “the world’s No. 1 customer.”

Business Tokyo’s owner, Seichu Sato, whose Tokyo company, Keizaikai Co. publishes Japanese business periodicals, opened editorial and sales offices in New York this summer and hired magazine designers Milton Glaser and Walter Bernard, who recently redesigned Time, Fortune, Paris Match, the Washington Post and U.S. News & World Report. Paul would not say how much money has gone into the redesign.

“The magazine was distributed in 39 different countries,” but did not define its readership well, explained Paul, who moved to New York from Tokyo. “We made a decision to concentrate on the North American readers . . . if we are doing an English-language magazine on Japanese business, we have to succeed or fail in North America. This is the largest single group of English-speaking readers.”

Seeks Elite Readership

The magazine’s initial plan for wide distribution was too long term, he said. “It might take 20 years. We decided the publishing logic was to leap into the North American market,” said Paul, adding that the monthly’s readership had varied from a high of 54,600 a month to 24,000 as Business Tokyo wound down to reformat.

Business Tokyo is aiming for circulation of 100,000 composed primarily of controlled or free distribution to U.S. senior executives and opinion makers, such as congressmen. “The trick will be converting that into paid circulation over a period of three years,” said Paul, a native of Australia who had been the Hong Kong-based roving editor for the U.S. edition of Reader’s Digest before joining Business Tokyo in 1988.

Venture Japan, a product of Asia Pacific Communications Inc. of San Francisco, evolved out of a newsletter. The quarterly, which has a paid subscriber base of only 1,300 out of the 22,000 copies circulated, provides information on entering the Japanese market, licensing agreements, joint ventures and opportunities in the semiconductor, biotechnology and other manufacturing industries.

“Our niche is clearly in providing close examinations of joint ventures both past and present through case studies of what has worked and is not working,” explained James W. Borton, managing director and editor-in-chief. “We don’t believe other periodicals are providing that kind of information.”

To provide a greater range of information services, Borton’s group has secured the North American rights to the English-language translation of Tokyo Insider, a monthly economic and business newsletter that “provides inside information on what is going on in Tokyo,” according to Borton. He also is exploring a cross-marketing linkup with Toyo Keizai Inc., the Tokyo producer of another English-language magazine, Tokyo Business Today, and publisher of the quarterly Japan Company Handbook, a two-volume directory of Japanese firms.