(FORTUNE Magazine) – Aside from their end-of-the-day drinkathons when they can -- and often do -- let down their reserve, Japan's dedicated blue-suited managers tend to be as stiff as planks. To loosen them up, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is opening a college for clowns in Tokyo next September. The students -- salary men, waiters, store clerks, and others in the service industries -- will learn stilt walking and other circus antics. But their majors will be improvisation and pantomime. Thus, says Ringling Bros. President Kenneth Feld, ''the businessmen will lose their inhibitions and learn how to relate with foreigners.'' The clown school will be operated under license by Naturally Yours, a Japanese health food company that wants to diversify. The first freshman class will have about 30 students. Their tuition fees have yet to be decided. Keiji Yokozawa, the college's project manager, hopes the school will rekindle his countrymen's latent sense of humor, which has been buried by Japan's rigid educational system and fast economic growth: ''Japanese became obsessed with material goods but forgot how to laugh. We hope they will learn how to express their inner emotions -- without the aid of a calculator.''