Business Guide to Japan. Boye Lafayette De Mente
that is as open and as pragmatic as that typical of Westerners— particularly among the young.
But in the adult business and professional world when these people interact with other Japanese as members of a group or team, they must conform to the existing culture of whatever organization they belong to—and that culture remains very much “Japanese” in the traditional sense.
This quick guide to doing business in Japan identifies key cultural factors that continue to be the basis for the nature of typical Japanese companies and provides insights and guidelines for approaching and dealing with them successfully.
Boyé Lafayette De Mente
Tokyo, Japan
THE STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
THE FIRST KEY to understanding and dealing with Japanese businessmen is keeping in mind that there are two categories of culture—one that is visible and tangible and one that cannot be seen or touched. It is the invisible culture of Japan that sets the Japanese apart from other people and makes their way of doing business different and often difficult for others to understand and follow.
While Japan’s invisible culture has been considerably diluted since the end of World War II in 1945—and continues to change—it remains the primary force in the Japanese political and economic systems.
Cultural differences that continue to distinguish Japanese businessmen from their American and European counterparts are basic and extend across the board, from their values and the nature of their human relationships to how they go about accomplishing things.
The foundation of Japanese beliefs and behavior is bound up in a series of key words that express their philosophy, describe their mind-set, and prescribe the way they do things. The bedrock word in Japanese behavior is amae (ah-my), which refers to an idealized relationship between people—one of absolute trust and benevolence in which no one takes undue advantage of the other and all are united in a philosophical and spiritual bond that transcends the mean and mundane.
The second most important word in the lexicon of the Japanese way is wa (wah), which means “peace and harmony,” and which is both an outgrowth of amae and an essential ingredient for its existence and application. Of course, neither of these principles has ever worked perfectly, but they have been and still are the national ethic of the Japanese.
The whole fabric of Japanese culture that grew out of the philosophies of Shintoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism was shaped and colored by the principles of amae and wa, in particular the etiquette and ethics of interpersonal relationships from the highest authority down to the lowest laborer. These relationships, and their psychological offspring, are what give the Japanese business system its form and much of its essence.
Other factors that have played primary roles in the molding of the Japanese character and greatly influenced the Japanese attitude toward foreigners and the way they conduct business are the small size of their homeland, its relative isolation from the rest of the world during most of their history, their racial homogeneity, their deeply held belief of the superiority of their way of wa, and—until recently—their view of the outside world as an enemy to be kept at bay at all costs.
With the forced opening of Japan to the West by the United States in the 1850s, the national character of the Japanese was made even more complex by the rapid development of an inferiority complex brought on by their sudden exposure to the material wealth and power of Western countries, which had been transformed by the Industrial Revolution.
This new psychological factor intermingled with the rest of their invisible cultural heritage, giving the Japanese a kind of split personality— strong feelings of superiority on one hand and equally strong feelings of inferiority on the other hand. This combination of feelings was to have a profound influence on the subsequent history of the Japanese and continues today to affect all of their attitudes and behavior toward foreigners, in personal as well as business relationships.
While there are a growing number of Japanese who have been internationalized to the point that they can think like, talk like, and behave like Westerners, they are still the exception, and when dealing with fellow Japanese, they must submerge their “international self ” and conform to the all-encompassing “Japanese way”—or find themselves even more isolated and often at as great a disadvantage as many Westerners who have chosen to live and work in Japan. While amae and wa are no longer absolute values, they remain the philosophical and ethical foundations of Japanese conduct.
Probably the second most important key in dealing effectively with the Japanese is an understanding of the emotional factor in their makeup.
THE CULTURE OF EMOTION
PART OF THE OLD stereotype of the Japanese was that they were both inscrutable and unemotional. As it turns out, the Japanese are easier to know than most other people because their mind-set is far more precisely structured and homogenized than that of most. And as for regarding the Japanese as unemotional, that mistake has been the downfall of many an insensitive foreigner, not to mention the cause of a lot of trouble on the international front.
The Japanese are, in fact, far more emotional than Americans and most other Westerners, again for very solid historical reasons.
Most Westerners are used to a degree of frankness, candid criticism, slights, and outright insults and have developed a thick skin to counter such behavior. Most Westerners are also practiced in giving as good as they get. Not the Japanese. Their cultural conditioning has been to totally avoid such behavior, to keep such a tight rein on their emotions that people would not know what they were thinking or feeling, especially in formal and business situations.
This, of course, was the origin of the Western perception of the Japanese as unemotional. But beneath their calm front, the Japanese seethe with unrequited emotions. Their highly refined etiquette system, especially in the use of the “proper” level of language to each individual, makes them extremely sensitive to the most subtle of slights or unsanctioned behavior. Their skin is so thin and they are so sensitive that a brief look of disapproval flickering across a person’s face may be enough to devastate them or earn their undying wrath.
This sensitivity and the bottling up of normal human emotions over the centuries resulted in the Japanese being prone to extreme violence when they found themselves free of the restraints and rules of their culture, especially in war and in dealing with captives and criminals. Historically, there have also been examples of individuals suddenly snapping and engaging in extreme behavior because they simply couldn’t take it anymore.
In the 1950s when hordes of Japanese businessmen began going abroad on study and survey trips, many of them became so stressed out that they became ill within a few days and either returned to Japan immediately or stayed in their hotel rooms until they were scheduled to go home.
In the following years, whenever possible, Japanese companies opened branches abroad to handle all of their foreign operations because they only felt comfortable and secure when dealing with other Japanese.
Part of the emotional makeup of older Japanese involves a resentment factor that is a holdover from their history. There has always been a deep-seated belief among the Japanese that foreigners, Westerners in particular, look down on them and take advantage of them whenever they can.
Japanese skin is now much thicker than what it was as late as the 1980s, but it is still gossamer thin when compared to the typical American or European. Their emotional antennae are up and on twenty-four hours a day, especially in their dealings with non-Japanese.
The problem of their emotional sensitivity is compounded where foreigners are concerned— except when the foreigners are in the “honored guest” category—because as much as they may try, most un-internationalized Japanese readily admit that associating with foreigners makes them uncomfortable.
Still today, franker businessmen privately admit that they do not like dealing with foreigners and would not do business with them if they had a choice—a cultural response that results from the fact that they cannot predict the behavior of foreigners