Business Guide to Japan. Boye Lafayette De Mente
businessman if, at a first meeting, you make a point of saying you want to develop a relationship with him that will allow you to communicate heartto-heart. Interestingly enough, most of the belly-to-belly and heart-to-heart communication that takes place in Japan occurs in the mizu shobai (me-zuu show-bye), or “water business,” a very insightful euphemism for the night time entertainment trades—something which has also been seen as a particular obstacle for Western women in forming business contacts.
However, a word of advice is in order when it comes to after-hours drinking. It is better to take a page out of the book of many Japanese and not get totally soused during hostess bar outings. On numerous occasions I have been part of Japanese/foreign groups out on the town when one or more of the foreign contingent got sickdrunk and on some occasions passed out, making any form of communication impossible—besides presenting a very negative impression.
Japanese hosts are often relentless in pressing drinks on their foreign guests during hostess bar parties. It is essential that you stay well within your capacity by cutting back sharply after the first few rounds, just sipping the drinks and/or dumping them when nobody is looking, then feigning a degree of drunkenness that keeps you in step with the Japanese side.
If a key Japanese contact leans over and quickly gives you a briefing on the state of your business with him, you want to be able to clearly understand the message and make any appropriate response (even if that is nothing more than nodding your head and thanking him).
The importance of haragei and ishin denshin becomes very clear when you realize that what is not said is often more important than what is said and just as often is the key that opens or locks the door to business.
Learning this form of “Japanese telepathy” is not something one can do quickly or easily. It requires complete immersion in the culture of contemporary Japan, along with a good grasp of the cultural history of the country. This aspect of communication in Japan is one of the primary barriers facing any outsider who attempts to do business with the Japanese and is also why so many foreigners end up having to work through Japanese surrogates to get anything done in Japan.
MANAGEMENT BY INTUITION
GIVEN THE cultural conditioning that results in the Japanese often assigning more importance to feeling than to reasoning, it is not surprising that such things as haragei, or the “art of the belly,” and ishin denshin, or “heart-toheart communication,” play a key role in Japanese management. But on the more refined levels of management in Japan one encounters the ultimate in “managing by intuition.”
The Japanese word used to express the idea of managing by intuition is kongen (kone-gane), which means “root” or “source” in relation to the universe—and may sound like pretty heav y stuff to foreigners who have MBAs instead of MBBs (Masters of Business Buddhism).
Kongen refers to the energy-wisdom that, in Buddhist thought, fuels the universe. According to Buddhist belief, it is accessible to man through meditation, which allows one to tap into the stream of wisdom and energy and make use of it.
Japan’s best-known proponent of kongen was the legendary Konosuke Matsushita, founder of the Matsushita empire (National, Panasonic, etc.). Matsushita attributed his extraordinary success to regularly tapping into the intelligence of the universe and decreed that all Matsushita managers would spend a part of their work period tuned in to the universal mind.
While Matsushita was the most prominent modern-day practitioner of managing by intuitive intelligence, it is the key to the management success of all Japanese companies—although I am tempted to label it “Japanese cultural intelligence,” since it appears inseparable from the Japanese mind-set and traditional social system.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, many Japanese companies made an attempt to convert their management system to the American paradigm. All of the attempts failed, some of them with tragic results, forcing the companies to go back to the traditional Japanese ways of managing a company. Some of them failed entirely and disappeared.
Many Japanese companies then attempted to follow in Matsushita’s footsteps, but what they were doing, regardless of how it was labeled, was following the traditional Japanese way of organizing and treating people and getting an awful lot out of them in the process.
In any event, when the foreigner in Japan runs up against something he thinks doesn’t make logical sense, he has probably had an encounter with kongen. If he is inspired to go out and buy himself a cushion to meditate on, he may learn something.
PASS THE ZEN, PLEASE
I DO NOT advocate that foreigners wanting to do business with the Japanese immediately run to a temple and sign up for a course in Zen Buddhism. But I do suggest that familiarity with the concept and precepts of Zen would be of significant value in dealing with the intangible, esoteric, and philosophical facets of the Japanese business system as well as its facade.
In Japan there is almost always a tatemae (tahtay-my), or facade, and a honne (hone-nay)—the reality behind the facade. The universal facade that covers Japan like a blanket is its etiquette system. Other facades include such diverse things as hostess bars in Japan’s famous mizu shobai: the colorful kimono, which women wear as a “face” to present to the public, is a wonderful facade. Looking at many aspects of Japan, one sees a surface that may hide any number of realities.
The same is true in business. What you see, and what the inexperienced foreigner is apt to take at face value, is often far from the truth. The surface harmony that prevails in most Japanese companies, for example, generally masks a morass of underlying friction and discontent, as wa suffers more and more from the strains of changing lifestyles.
Japanese society in general has traditionally been based on presenting a carefully fashioned image to the public and outside world, taking great pains to camouflage reality behind manners, screens, language, and other opaque barriers. The challenge for the outsider is to discern what is real and what is facade, to see beyond the tatemae to the honne, and one of the skills that has traditionally helped the Japanese see beyond their own illusions is the art of Zen.
The first stage of Zen, for all of its own tatemae, is nothing more than being able to distinguish between what appears to be real (or what we would like to be real) and reality itself. The second stage of Zen requires that one develop the ability to eliminate his own self from the duality of what he is and thinks he is to what exists outside of him and, if he wants to go all the way, merge his being into the one reality.
In the Japanese historical context, Zen was traditionally the vehicle by which people gained extraordinary skill in arts, crafts, and other pursuits. By physical discipline and meditation they first got their own selves under control. Then they learned how to discern the essence of what they saw before them, whether it was a rock, tree, sword, or human being. Then by becoming one with the thing before them, they could use its essence in a natural way.
Probably the most illustrious use of Zen was in the training of swordsmen. After years of rigorous physical and mental training, the greatest swordsmen came close to becoming a part of their swords. Straining the analogy, their swords would therefore strike, perfectly, whatever blow they thought of because they and the sword were the same. The greatest of Japan’s sword masters were virtually unbeatable during their peak years. This, of course, represents the Japanese ideal in all things, including business.
The lesson you can take from this facet of the Japanese way is to do your best to separate your emotions and preconceived ideas from any meeting or relationship with a Japanese businessman and attempt to discern the reality behind the visible scenario. This is, of course, just another way of saying determine the facts, the cold, hard facts, before you commit yourself. The idea of taking a Zen-like approach could make it easier, especially with practice.
PUTTING YOUR BEST FACE FORWARD
IN THE JAPANESE context there is no neat separation between business and personal life. The larger the company, the more apt it is to play a vital role in all the key areas of the lives of its employees—from housing and