Why doing business in JP is so difficult?

I would like to point out three fundamental reasons.

 

 

1 Language

 

Most Japanese don’t speak English. That’s very funny. From junior high school to university, most of Japanese spend a lot of time in learning English. However, quite a few people use English in their business scenes. Why this happens?

 

The answer is the educational system. Japan lost the WWII and the educational system was established by the lead of the U.S. I personally feel that the winner or counter parts of Japanese in the war had a sort of fear against Japan. People with such high technologies and strange enthusiasm come to the world and do business, they might be able to dominate the market? They may have had such fears.

 

Thus, Japanese educational system, especially for English or global communication was distorted. Someone might have thought “Japanese should study and spend resources to understand our English but not too much.” Our English program was so weird.

 

When I decided to study abroad, I had to learn English almost, “starting from the scratch”.

I have found many words or phrases, for which I thought why I had never learned them although they look frequently used words…

 

The initial point, according to my own assumption, was a fear. However, this affects as some disadvantage when those counterparts tap Japanese market. Most non-JPs may have impressions for JPs.

 

They seem to know many English but speak very awkwardly.

They seem to understand our email but avoid con-call and ask us many email correspondences. Sometimes they raise strange questions.

Communications are abrupt and disappear without any clear reasons.

I totally don’t understand JPs. Why are they doing this to us…?

The trick is nothing but the language.

Japanese have learned English very hard but all of them are in wrong directions. Thus, proper English communication is hard to expect.

 

If you understand our English program, you would be able to understand the reasons.

Japanese learn basic grammar, reading many English classic literatures, and have almost no exposure to actual English communication, I mean conversation. Almost no speaking. If you imagine that your child raised only through the English classic literatures, no verbal communications, what kind of reaction would they do to your questions?

2 Matured economy

 

This means that we have no need to learn outside Japan. Japan can complete everything by ourselves. Create products or services and consume by ourselves. Therefore, as a Japanese, still majority of JPs are less interested what happen outside Japan. Geographic and economic status have encouraged JPs isolation.

 

Additionally, when it comes to our mentality, we rely on “Virtue oriented-VO-” culture, while the rest of the world lives in “Desire oriented-DO-” culture.

 

VO governs people or company by virtues. Humanity, generosity, compassion, diligence, trust, honesty are the fundamental drivers to develop a corporate culture. People must get moved by those values.

 

DO, on the other hand, believes that people are moved by desires. Desires dominate everything and govern people’s actions. People protect their rights and desire. Then people again seek more desire to be satisfied.

 

For instance, the conflict of interests sometimes come to our discussion tables. Japanese never understand foreigners’ concerns: that guy must do something harmful to us unless we protect ourselves by terms and conditions. Japanese never understand this and according to our business practice, we have had few troubles. Under the global base, which attitude is encouraged more? I can’t tell you the answer.

 

Simply because “Virtue orientated ” corporate culture have merged a lot of “Desire oriented” companies. Obviously, “Virtue orientated ” companies are minority under the global business environment. Fundamental action drivers are so different, even though we solve communication barriers, Japanese and non-Japanese can’t either communicate or understand each other since there is no common cultural/ value base.

 

3 Ambiguous power structure

This means the uncertainty in “who to talk”. It has always been ambiguous to figure out who is the decision maker. Some people say doing business in China is easy because they know who to talk. This is true. That country itself is super “top down” structure. No shadow was behind and all you have to do is approaching to the business top and convince him/ her.

 

On the other hand, in Japan it’s always question to find out who has the actual delegation.

 

This is the reflection of the politics in Japan. Representatives have been elected as leaders. However, they can’t work for Japanese people due to a lot of obstacles; social media influenced with only one group, Kasumigaseki public officers are very much against politicians, and other countries have heavily influenced to JPs policies.

Japan has been keeping the best balance among all of those uncontrollable forces.

As I pointed out three major reason why doing business in JP is so difficult.

1 Language

2 Matured economy

3 Ambiguous power structure

Those three have been the fundamental drivers to make it difficult to do global business in Japan. However, JPs technologies have been far advanced now, the communication gap will be solved with technologies. Most Japanese have been aware of shrinking domestic markets and trying to tap other global markets. As natural selection happens over several market cycles, top down corporate structures may be seen.

 

 

Further queries or doubts, please email to ytomizuka@abrilsjp.com

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