Professional Documents
Culture Documents
BUSINESS CULTURE
Business etiquette and practices are important. The Japanese are extremely
polite and place importance on respect and social rank. You may be showered
with elaborate compliments while your host remains humble and plays down
their achievements. Australians who show modesty will be well regarded by
Japanese people.
While business meetings during the day can seem to be slow and often skirting
key issues, night time drinking and dinners are often the time when more useful
information is fed back to you. The Japanese equate being indirect with being
polite, so starting a business meeting with small talk will help to get the
meeting off to a good start. Australians can misunderstand this indirectness and
interpret it as indecisiveness or non-commitment from the Japanese side. In
these situations, it pays to be patient.
English is not widely spoken in business and government, with some exceptions,
such as in trading companies. If a meeting is conducted in English, be sure to
speak slowly and clearly and do not use Australian idiomatic expressions or
humour. Meetings in English are rare and an interpreter is generally required.
Product brochures and a company profile should be taken with you when you
visit a Japanese company for the first time.
Business meetings invariably begin with the exchange of business cards and are
given and recevied in both hands and laid respectfully on the table. Do not place
the card in your pocket or write on it. If time allows, have your business cards
printed with your name and company name in Japanese, but not your business
address as it is meaningless.
Breakfast meetings before 9.00am are not usually possible, although meetings
after 5.00pm are more common. Most large companies will not meet on
Saturdays but some medium to small sized companies will accept meetings on
Saturday, although this should not be taken for granted.
Seating arrangements are used in formal business meetings. The most important
guest sits furthest from the door and the host sits closest to the door. If in doubt,
wait to be seated or ask where you should sit.
Japanese people also try hard to avoid open conflict and so may answer
ambiguously or even agree to an offer that they have no intention of accepting.
One productive way of solving this problem is to prepare a brief, but clear memo
describing the situation and obligations of both parties and present it as a record
of the meeting. This will test the Japanese sides position on the issue as they will
be forced to respond.
SETTING UP IN MARKET
The Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO) provides an overview of the laws,
regulations and procedures related to setting up a business in Japan, as well as
an easy-to-follow flowchart outlining the basic steps and a model case which
shows approximate start-up costs.
There are over 100 major regional banks, with total loans of JPY218.3 trillion and
total deposits of JPY296.9 trillion (Source: Japan Bankers Association, Bank
deposit and loans report (Japanese)). Yokohama, Fukuoka Financial Group, Chiba,
Hoku Hoku Financial Group (Hokuriku and Hokkaido) and Shizuoka are the top
five regional banks in terms of assets.
Bank of America
Barclays
Credit Suisse
Deutsche Bank
Goldman Sachs
HSBC
Societe General
Commonwealth Bank
National Australia Bank
ANZ.
Other major Japanese financial institutions include general insurance, life
insurance, investment banks, asset managers and investment advisors.
Japan Times
Asahi Shimbun
Japan Today
News on Japan
Metropolis