Doing Business With Japan

The United States once used to be the dominant image of innovation and development, yet has now had to share this high ranked seat with Japan. Japan in time built itself from the ground up to become a top industrial nation in the world today. Japan and the United States are always in communication with business making it important for one another to understand each others cultural norms and what is socially acceptable. A large discrepancy between Japan and Americans is that Japan feels that “the nails that sticks up, gets hammered down.” While Americans feel that we should all work together as a team to fulfill goals. Sue Galatz, an American woman, lived in Japan with a Japanese host family for 6 months learning about the true identity of Japanese men and women that Americans never see.
Within America we label individuals with stereotypes that tend to inhibit our ability to view the person in actuality. The United States is apt to label the Japanese individuals as has hard working, non-emotional, and stingy. This enables us as Americans to look past the typical mold of Japanese individuals. Only when we have close contact with these stereotyped individuals can we break our initial ideas and begin to create new ones for the Japanese. Galatz and another man from the United States lived with families that did not stick to the typical Japanese mold. “Galatz’s (host mom) likes to drink whiskey and water and play pachinko, and McLaughlin describes his, a former nurse, as a wild one, really crazy, really off the wall, really excitable." (Legg) Is this the image that everyday Americans envision stay at home Japanese women? The stereotype that we associate with theme women is that she is calm, always at home, and spending there day getting ready for their husband to get home. These discrepancies begin to distance what could be relationships between different cultures, that at this point do not not understand each other fully.
This misunderstanding is also carried out in the workplace that usually men tend occupy in the professional world of Japan. American business integration within Japan has increased over the past decades, making communication between each other key for eliminating these misunderstandings. “A foreign businessman or women who wishes to work in Japan therefore needs to be aware of and adapt to its basic principle if he wishes the business relationship to lead to a successful outcome.”(How To Bow) A goal of the Japanese businesses is to strive towards mutual harmony within a company. It is hard for Americans to comprehend this sense of obligation that the Japanese have to the business they work in, which could cause one another to not see eye to eye. There are very many small yet important steps that need to be taken when meeting with a Japanese business man/woman. “How To Bow” gives the reader a clear example of the many small details that one needs to follow in order to viewed in the correct light of the Japanese business man/women. How an American is portrayed in the eyes of the Japanese can easily become a generalization for who all American businessman are. This could potentially be a lot of pressure on the shoulders of Americans, as though we hold the key to the level of success that all American businesses has.


Sources
How to Bow: http://www.how-to-bow.com/

Legg (1989), "American Engineers in Japan: Getting by with a Little Help from their Friends"