Business Guide to Japan: A Quick Guide to Opening Doors and Closing Deals

By Boyé Lafayette de Mente

Book Overview

Conducting business in Japan: a delicate and valuable skill is explained by a true master of Japanese culture.

Not only is Japan the world's third largest economy, it is a global center for design for non-Japanese businesses looking to expand into international markets.

But business people from outside Japan quickly discover that doing business in Japan is unlike anything they've experienced before. They find Japanese business etiquette and culture both highly regimented and maddeningly impenetrable--making it difficult to identify, much less approach, key decision-makers, or to bring negotiations to a successful close.

Japanologist Boye Lafayette De Mente explains the key aspects of Japanese business practices and protocols with specific advice for approaching and engaging with Japanese executives, their staffs, and their organizations.

Business Guide to Japan offers yo invaluable insights into how to unravel the complicated maze of business bureaucracy, interpret verbal and written messages from your contacts, and create the critical social comfort zone necessary for working with Japanese companies. Doing business with the Japanese can be both challenging and rewarding, and the Business Guide to Japan offers you precise guidelines for success.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0804837600
• ISBN13: 9780804837606
• Release Date: February 2006
• Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Practical, informative, authoritative, and well written

I feel foolish praising such a small book to high heaven. But,I must say that this book is a fascinating read. I bought it duringmy first business trip to Japan and couldn't put it down. The book's author, an American, has lived in Japan for 50 years. It's clear that he knows the language and the culture. Moreover, he also has kept in touch with the States, and still has the ability to communicate with an American audience. As I said, the book is small. It's only half the physical dimensions of an ordinary book. It is about 170 pages in length. There are 64 chapters, so each chapter is only 2-3 pages long. Each chapter is like a short essay on some minute but nonetheless important detail about Japanese business culture, or advice on how to successfully interface with it. Some of the chapter titles are : The Role of the Greeting Ritual, The Name Card System, How to Recognize "No," The Importance of Going to Japan, Making the First Contact, Seeing Behind the Facade, The Importance of Following up, How to Use Interpreters, Dealing at the Negotiating Table, More Mistakes Foreigners Make, and Mastering the Art of Business at Night. Each of these short chapters is very well written. The author has obviously advised many foreign companies on how to approach the Japanese and how to get past all the suspicion and barriers that prevent the Japanese from establishing a formal relationship with a foreign firm. His descriptions of how the Japanese protocol functions, how the Japanese company functions, the importance of etiquette, the all-important socializing between potential business partners, the Japanese sense of caution, their fixation on outward appearance, their "group think" mentality, their concern that everything be right and that everyone be comfortable with any new venture before it can begin, and even his description of how Buddhism affects the Japanese business mentality, singularly and in toto indicate that the author really knows what he is talking about. I've lived a year or more in four different countries, and written about the culture of three of them. It's hard to write about a culture in a way that does not sound like criticism or like proselytizing. Yet, Boye De Mente manages to do so. The reader becomes far more sophisticated in a couple of hours than (s)he was before picking up the book. I was so impressed that after reading this book, I ordered another by the same author. I'll definitely read this book again before my next business trip to Japan.

Practical, informative, authoritative, and well written

I feel foolish praising such a small book to high heaven. But, I must say that this book is a fascinating read. I bought it during my first business trip to Japan and couldn't put it down. The book's author, an American, has lived in Japan for 50 years. It's clear that he knows the language and the culture. Moreover, he also has kept in touch with the States, and still has the ability to communicate with an American audience. As I said, the book is small. It's only half the physical dimensions of an ordinary book. It is about 170 pages in length. There are 64 chapters, so each chapter is only 2-3 pages long. Each chapter is like a short essay on some minute but nonetheless important detail about Japanese business culture, or advice on how to successfully interface with it. Some of the chapter titles are : The Role of the Greeting Ritual, The Name Card System, How to Recognize "No," The Importance of Going to Japan, Making the First Contact, Seeing Behind the Facade, The Importance of Following up, How to Use Interpreters, Dealing at the Negotiating Table, More Mistakes Foreigners Make, and Mastering the Art of Business at Night. Each of these short chapters is very well written. The author has obviously advised many foreign companies on how to approach the Japanese and how to get past all the suspicion and barriers that prevent the Japanese from establishing a formal relationship with a foreign firm. His descriptions of how the Japanese protocol functions, how the Japanese company functions, the importance of etiquette, the all-important socializing between potential business partners, the Japanese sense of caution, their fixation on outward appearance, their "group think" mentality, their concern that everything be right and that everyone be comfortable with any new venture before it can begin, and even his description of how Buddhism affects the Japanese business mentality, singularly and in toto indicate that the author really knows what he is talking about. I've lived a year or more in four different countries, and written about the culture of three of them. It's hard to write about a culture in a way that does not sound like criticism or like proselytizing. Yet, Boye De Mente manages to do so. The reader becomes far more sophisticated in a couple of hours than (s)he was before picking up the book. I was so impressed that after reading this book, I ordered another by the same author. I'll definitely read this book again before my next business trip to Japan.