Habitat Japan - Free eBook About Living in Japan

you are here for a shorter length of time. That said, there are things you can do to make life easier for yourself and for your Japanese hosts.

One concept with which you should be familiar, is that of groupism. In the West, individual talents and achievements are celebrated. If you’ve ever walked on an elaborate mosaic floor, you may have noticed that each tile is a thing of beauty within itself. Even though the tiles work in a team to make up the picture, some tiles stand out more brightly than others.

In Japan, the corporate team is more like a tatami floor. Straw is bound together, all moving in the same direction. No one strand of straw is any more remarkable than another.

Patterns may exist within the straw mats, which are often bound by beautifully coloured fabric. This fabric is the decoration, like the reputation of a company in the public, but it’s worthless without a strongly bound workforce working together toward a common goal.

What this means for you, is that there will be little or no appreciation of grandstanding techniques which seemed so appropriate in your home country. While you might be wanting to put your best foot forward and show your colleagues in Japan how very clever you are, it’s likely you’ll be seen as boastful or self-serving.

Corporate Family Relationships As mentioned above, the office or section manager acts as a father figure in the Japanese office. The management of the department looks after not only employee’s job progress, but also personal matters, including attending weddings. I recall attending one party for foreigner visitors to Japan. The female staff played their role as hosts very well, being pleasant and bombarding the visitors with insincere compliments. One guy mistook the compliments for flirting and put his arm around one of the female staff. My general manger discretely called me over and asked me to separate them by sitting between the female staff member and the amorous foreign guest. This was my introduction to the paternalism of Japanese company life.

Another relationship worth mentioning is that of sempai (roughly translated as “mentor”) and kohai (roughly, “trainee”). The Japanese 56