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BUSINESS IN JAPAN Business in Japan A guide to Japanese business practice and procedure REVISED EDITION Edited by Paul Norbury and Geoffiey Bownas ©Japan Air Lines 1980 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 2nd edition 1980 All rights reserved. No part ofthis publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission. First edition 1974 Second edition (full y revised) 1980 First published in 1974 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Second edition 1980 published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basillgstoke Compallies and representatives throughout the world and PAUL NORBURY PUBLICATIONS LTD Yenterden, Keilt British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Business in Japan. 2nd ed. 1. Business enterprises - Japan 2. Japan - commerce I. Norbury, Paul 11. Bownas, Geoffrey 338.7'C 0952 HF3826.5 ISBN 978-1-349-05657-6 ISBN 978-1-349-05655-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-05655-2 It all started thirty years ago when I first flew from my native Brussels to Tokyo, stopping along the way for a few weeks in Calcutta and Shanghai. On my second day in Tokyo, I dimbed into a streetcar that obviously had survived the war at great cost. As my eyes wandered over the strange people and things surrounding me, my bewilderment grew. Wasn't there somewhere something familiar my eyes could ding to? Suddenly, in a corner near the ceiling of the streetcar, I recognised familiar symbols. Something was written in English. At dos er scrutiny, it read 'Made in Japan'. In Calcutta and Shanghai, what I had seen of the East was its misery, and whenever I saw a familiar convenience, it was always made in England, in France, or in the U.s. A. The 'Made inJapan' mark I saw in the streetcar, however, carried a different message: Japan was and yet was not the East. Of course, the ready explanation was that the Japanese were imitating us; but I could not ans wer the question of why the Indians and the Chinese had not done the same. I was soon to discover that many other seemingly familiar things were also 'Made in Japan'; for example, eggs. In those early post-war years, the taste of eggs in Japan was that of feed given to chickens - fish. Eggs looked perfecdy familiar, but their taste was not. At any rate, the words 'Made in Japan' were to haunt me for the following three decades. And in trying to understand the phenomenon behind those words, I found litde help in visiting the traditional old temples, where I would join throngs of Japanese who were likewise 'visiting' their past. The challenge was not in the past but in the present. ROBERT BALLON In 1972Japan Air Lines introduced theJAL EXECUTIVE SERVICE to aid the international business traveller visitingJapan and the Far East. As part ofthis service aseries ofbooklets was produced by JAL entitled Business in Japan - Guidelines for Exporters. These booklets were brought together to form part ofthe first edition of Business inJapan published at the end of 1974. This new edition contains a considerable amount of new material as weIl as some of the original chapters now fully revised. Contents Foreword Editors' Preface Glossary of Japanese terms used in the text SECTION I UNDERSTANDING THEjAPANESE 1 The Logic Gap Martyn Naylor 2 Japan's Unique Group Dynamic Gregory Clark THE NEW INDUSTRIAL POLICIES OF JAPAN 3 Japanese Industries to 1985 Shinzo Katada 4 Japan and the New Industrial Countries of East Asia Charles Smith IX Xl Xlll 1 5 SECTION II SECTION III APPROACHES TO THE MARKET 5 Working with Japan's Free Market Structure Gene Gregory 6 Pointers to Success and Failure Sadao Oba 7 Japan's New Superconsumers Teruyasu Murakami 8 Rationalising the Distribution System Masao Okamoto 9 The Value of Market Research Andrew Watt 10 The Role and Application of Advertising David Gribbin 11 The Japanese Housewif