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Worlöng for the Japanese
How,
as
a
gaijin
(foreigner) do you get
a
Job
in a big Japanese
Corporation?
First of
all
you need
a
good neighbour who alrea-
dy works for the firm, and then you need
to pray to the right god. The Japanese
have seven lucky gods, and at least eight
thousand others (whether lucky or not I
never discovered) - so the choice is enor-
mous.
I
selected
Hotei, the
god
of happi-
ness,
a jolly little fat man with
a
sack on
his
back like an oriental Santa Claus,
presented myself at his shrine. threw my
coins into his offertory box, clapped my
hands three times in the appropriate
manner, and bowed praying for an end to
my flu and
a
job with Marubeni Corpora–
tion. The next day I was fit and well, and
was offered the job.
And so it was I came to
work part-time
for sbt
months in
the
International
De–
partment
of one of lapan's
biggest
tra-
ding companies. The headquarters buil-
ding in Takebashi overlookek the Imperi–
al Palace and its cool, green gardens right
at the heart of the metropolis. At
the
beginning I had time to look down from
the Window at the roof under which the
emperor Hirohito was slowly dying.
But
soon I was busy teaching the 0 Ls (office
ladies) and writing after-dinner speeches
for the President when he flew to Europe,
as he offen did, to meet his trading part–
ners. The
Speech
was nearly always the
same.
Marubeni Corporation valued its
long association with
and looked
forward to an even warmer relationship
with
and continued prosperity for
both businesses.
The obviously brilliant
Head of the International Department
once told me, in his perfect English, that
he disagreed with our English saying 'Ne–
ver mix business with pleasure'.
For him
personal relation-ships and business
relationships were inseparabie.
If his
attitude was at all typical of Japanese top
managers, then perhaps one can under-
stand the bitterness with which the Pre–
sident of Honda greeted British
Aerospace's sale of Rover Group (in which
Honda had a 25 % holding) to BMW.
There must have been around eighty
people working in the open-plan office
on the fourteenth flöor of Marubeni Buil–
ding, the tables carefully arranged accor–
ding to the
Status
of the staff. Generally
the noise level was low, but towards 4pm,
when corporate Americans eight hours
away and well-breakfasted, reached for
their telephones, the noise in the Tokyo
office swelled into a hubbub that made
concentration difficult. Commentators
often refer to the collective spirit of the
Japanese. I witnessed this in action. At
3pm, every day, soothing music filied the
room and people would stop what they
were
doing, stand up, stretching their
arms and go through a routlne of exerci-
ses. They were not in the least self-consci-
ous about
it. Managers and office ladies,
even visiting businessmen, took part,
bobbing up and down behind their ta–
bles and Computers. Many's the smile I
exchanged with colleagues as our eyes
met across the office before sinking out
of sight.
When 1 add up
all my stays in Germany,
both long and short, voluntary and com-
pulsory (18 months disguised as a sol-
dier)
1
find it amounts
to
three years, time
enough to get used to the German 'Art
und Weise' you might think, but l'm sure
I go on making 'faux pas'. One of my
early ones was to präsent the wife of one
of my German friends with a bunch of red
carnations when I arrived for dinner
Another time I started to cross the road
when the pedestrian traffic light was red.
There were no cars in sight, but there was
a policeman on duty Deeply shocked, he
blew his whistle and waved me back to
the pavement. And
I
am never sure whe–
ther I am causing offence when I cut my
potatoes with a knife...
Having been in dose contact with sever-
al different cultures,
I
have come to one
or two tentative conclusions. One is that
a culture doesn't necessarily make life
easy for people; in fact, it can be extreme-
ly inconvenient. Young Ugandan men,
for example, may have to plunge into
debt for years so that they can buy enou–
gh cows to pay the bride-price to their
fathers-in-law. The lapanese have social
obligations that many may despise but
which they nevertheless carry out. On a
certain day in the year all female secreta-
ries are expected to present boxes of
chocolates to their bosses. They may not
like their boss, but not to give him choco–
lates would be
Seen
as an insult. Howe–
ver, this is a trivial inconvenience compa-
red with a culture that used to bind the
feet of girls so that when they grew up
they took - they had to take those little
steps so attractive to men. The fate of
thoseChinesewomen'sIndiansisterswas
even worse. Surely nothing could
be
more
inconvenient for a woman than to be
expected to throw herseif on her
husband's funeral pyre! My second con-
clusion is that you can't learn everything
about a foreign culture and that you are
bound to make mistakes sooner or later
That doesn't really matter so long as you
show that you are interested in the way
the others do things, make some effort to
speak their language, and leave them
with the idea that you do, despite your
own bizarre behaviour, belong to the
same human race.
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Zuordnung CM-Themen-Tableau
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