Business in Japan: Names, Honorifics, Introductions

When I started writing these articles I said that the number one question I received was about business cards and how to present them. That is true in a dinner party setting where friends and other non-colleagues are really asking about Japan and Japanese companies generally, about the rituals and observance, about general behaviors, but, judging by the number of questions I received during my visit to Mobile World Congress this year, for real-life work colleagues dealing with real-life visits to Japan, there is a more pressing matter before you even get to the business card exchange.

There is a very real fear from a ‘western’ audience that one minor, unintentional slip in such a perceived ritualistic society, one wrong word to a senior manager for example, may create lasting relationship damage. The questions I get are “How do I introduce myself to Japanese colleagues?” “How do I avoid getting something wrong?” “How do I avoid threatening my career or the deal I’m working on?”

So, here are a few guidelines for newbie westerners when dealing with Japan-based colleagues that will hopefully alleviate fears.

1.??????Smile and Be Polite

This is true the whole world over.?Your dear old Grandma was 100% correct and then some: smile, use the good manners you were taught, listen and don’t interrupt. This is essential.?Manners and customs change by country, but everyone can tell when you are being polite, whichever system of manners you are using.?Explore the differences and learn; it’s fun. In Japan the differences in manners and customs are many, e.g. no pointing fingers - show the way with an open palm, but, as a westerner, you are clearly not Japanese so you will be forgiven your transgressions as long as you are human. Showing consideration and courtesy is appreciated.

As a practical exercise: get on the Metro or JR Yamanote line when you arrive in Tokyo and see what you notice that’s different. You will see behaviors that you perhaps wouldn’t see in other cities, (certainly not in Paris where I live or London where I’m from or Barcelona which I just visited) eg queuing to get on the train, no loud talking, no bags on the floor (germs!).?Try to follow what others are doing, adapt, notice things and question your own attitudes, don’t just blindly assume that what you normally do in your hometown is the accepted way to act.

2.??????You do not need to speak any Japanese

Most of the people you will deal with in the business setting will likely speak English to a greater or lesser extent, but levels vary of course.?Do not underestimate language issues and do check for understanding.?Those that are already working or living in a second language understand this through bitter experience.?

If you only speak one language and that language is English you may have to put the brakes on your speed of speech and turn down the complexity, by which I mean avoid cultural references, idiom, complex vocabulary, nuance and subtlety.?Be direct, with a smile. As a natural English speaker, the sheer practicality of doing this when you aren’t used to it can be problematic but adapting your level of language to your interlocuter is appreciated.?If you slow down too much there is a danger you will sound patronizing though, so err on side of too fast rather than too slow, and repeat if you have to. If you are asked to repeat something, try to use the same words as you used first time as it is most likely that your speed of speech was the problem rather than any words you actually used. In a second language, it is difficult to differentiate words some times.

True story: I was having lunch with French colleagues and trying to follow the conversation (in French) in a noisy restaurant at lunch, work banter, going back and forth, quite tricky to understand. One of my colleagues, talking about the UK, said to me (and I will write it as I heard it) "J'aime bien mon tipiton" (I really like my 'tipiton') to which I genuinely replied 'what is a 'tipiton'? And he looked at me kinda funny, like I was mocking him a little. Once he repeated it, and slowed down a little, I realized my mistake: he had actually said that he liked Monty Python which, in a French accent, sounds like 'Montee Peeton'. D'oh. Just repeat the same words, a little slower, and enunciate a little more clearly.

If you are feeling adventurous, you could start with ‘Ohaiyu gozaimasu’ (good morning) followed by ‘Watashi wa Robert desu’ ?(Hi, I’m Robert’) or even a ‘Hajimemashite’ (‘Nice to meet you’ – see pronunciation below: Ha-ji-me-ma-shi-te, the ending of which at speed sounds like …mashtay). Unless you are fluent, I’d recommend stopping there.?

?3.??????Should I bow?

If you are not Japanese, there is a very clear answer here – no, there is no need to bow. Unless you have attended the courses throughout your life on the when, how (precisely), why and sub-titled messages of bowing, I’ve always found that a smile and a handshake is perfectly acceptable for newbies and old hands alike.?

4.??????How to pronounce names

This question is very common.?In fact, once you’ve learned a couple of tricks, names and most Japanese words become very easy to pronounce for an English speaker. Pronunciation is very uniform, each syllable usually receives the same stress and there are few irregular pronunciations, unlike English which is littered with such problems and is nightmarish for foreigners to get to grips with, eg I am from Greenwich in London which is pronounced Grennidge or Grennitch, not Green Witch, but there is no way of knowing that just by looking at the word. The same sound in English can be spelled in a number of different ways – there is a linguist’s joke (well, not a laugh out loud joke) about the fictitious English word ghoti that can be pronounced ‘fish’ if you use the gh from enough, the o from women and the ti from nation. As an aside, I just read an interesting article on the BBC about a guy suffering from bad dyslexia in English, but not in Japanese: part of the problem diagnosis was exactly this issue, that English pronunciation is so varied.

But back to the plot, the first trick is to understand that Japanese spelling is a syllabary, not individual letters. To explain: what you see in English, eg the word Toyota, is a translation of the original Japanese.?In the original Japanese (at least in the Hiragana and Katakana writing scripts) it is one word of three characters/syllables – To -Yo -Ta and each of the syllables is always pronounced the same, whichever word it appears in.

In English, the word ‘Toyota’ appears as one word of six letters. So when we pronounce that word in English we usually say something like saying Toy-Yota, or even Toy-Yoda.?This is not exactly wrong, but neither is it 100% correct.?If you break it into its (Japanese) syllables it sounds like ‘To’ (like in toe, the things at the end of your feet) – ‘yo’ (like in yo-yo) – ‘ta’ (quite a short ‘a’ like in ‘tag’ rather than ‘tar’).?There are three syllables, not two.?To (pause) yo (pause, note yo not yoy) ta.?Say it slowly, like a chant To-yo-ta, then speed up To-yo-ta, To-yo-ta, Toyota.?At full speed it sounds *almost* the same in English but subtly different, right??Three distinct syllables.

Other examples? Tokyo is often pronounced in English as three syllables: toe – kee – yo, but in Japanese is *two* syllables: To-kyo.?

Now, the syllables that are available to you to write with in the English version of Japanese nearly all end with a vowel, so it is fairly easy to identify where the syllables start and end, eg Minamibayashi, which is one of the more daunting looking family names I’ve had to deal with, breaks down to Mi-Na-Mi-Ba-Ya-Shi.?Note …ba (like bah humbug!) so the ending is -ba-ya-shi, not -buy-yashi. Also note that, for the first syllable, ‘Mi' is pronounced like an English ‘me’ not ‘my’, (and 'hi' is like the English 'he' not 'high', so practise saying Asahi, the beer brand).

There are some further things to learn of course, but the above will get you through a lot and then you can be curious and ask questions about the rest.

True story: a few years ago, I had to direct a Japanese colleague to Chichester train station in the UK. The room was noisy, and he couldn’t get my pronunciation. He had never heard of Chichester before and was worried about remembering it to catch the train, so I wrote the Japanese character for Chi twice followed by a five-pointed star – chi-chi-star - and that worked!

5.??????Forenames, surnames, honorifics

I have mentioned honorifics before but it is worth repeating.?In English, to be polite and give some respect we use a title for people – Mr, Mrs, Ms, Dr and so on. In Japanese there are also a variety of these: collectively referred to as honorifics which are applied as a suffix at the end of a family name.?The only one you really need to know about at the beginning for business, the most famous and frequently used of these, is the -san suffix which roughly translates to Mr/Mrs/Ms level of respect.?You can look up on Wikipedia all about -sama, –kun, –chan, –sensei and other honorifics if you like and the intricacies of their use, but -san is the one you’ll really need to get right.

It is widely used, gender neutral (ie everyone is -san there is no difference for men, women or other) and very useful.?It is usually applied after a family name/surname, so Honma-san, Moribayashi-san, Shoji-san, Shimada-san, Arima-san, Sawada-san, (the NTT-astute among you will recognize all of these names, I’m sure!).?In terms of pronunciation, I may have this wrong, but the ‘a’ sound is marginally longer than the short ‘a’ in English, ie it sounds a little more like sahn than the san in sand.

There are a few things to note about its usage, to get you through.

a. If in doubt, use -san, especially as a newbie. It is much better to give respect than accidentally cause offence by omitting it.??Showing consideration and respect, and being seen to be showing consideration and respect, is important.

b. Don’t refer to yourself as -san in normal conversation, it is for you to use to show respect to others.

c. As you get more experience, in some cases you may find that the -san can be dropped if the setting is informal, your level in the hierarchy is similar and you are familiar with someone. This happens with colleagues of similar ages and levels in the hierarchy, but rarely with people above you in the hierarchy - they are almost always (with some notable exceptions) -san all the time.?You will know when.

d. This one is a little more advanced and requires an understanding of the uchi/soto principle that I’ve written about in other articles where, in a meeting, you can be inside of groups and outside of other groups at the same time.?So, in a business meeting with a client ‘our’ group may be our company representatives (uchi/inside) and the client’s team is soto/outside.?In this setting you may notice people in our own team referring to other people in our team without the -san suffix, reserving the -san for the ‘soto’ team, to give respect.?As a newbie in this situation I would recommend calling everyone -san, don't try to navigate it, just be nice to everyone.

These days in English, especially in business, we tend to jump to the very familiar quite quickly and begin addressing each other by our given or first name – Hey Rob – and consequently it sounds almost awkward these days to hear myself referred to as Mr Steggles. In Japan, at least in our company, I am sometimes asked by Japanese colleagues at similar levels of hierarchy to use given names only rather than <surname>-san. You will notice this, as the signature on mails will just say <given name> signifying "It is OK to use just this name", or sometimes you are straight out asked to use, say, Yuzo or Yuko instead of the family name. Mostly this feels fine, but sometimes a little awkward I have to be honest; it depends how closely you work together; it is more difficult the higher the person is in the hierarchy! However, when you are then in a more formal situation with other people that don't know your colleague as well, you should revert to <family name> -san. There is also a kind of middle ground we see quite a lot using <given name>-san, eg Yuko-san or Yuzo-san: this seems OK amongst colleague groups I feel, but again, in a formal situation, an introduction, a client meeting, an email chain with parties outside the immediate group, you should probably err on the side of caution, consideration and respect by referring to your colleague as <family name>-san.

While we are on family names it is also helpful to know that lots of the components of Japanese family names are related to nature, geographical features or locations, often signifying where the family came from, a little like the class of family names in English that are locational e.g.?the former CEO of NTT Europe and now President and CEO of NTT West is Moribayashi-san: his name literally means Forest twice - Mori (森) has three tree symbols in it and Hayashi (Bayashi) (林) has two, so the second 'forest' is a different way of saying 'place with lots of trees', ie 'woods' or something similar in English), so he was often just known as Mori-san; I guess one forest is enough. It can also work backwards, so if your surname is something like 'Woods', you may find your Japanese colleagues calling you Mori-san – word play JP style! Others include (from japan-guide.com and other sites) mountain (yama), tree (ki), rice field (ta), island (shima), village (mura), bridge (hashi), between (naka), below (shita).

If asked to write my name in English it will always be in the format <given name> <family name>, ie Robert Steggles.?Between Japanese colleagues, at least in our company, the usual mode of address is to call each other by family name first and then, if further differentiation is required, add the given name.?I guess this why we would often see the former Japanese prime minister’s name written as both Abe Shinzo and Shinzo Abe in the English speaking press - confusion over which is the family name and which is the given name.

Following the above, you would expect that Japanese colleagues would refer to me, for example, as Steggles-san but no, usually we westerners use first names, so I’m Rob-san.?I guess it helps that Rob-san is much easier to pronounce than Steggles (Su-te-ga-ru-su -san). You should expect to be known as <your given name>-san.?

Most of the time this is fine but occasionally there is a given name that will cause difficulties in pronunciation – I’m thinking of a French colleague Aurelien – try saying that in Japanese.?You may have to agree a shortening, a variation, a nickname to avoid difficulty.

Another lovely true story.?I have a German colleague Dorit Kruse – I hope she won’t mind me telling this.?Japanese pronunciation of words often adds an -o or a -u at the end of words, because nearly all the syllables end with a vowel, and Dorit ends with a ‘t’ so in Japanese the word sounds … unfinished, hence adding an O or a U.?So Dorit sometimes gets called Dorito-san.

You may also sometimes hear of Japanese colleagues being given, or giving themselves, English first names ‘to make it easier for westerners.’?Though it is done to be helpful and some westerners do find it easier, I find this a little annoying, I have to admit, as it’s a third thing I have to remember along with the first name and family name.?Politeness dictates using the name the person was given or that they wish to be known by, so I like to figure out how to say a person's name correctly, rather than use a short-cut. With a third name, we can quickly get into a mini moral maze here which I tend to get out of with a smile and by using all the names: Mr Masayuki "MARK" Tsunoda -san, I am thinking of you as I write this!

As a further complication, at one time, five of my Japanese colleagues in one department all had the same surname – Yamashita (NB pronunciation sounds more like Ya-mash-ta than 'Yammer-sheet-a') - so nicknames were used to differentiate who we were referring to in various project meetings, eg Hironori Yamashita became known to us as ‘Yamahiro’ at that time, and is still known by that nickname today. You may run into him in NTT Holdings – please say Hi for me.

The other question that gets asked about given names is (with apologies to those that don't identify as male or female) which of the given names are for women and which for men? I’m not totally sure whether there is a fixed rule here but generally you can make an educated guess based on the endings of the names, for example, Naoko, Yumi, Chiemi and Yuko (all -ko or -mi) are female whereas Naoki, Yuki, Hiroshi and Kiyoshi are male. If unsure, it is perfectly acceptable to ask.

OK, so at this point we’ve smiled, said ‘Hello, Nice to meet you’, shaken hands, and worked out names.?There may well be an exchange of business cards next, which I covered in the first article in this series, so, for the next instalment, I'll cover your first business meeting in Japan.

Other posts in this series

1. The Business of Business Cards
2. Tips for Your First Tokyo Visit
3. What's it Like Working for a Japanese Company?
4. Let's Earthquake: A Lesson in Group Mentality
5. A Question of Seniority
6. Nemawashi: The Art of Getting Things Done