Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

I have no silver bullet to provide companies looking to enter the Japanese market.  However, as someone who has worked here for a little over 4 years, I've learned a lot about my "ancestry" and just in general how to survive or deal in business situations here.  Naturally, there are probably hundreds of books written on this subject, but I would like to provide various insight in my experience here, especially from that of someone working in IT in a finance department and who has tons of contacts and friends here in Tokyo:

- Relationships are everything.  Ever wonder why a meishi (business card) is so important?  It's because that identifies the person you are working with.  It identifies their position in their company, with you and within society.
- Japan is a hierarchical society/culture.  This can be attributed all the way back, even before the Samurai periods and such.  This is a culture based on levels from peasants/serfs towards emperors and such.  The mindset has never really changed, despite the elimination of real power from the emperor towards the parliament.  When you go to work, you're expected to be unquestioningly obedient to your superiors.  This is called the kohai-senpai relationship.  It does not matter if you believe or even in truth know more than your superiors.  You must respect and obey them at all cost.
- Respect elders.  The old rule this country, unfortunately.  They are a social disease in a sense because they continue to reign their power, but retain the old mindset that keeps Japan trapped in some ways with invalidated, outdated social doctrine.  These people don't retire but should and can hurt your business if you let them in.
- Language is more than just communication.  It's a significance of relationships and a key pride of the culture in Japan.  Japan suffers fromt he sin of pride (among others) and this is one area where they won't relinquish, especially in the global world.  Certainly, other countries face similar issues (America for instance has always had battles in school for enforcing English).  That said, this is an extremely sensitive issue.  On top of that, the method of speaking such as using keigo and kenjogo expresses relationships and hierarchies and thus a person's place in society.  While foreigners are excused from being forced into this, it still is not looked favorably by the Japanese.  After all, you are being called a "foreigner," not a guest.
- The pokerface syndrome.  Japanese are notorious for being two faced.  They hide what they really feel and express things subtly.  This is one of the hardest things for foreigners to really understand about Japanese society.  It becomes impossible to read the Japanese since they are not open.  However, only experience reveals how to handle the Japanese with their signs.  Just trying to get a woman in bed can be a daunting task since what they want might not be what you're willing to give.
- Japan as a passive-aggressive society.  Japan likes to express themselves as a "peaceful" nation.  That is true in the sense that they outlaw guns and want to prohibit military presence. However, internally, they are constantly plotting, not just as a country, but against each other and everyone.  It's just their nature.  You do not know what they really want to do until it's too late.  They don't show their animosity, but express it through subtle jabs.  For instance, people will do nothing, approve of the action by their superiors, then lay blame to others for not following up.  You might compare this art to the art of ninjitsu because of how stealthy people behave.  But people here are truly vicious.  You just won't know it until you're affected personally.
- The Japanese office.  I think the notion of the Japanese office is a plight in society. It's a construct of undeniable inefficiency.  Yet it somehow works in the minds of Japanese.  What is the Japanese office?  The above mentioned characteristics with the additions of incredible loads of bureaucracy, "kakunindo" or the constant check/confirmation to avoid blame/responsibility, the long hours, the lack of work/life balance, the nonsense business attire, the non-expressive attitudes of people, the women who manuever their careers through sleeping with their bosses, the emphasis on relations rather than real results, etc.  If you ever go to Japan to do business, make sure you clean house whenever this situation arises.   Even if it cost your company thousands of dollars per person, it's better than the eventually loss of the branch.
- You need to have a native be owner of the office.  This seems to be the real killer for companies in Japan that try to migrate over.  I've seen companies holding duo positions where the Japanese side might be owned by 40-50%+.  This presents a huge problem in terms of identity for the company as their would be a natural inclination to assert the Japanese office into the company.  At that point, you've lost your branch to your partner and will get into constant political battles with no end in sight.
- If you do want to partner up with a company, you need to improve your relations with that company.  Straight one-to-one business that I've seen can hurt a business, especially those inexperienced with the Japanese side.  For instance, I saw one company that was attempting to get some sort of alliance with NTT.  However, NTT was extremely slow to react.  The problem stated was the so-called stereotype of the Japanese being slow to respond.  Truthfully, that's not the case.  The problem was that the company attempting to form the relationship with NTT was quite small and not well known.  NTT had strength in that relationship and probably felt that the cost-benefit for putting more effort into that relationship was not enough.  For that company to succeed, the key ingredient was that the company needed to invest in the salesmen that came from NTT.  In other words, they needed to take those salesmen to Las Vegas, get them dead drunk, purchase a gorgeous hooker (I'm NOT joking), and play golf and even lose to the salesmen.  Why?  Because those salesmen need to feel something special on a personal level to arrange that type of commitment from the company.  You want quick results with a large Japanese company?  Do my recommended approach.
- Avoid letting any Japanese software vendor to take charge of your local branch's IT.  I've seen many Japanese software vendors and have been extremely disappointed with their results.  Despite another stereotype of Japanese people being technogeeks (cellphones, electronics), the truth is that Japan's education in computers, especially software is quite lacking.  I think people are more on just the hardware level where things like clock speeds, memory, etc. can be quantitatively measured.  However, at the software level, as I stated before, software is a heavy philosophy.  The Japanese do not understand the same type of philosophy, nor view programming as an art, and lack the necessary English skills to really keep up with the trends in terms of publications to be effective in this realm. 
- Japanese are extremely demanding.  I've mentioned before how Japanese remind me of small children constantly opening their mouths, waiting to be fed.  Service in Japan is always superior to many countries.  However, when you're on the side of the people providing the service, that expectation needs to be met as well.  Japanese tend to be extremely detail oriented, especially at the cost of looking at the overall picture, and focusing on areas that have no functional benefit.  That leads me to my next point.
- The Japanese are mostly superficial, believing in the image above all else.  Go to theories on Jean Baudrillard who wrote up many essays describing the simulcra.  The Japanese are incredibly fascinated by images more than reality.  Disneyland is a popular place just as Baudrillard compared it as what most think is the symbol of American-ism.  Women here follow fashion trends and are heavily influenced over  ads.  Tokyo is nothing but one ad after another.  Go to the subway and see how many ads pelt you.  Again, everything here is image, image, image.  This is a society that lives in a world of simulation, not reality.
- Creativity is not valued, but copying is worshipped.  Again, this goes back to my statement on the image and its role in society here.  People will never create something on their own, but they will attempt to make something existing better.  If this happens, you are praised.  But I think that they are incapable of making the web better.  This is something that they do not and cannot push the boundaries on based on my experience.
- Critical thinking has no value and is in fact a threat to society.  There is something called "Common sense" here.  But it is not what a typical American would call common sense.  For instance, my friend told me a story where her bike was chained up because her friend had accidentally forgotten the key to the lock.  So the friend hammered on the lock until it was finally broken.  I think the friend's rationale (if you call it that) was to avoid humiliation and took it upon herself to amend the problem and save face.
- Humiliation and shame are considered the ultimate sin here.  If you want to humble a Japanese person, shame them in front of everyone.  One of the most pathetic yet surprisingly gratifying experiences a person can have here is witnessing someone bow and say, "Moshiwakearimasen!!!"  That implies that nothing was able to be done and that some extreme cost had been incurred and caused by that person.  No one here wants to accept such responsibilities, hence why they constantly are in the process of checking, double checking, and triple checking since critically thinking about a problem rather than handing the issue to a superior is far more  risky for the individual here.

This is a very long piece.  Hope you enjoy it!  And good luck trying to utilize my thoughts here!  I hope to add to it!