My Research: Japanese Business Manner Training

The research I am conducting in Japan focuses on language ideologies and the language socialization of young adults as they move into the workforce. In Japan, the transition from college student to “new company employee” is seen as a major life stage which culminates in one’s development as a mature adult. Training in formal Japanese speech styles is an important aspect of this transition because college students are seen as ill-prepared for the behaviors and language use that are expected in the business world. Many companies provide new employees with several days of training in “business manners” covering everything from how to bow and present one’s business card to how to answer the telephone.

My research project is ethnographic study of such business manner and speech training. The methodology involves participant observation of one or two-day business manner training conducted by companies that specialize in workforce development training. I have participated in two of these courses as a student and have been able to observe and record three additional classes. Some of these training sessions are for employees of a specific company while others are “open seminars” attended by employees of a variety of different companies. I have also been able to interview several instructors and people responsible for course development. All together, I have been able to gather information on the courses offered by seven different training companies.

Despite the rhetoric of discontinuity between the roles of “student” and “member of society,” much of what is covered in these courses, from group greetings to the emphasis on proper attire, is grounded in the trainees’ prior educational experiences. Trainees are videotaped giving a one-minute self-introduction followed by a critique from the trainers on everything from hairstyles and posture to language use. Rather than learning entirely new speech patterns, the focus of the course is on eradicating forms viewed as slang, vulgar, or incorrect. Trainees are critiqued on their word choice, intonation, and use of incorrect honorific forms. As in traditional Japanese arts, the focus throughout is on learning and imitating the correct form. Awareness of deviations becomes the basis for setting individual self-improvement goals. The courses draw on and reproduce familiar cultural practices at the same time that they attempt to transform students into idealized company employees.

As another aspect of this study, I have also enrolled in a three-month public speaking class at a “Speech Center” that trains people in how to give effective speeches. This class has proved to be a rich source of data on Japanese ideologies of language and human relationships. For example, the first class was a lecture on how greetings contribute to good human relationships. The motto of the Speech Center is “Before there are words, there is the heart. After the words, there is action,” and their goal is not only to produce effective speakers, but to help participants develop a more “bright” and sincere heart.

Participants practice giving three-minute speeches in which they use their own observations and experiences to draw out a moral theme which becomes the thesis of the speech. They are assigned to prepare speeches describing how they have put the speech center’s teachings into practice through engaging in positive thinking, cheerfully greeting their coworkers and family members, and so on. In the process of learning and practicing effective speaking techniques, they also learn to produce a narrative of self-improvement showing how their behavior and attitudes have changed as a result of the speech center’s teachings.
One aspect that intrigues me about the teachings of both the speech center and the business manner classes is the relationship between form and feeling, kokoro (the heart) and kihon (the standard forms). In both types of training, a great deal of emphasis is placed on exact details of form such as how to bow correctly, and yet there is also a message in both contexts that the form is valueless unless it is suffused with feeling. It is no good simply saying the correct phrase unless you sound like you mean it. Rather than a tension between form and feeling , the idea is that using the correct form is what enables one to best express sincere feeling. Of course, this presumes that the feelings that one wants to express are the socially normative or approved ones, and it allows no avenue to critique or change existing social systems. I am interested in exploring the techniques used in both types of courses to motivate the students to put these teachings into practice.

A Weekend of Festivals

Last week was Golden Week, a series of three holidays in a row when virtually the entire country takes a vacation (except for those unlucky enough to work in hotels or other tourist industries). We went to visit our friends the Fujis in Kanazawa which is on the Japan Sea side of the islands. About eight years ago, the husband was transferred from Tokyo to Kanazawa, but the wife continued her job in Tokyo, and she flies out to visit him every weekend. This is a fairly common situation in Japan, except for the part about getting together every weekend which most of the Fujis’ co-workers feel is rather excessive.

The Fujis took us to spend the weekend on the Noto Peninsula. It’s a relatively undeveloped and less traveled area by Japanese standards and there were lots of picturesque farm houses and rice paddies tucked away in the mountains and scenic drives along the coast. The azaleas were in bloom and wisteria was growing wild in the mountains. This was particularly special because “Fuji” is the Japanese word for wisteria. Mrs. Fuji, who loves to wear kimono, wore a kimono with a wisteria design on it to fit the season.

We stayed at two different minshuku. A minshuku is sort of the equivalent of a Bed-and-Breakfast except that they generally serve dinner as well. Many of them are well known for their cuisine and it’s a good chance to sample regional dishes. It’s a very fun way to get a feel for traditional Japanese lifestyles, but you have to be prepared to eat and sleep on the floor, share your bath with strangers of the same sex, and eat fish, rice, and tofu for breakfast (both of the places we stayed at were very proud of their local, homemade tofu). My main problem as I get older is that my body just can’t take all of the sitting on cushions with no chairs.

We also got to see several small local festivals. The first minshuku we stayed at was in a tiny little village and the owner mentioned that they were having their local festival that night and would we like to attend? For a 250 yen donation (about $2.50) we could also buy a strip of paper to write a prayer to the god. So after dinner, we went down to a small, oddly shaped rock by the side of the road where they were doing the ritual. There were about thirty people there of whom probably about half were villagers and the rest were guests staying at various B&B’s nearby. The minshuku owner was there handing out red paper lanterns with candles inside and there was a priest standing in front of the altar and chanting something. After awhile, they lit a small bonfire, and then one of the priests stepped forward and started reading the prayers aloud from the strips of paper and then handing them to another man to place them on the fire to release the prayers to the gods. Most Japanese festivals have become tourist attractions and there was something special about this small group of people doing this unpretentious festival just for themselves (even if they did allow outsiders to attend).

The other two festivals we went to were bigger but still intimate enough to have a local feel to them. One was in Nanao City and consisted of three model ships being pulled through the streets with ropes. A number of the local businesses also displayed small models of the Tenjin god (see photo above). Tenjin was an eighth century scholar who was deified after his death and became the god of learning and scholarship. Every year thousands of Japanese visit his shrines to pray for success in getting into college. We asked about the history of this local Tenjin festival and were told that it had just started the year before! Apparently the tradition was to display the Tenjin god as part of the New Year’s celebrations, but then someone got the idea that since they had all these tourists coming into town for the boat festival, why not display the Tenjin gods as well (and maybe make some extra sales off of the tourists coming in to your store to see the Tenjin statues).

One of the shops sold Buddhist altars. Many Japanese homes have a Buddhist altar where they pray to the spirits of their deceased relatives (whom many Japanese believe become buddhas or gods after their death). The altars are like tall cupboards or wardrobes and they are truly works of art--covered with lacquer ware and carving and gold leaf. So we stepped inside just to admire the artwork, and the owner came over and started chatting with us. She said that she had heard that Americans don’t have the custom of having household altars to the dead and there was something she had always wondered about. “What do Americans do when they want to pray? How do they remember their dead?” I told her that Americans go to church to pray or sometimes visit the graves of their deceased relatives (which is something Japanese also do on an annual basis), but it was a question I’d never thought about before. Of course, many Americans do pray at home too, but we don’t usually have a dedicated religious space within the home the way Japanese do. It was one of those interesting cross-cultural moments.

So it was a lot of good food and fun festivals and we also got to sample some locally brewed sake and bought a small bottle to bring home.

March in Tsukuba

We went out for lunch today at the fancy hotel at the town center. You can see our two lunches above. When Americans think of Japanese food, they often think of things like sushi, but this is another form of traditional Japanese cuisine; lots of small bits of food carefully chosen and arranged to create a mélange of shape, color, taste, and texture. If you go at dinner time, this kind of food usually starts around US $50 and goes up from there, but for lunch these two meals cost about $18 and $23 respectively. I had the seasonal “cherry blossom special” and if you look at the picture you can see a twig with cherry blossoms arranged as part of the meal. Wes’s rice (in the other photo) was also arranged in the shape of a cherry blossom. Very elegant with all the waitresses in kimono.

As we were paying, the head waiter complimented me on my Japanese and asked how long I had been in Japan. I explained that I had previously spent two years living in Iwate Prefecture. He said that he himself was from Miyagi Prefecture (just south of Iwate). At that point I noticed something interesting. There are several different ways to say the pronoun “I” in Japanese with varying levels of politeness and familiarity. Up until that point, in his role as waiter, he had been using extremely polite Japanese. But when he said he was from Miyagi, he used a more informal pronoun, momentarily stepping out of his role as head waiter to converse on a more personal level. It was a perfect example of the kind of shifting between styles that I am here to study.

After lunch I went to the university to print out some things. (We didn’t bring a printer with us, so I have to go to campus whenever I want to print something.) As it turned out, it was graduation and the campus was filled with young men in suits and women wearing brightly colored kimonos and hakama. A hakama is a sort of a split, pleated skirt, usually in dark blue or maroon. In the US, they are used in some martial arts such as aikido. In Japan, they are associated with scholarship more generally and are the standard thing for women to wear at their graduation, sort of the equivalent of our cap and gown. So there were groups of graduates all around campus holding bouquets of flowers and having their picture taken together holding their diplomas. The odd thing was that there were no crowds of proud parents. But when I got to the bus stop to go home, I found all the parents apparently going home separately from the graduates.

Plum Blossom Season

It’s spring in Tsukuba. The crocuses and daffodils are coming out and the plum trees are blossoming in delicate clouds of pink and white. This is the season when the Japanese like to engage in “flower viewing,” having a picnic and getting drunk under the flowering trees.

Last week we went to see Kairakuen Park which is famous for its plum blossoms. On the weekends during the plum blossom season, the trains even make a special stop right in front of the garden. Since we went on a Thursday, we had to take a bus from the station, but at least the park was only moderately crowded rather than jam-packed. There is an area at the top of the bluffs with literally hundreds of different varieties of plum trees. In some ways it’s not that attractive because there’s too much of the same thing with no contrast, although it does have a spectacular impact from a distance. In the lower part of the park the plum trees are more mixed in with other trees and it was, to our minds, more attractive. There was also a nice bamboo grove, and there’s an area where they’ve planted beds of crocus in between the plum trees which makes a nice picnic area. We walked back to the train station along a small lake and saw a number of black swans resting on or preparing their nests.

After the plum blossoms come the cherry blossoms. They are a bit larger and showier, but also more fragile, easily lost in a strong wind. For the Japanese, cherry blossoms symbolize the bittersweet beauty of the ephemeral. During WWII, cherry blossoms were associated with the suicide pilots because their lives were cut short while they were still in the bloom of youth. Today, cherry blossoms are also associated with new beginnings. The Japanese school year ends in March and starts in April. So young children begin school and teenagers enter college in the season of the cherry blossoms. Because most college students are recruited during their senior year, cherry blossom season is also the time when new recruits are entering Japanese companies. Throughout the city one can see young adults dressed in black business suits. (Not navy blue. Not grey pinstripe. Only solid black will do for the company-entering rituals.) Even the retailers get into the spirit of the season with plastic displays of cherry blossoms advertising Coca-Cola or this week’s special. It’s spring in Tsukuba!

How to Bow

What's with the owls? The owl is the symbol or mascot for Tsukuba City. There's a park with lots of different owl statues.

In my discussion of the hazards of fieldwork, I forgot to mention the earthquakes. We've had several small tremblers since we've been here. They often wake us up at night. The whole apartment shakes for about 30 seconds, and then it's over.

I've been learning more about bowing. One of the first things a foreigner notices in Japan is the ubiquitous bowing. Pretty soon you find that you are also bowing at every opportunity, even on the telephone where no one can see you. But there are bows and there are bows. As I am learning in my Business Manners classes, even the Japanese, who have been bowing their whole lives, do not always bow “correctly”.

The first thing they tell you in these classes is that there are three levels of bow: the fifteen degree bow, the thirty degree bow, and the forty-five degree bow. Differing phrases and differing situations call for different degrees of bow and the lower the bow, the longer you should stay down. This has always been a problem for me. I would bow, come partway up, look around and realize that I was the only one standing up, and immediately go back down again, sort of bobbing up and down. It’s something of a relief to discover that it’s not just me; a lot of Japanese make exactly the same mistake. They taught us to go down and then count to three before coming back up.

Another mistake that people make is to start to bow before they have finished saying “thank you,” or “good morning,” etc. You should never bow until you have finished speaking.

The final mistake is that people have a tendency to look down at the floor so that their heads sag forward and ruin the smooth line of the bow. For a shallow, fifteen degree bow, you should look at the ground about three meters (yards) in front of you and that will keep your head in a line with your body. For a thirty degree bow, look two meters ahead, etc. If you feel like your rear end is sticking out and there’s a pole up your back, you’re doing it correctly.

"You Speak Japanese So Well"

One of the things that regularly happens shortly into my first conversation with anyone Japanese is that they will comment on how well I speak Japanese. Unfortunately this has less to do with my competence than with the low level of their expectations. For example, one day I was visiting a garden with a friend and I walked up to the gate and said, “Two tickets please.” The gate keeper immediately responded, “Oh, your Japanese is so good.” “Two tickets please” is not exactly War and Peace, but because people don’t expect foreigners to speak Japanese at all, even a minimal level of competence is considered astonishing. As the old saying puts it, “The amazing thing is not how well the bear dances, but that it can dance at all.”

The other part of this is that many Japanese are extremely insecure about their ability to speak English. Even though English is a required subject for six years, many Japanese have a very low level of speaking competence. When they see a white person, they immediately assume that they are going to have to produce some of the English that they haven’t studied since high school and go into a panic. When it turns out that the foreigner is in fact able to order a bowl of today’s special “chanko nabe” in Japanese, there is a huge flood of relief. I have actually had waitresses tell me how nervous they were when I walked into the restaurant and how relieved they were to find out I could speak Japanese.

I can’t help but notice the difference from the United States where people often assume that foreigners can and should speak flawless English. Even when I use English in public with Wes or other friends, I have never had anyone here say, “This is Japan. You should be speaking Japanese.” Both Japanese and Americans are (generally speaking) pretty bad about learning foreign languages, but at least the Japanese blame themselves rather than the foreigners.

The other thing that happens is that people tell me that my Japanese is “beautiful” or “correct.” Now this is simply ridiculous. I know that I still make mistakes, and I sometimes get so tangled up that my meaning doesn’t get across at all. Now that I am doing research on “business manner” courses , I think I understand it a bit better. One purpose of these courses is to eradicate from people’s speech certain common features that are viewed as slang, vulgar, or incorrect. Simply because I learned Japanese in an academic setting, I’m unlikely to use slang or whatever common patterns are currently arousing the ire of the language purists. To put it in American terms, you might expect foreigners to have an accent or be hard to understand, but they probably won’t pepper their speech with the word “like” every ten seconds. So, somewhat ironically, I end up being held up to young Japanese as a model for how they should speak. After all, if the foreigner can speak Japanese so beautifully, why can’t they?

The Hazards of Fieldwork

I have to admit that I have it easy compared to a lot of anthropologists. I don’t have to worry about malaria, clean drinking water, or getting bitten by a poisonous snake miles from the nearest hospital.

Instead the greatest hazard of my fieldwork is simply finding places in Tokyo. Most Japanese streets do not have names. And buildings are numbered in the order that they were built, so number 17 may be right next to number 67. As a result, addresses are pretty worthless (I’m actually amazed that the Japanese postal service manages to deliver mail so efficiently). Most people rely on maps and most businesses will have a map posted on their website showing how to get there from the nearest train or subway station. The catch, particularly at the larger stations, is to make sure you go out the correct exit. If you exit from the Shinjuku Station West Exit when you were supposed to go out the Central West Exit, you will never find the landmarks on the map. I got turned around like that one time and spent half an hour wandering around before I realized I was on completely the wrong end of the station. One of the landmarks on the map was a MacDonald’s, and I found a MacDonald’s. Only it turned out to be the wrong MacDonald’s. Luckily there are police boxes scattered throughout the city and a major part of their job is providing directions to people who are lost.

Unfortunately the research I’m doing now involves making lots of visits to businesses where I’ve never been before, and I’ve never had much of a sense of direction to begin with. So far I’ve only been late to one appointment, but the concern about whether I will be able to find where I’m going always adds just a little bit of extra nervousness. I usually end up either rushing to get there or arriving half an hour early and having to find a coffee shop or wander around window shopping until it’s time for the appointment. But at least there are no snakes.