JAPANESE WORK CULTURE
Whether JET is your first job, or your sea-change, the Japanese work culture is quite puzzling to the western world. Nonetheless, to ease your transition we've provided an introduction to how to understand the work culture, and some suggestions as to how to navigate your way around!
Understanding Japanese Society In The Workplace
Meshing with the Japanese social structure and societal norms (especially in the workplace) is an often understated problem foreign workers have in Japan. This is for a number of reasons but the main one is that many foreigners coming to Japan lack the language/cultural knowledge to understand what is really going at the workplace. Because of this lack of understanding, many foreign workers like ALTs often don’t realize what actions either cause trouble for others or come off negatively in Japanese culture.
To this end, we would like to outline a few basic problems that may occur in the workplace as well as a few things that foreigners do that may don’t mesh with Japanese corporate culture. When in doubt, a good rule of thumb is to try not to stand out, but here are some more salient points on some things you can do to fit in and work well with others in your workplace.
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To begin, here are a few habits that some foreigners have that can come off as rude or jarring in the Japanese workplace.
01.
Don't put your hands in your pockets at work. A few ALTs have already been told to stop after already doing this for months. It is seen as rude and unprofessional in the work environment in Japan.
03.
Don’t be late. If you are late once in a while and have a good reason it won’t be the end of the world. However, if it happens too often it is also one of the easiest ways to lose good will with your co-workers and employer so try and make sure it only happens rarely.
02.
Don’t whistle. In Japanese society whistling while you work is seen as you not taking your work seriously.
04.
Dress tidily. Your fashion is very dependent on where you work and how the others around you dress, but no matter what you are wearing, make sure you look neat and tidy in your gear. Japanese people are never direct but they always observe and pay close attention to those around them.
Japanese Society and Working Environment
In Japanese culture, people often don’t say directly what they think to one another. This emphasis on maintaining the politeness in the work environment often means that small to mid-level transgressions (especially by foreigners) are often not mentioned or brought up to the person directly. This is where the big disconnect for foreigners often occurs. Most foreigners think that if something they did wrong wasn’t brought up, then it either wasn’t an issue, or nobody noticed. The reality is usually just the opposite. Japanese culture values politeness, and keeping the peace at work, so if you do something wrong, people are disincentivised to talk to you about it in a clear and concise manner. They might say subtle hints to you about it instead but these can also be mistaken if you aren’t aware of what they actually mean.
The following example is one that has been recounted to me by a former CIR who was asked how to solve the following workplace situation.
A foreign employee was late due to slow buses during the winter time. Her job wasn’t time sensitive, and she wasn’t confronted about it in the beginning, and none of her co-workers mentioned anything to her. She started thinking that it was more or less alright to be late since her co-workers didn’t seem to mind and start coming in late more often. After multiple weeks passing with the employee coming in 15-25 minutes late twice or so a week, the co-workers asked for help from a CIR about how to bring this up to their employee because they weren’t comfortable bringing this up to them face to face.
By the time is was properly brought up to the employee it had already been 3-4 weeks since this started happening and although the issue was fixed eventually, there was a needless amount of social capital and goodwill burned for essentially no reason.
What seems like using the fact that you are a foreigner to bend the rules may in reality be slowly putting a social gap between you and everyone else in your work place. People just won’t tell you about it until they feel they absolutely have to and at that point the damage is already done.
As an ALT or CIR you will inevitably make some social or workplace faux-pas and so the goal should not be perfection, but rather to build good will towards yourself and limit the amount of effort and exceptions people need to make on your behalf. Trying to follow the example of your co-workers set as well as make efforts to participate in work culture, and positively reinforce when people put in effort on your behalf are good ways to help you get along with your co-workers regardless of your ability to understand Japanese or the culture.