DEALING WITH JAPAN'S BUILT-IN CULTURAL OBSESSION WITH QUALITY

THERE are a number of elements in Japan’s culture that are unique to the Japanese—elements that make them different from other people, including Koreans and Chinese, their racial and cultural relatives.      This fundamental difference in the character of the Japanese can be attributed to the role that Shinto [Sheen-tohh] , “The Way of the Gods,” played in their lives until recent times.      Shinto is, in fact, a very sophisticated philosophy that incorporates the worship of nature in the tangible world and spirits in the invisible world—a phenomenon that has been common to mankind all over the world—but no other such nature-oriented society survived into modern times on the scale of the Japanese.      Japan’s Shinto-based culture developed and survived for so long because the country was isolated from all other influences expect for nearby Korea and China—and in the process of absorbing these cultural influences form their neighbors the Japanese Japanized them.       But the influence that China [generally via Korea] had on Japan was significant and across the board, including the arts and crafts and it was this area that gave birth to the Japanese obsession with quality.      The Japanese formalized and institutionalized the Chinese and Korean apprenticeship practice in all of the arts and crafts. Apprenticeship started early, generally under the age of ten, and lasted for twenty to forty or more years.     The apprenticeships of those who succeeded their masters generally lasted for more than thirty years, as it was common for men to retire from formal positions at around forty-two years of age.     As each generation passed, the standards of quality in the arts and crafts edged upward, and well before the end of the remarkable Heian era [793-1185 A.D.] the work of the masters and their star apprentices had achieved the level of fine arts.      To artists, craftsmen and the public in general it became natural for them to expect the highest possible quality in the products they made and purchased.  This level of quality was referred to as atarimae hinshitsu (ah-tah-ree-my heen-shee-tsuu) or “quality that is to be expected; that is normal; that is natural.”      Today’s younger Japanese are no longer overtly programmed in the atarimae hinshitsu mindset, but they naturally absorb a great deal of it as they grow up. Learning how to draw the complicated 1800-plus ideograms used to write their language plays a vital role in this programming.      Older Japanese, especially those born before 1960, still automatically expect a level of quality in the products they make and buy that can be disconcerting to Westerners—particularly to Americans who have been steeped in the “just good enough to get” by approach to quality.     I have seen whole batches of American-made shirts, blouses and other wearing apparel turned down by Japanese wholesale buyers because the labels had the ends of threads sticking out.      When American importers first began to flock to Japan [way back in the 1890s!] to get goods copied cheap, the Japanese referred to these items as “Yokohama Things”—meaning low-quality cheap products to be shipped out of the country from Yokohama that they themselves would not buy.      This piece of American-Japanese history was repeated soon after the end of the Pacific War in 1945, but that time the Japanese were smarter. By the mid-1950s they had begun establishing their own importing and wholesaling operations in the U.S. and by the mid-1960s had dramatically increased the quality of the goods they made for export. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.     Foreigners wanting to sell products [and services] in Japan should learn and use the atarimae hinshitsu phraseology in their initial presentations and in their sales approaches.  This will alert the Japanese that you understand their concern for quality and that you are also quality conscious on the atarimae hinshitsu level.       If you are not there yet, tell them that is the quality you intend to achieve...with their help. Copyright © 2009 by Boyé Lafayette De Mente ______________________________________ Boyé Lafayette De Mente is a graduate of Jōchi University in Tokyo and Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Arizona. He is the author of more than 50 books on the business practices, cultures and languages of China, Japan, Korea and Mexico. For a list and synopses of his books go to: www.boyedemente.com .

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