While English-speaking business people, especially Americans, will easily say "yes" or "no" to any new offer or proposal, Japanese counterparts will not clearly state their opinion. Instead, they usually like to say something like "we would like to look into the matter". This vague answer often creates confusion for Americans or Europeans in finding out whether their Japanese counterparts are interested or not.

Why do Japanese behave this way?

For Japanese, the most important thing, or at least what they would like to emphasize, is their company. However, for English-speaking people, what they are actually doing matters most to them. It is interesting that when any Japanese is asked what his or her job is, the usual answer is that he or she works for "Sony", "Toshiba" or "Hitachi". They usually will not say that they are sales persons or engineers.

The second reason is that while business practice is rather individual-oriented or at least any business person can freely express his or her personal views in American or European companies, Japanese business will usually be conducted through team work and, due to the Japanese cultural background, Japanese business people are not in a position to freely express their views.

This way of doing business usually takes time to reach a decision. However, once any matter is decided through meetings and discussions, including "Nemawashi" or personal negotiation, everybody strongly sticks to that decision and therefore the decision may not be easily changed even if the responsible people for a project quit the company. In case any failure occurs, no single person will be responsible because the decision was made by the team.

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