Business Guide to Japan: A Quick Guide to Opening Doors and Closing Deals

Conducting business in Japan: a delicate and valuable skill is explained by a true master of Japanese culture.

Not only is Japan the world's third largest economy, it is a global center for design for non–Japanese businesses looking to expand into international markets.

But business people from outside Japan quickly discover that doing business in Japan is unlike anything they've experienced before. They find Japanese business etiquette and culture both highly regimented and maddeningly impenetrable—making it difficult to identify, much less approach, key decision–makers, or to bring negotiations to a successful close.

Japanologist Boye Lafayette De Mente explains the key aspects of Japanese business practices and protocols with specific advice for approaching and engaging with Japanese executives, their staffs, and their organizations.

Business Guide to Japan offers yo invaluable insights into how to unravel the complicated maze of business bureaucracy, interpret verbal and written messages from your contacts, and create the critical social "comfort zone" necessary for working with Japanese companies. Doing business with the Japanese can be both challenging and rewarding, and the Business Guide to Japan offers you precise guidelines for success.

Boye Lafayette De Mente has been involved with Japan, China, and Korea since the late 1940s as a member of a U.S. intelligence agency, student, trade journalist, editor, and author working out of Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, and Singapore. He is a graduate of Jochi University in Tokyo and The American Institute for Foreign Trade (now Thunderbird: The School of Global Management). His 70-plus books include Instant Japanese, and Japan Unmasked.