General Terms

These are the words used to describe workplace events, specific activities and their consequences, and the materials to do tasks. Since these words are short, there is no need of lengthy explaination. Here i would like to list out a few of the workplace terms along with their meaning.

棚卸　tanaoroshi

This is one of the frequently used words in factories & warehouses for taking stock of product count, checking the quality of products. The term when applied to everyday work, provides a clear picture of inefficient areas, tasks that need to be prioritised, and so on. The other word for this is visualizing tasks and workloads.

たたき台　Tatakidai

The term tatakidai refers to the tool/metal base on which blacksmiths pound hot metal to shape it. At work, the same word tatakidai is used to denote a draft, prototype, or a rough blueprint. The draft will serve as the foundation for further work in order to finalise a plan.

終日　shuujitsu

This term is commonly used at work to denote working hours or the time between clocking in and out.

五月雨式　samidareshiki

The word samidareshiki refers to “Early summer/May rain” that is intermittent. The same word is used to describe a situation in which you contact someone constantly. Usually a word of apology will go along this word in a sentence.

虎の巻　Toranomaki

This term can be traced back to an ancient Chinese text of military tactics. Because the secrets of tactics were mentioned in the Tiger volume of the book, it came to be known as Tora no maki, or the Tiger scroll. Nowadays, the Tiger scroll is an idiom that implies “Key” or “Book of knowledge”. The master text for a specific topic is known as the “Tora no Maki,” which refers to the traditional Japanese technique of writing texts on long scrolls. It is common to see the word Tora no maki at workplace or on the title of books. The word is commonly used for a text book, answer book, reference book, work handbook, guide book, and so on.

Business Practice Terms

These terms indicate a set of ideas, guidelines or ethics in order to bring about improvements in communication flow, risk assesment, problem resolution, quality and efficiency.

報連相　hourensou

In a workplace, having effective communication is vital to building relationships with trust, and for this reason hourensou is exemplified.
Hou-Ren-Sou is an abbreviation of three words: houkoku, renraku, and soudan – reporting, informing, and consulting. Funny enough, it sounds the same as the Japanese word for “spinach”. This method is employed by the great majority of organisations and is strongly embedded in the country’s working culture.

危険予知活動　kiken-yochi-katsudo

Kiken Yochi Katsudo translates to Hazarad Awareness Activities. It refers to the proactive process of identifying potential hazards or risks due to unsafe conditions or actions before they occur so that accidents or incidents at workplace can be prevented.

横展開　yokotenkai　|　水平展開　suiheitenkai

Yokotenkai or Suiheitenkai translates to “best practice sharing”. It is an essential part of long term success in a lean culture. Achieve a result, and then share the results, learn from it & adopt it wherever applicable, and immediately recreate and multiply the success.

ポカヨケ　pokayoke

Poka Yoke means “Mistake proofing” or avoiding inadverdent errors. It is utilised in both the manufacturing and service industries. Its purpose is to eliminate product/process defects by preventing, correcting, or drawing attention to human errors as they occur.

5S

Seiri, Seiton, Seiso, Seiketsu, and Shitsuke are the five Japanese words that stand for Sort, Set, Shine, Standardise, and Sustain. The essence of 5S can be summarized as : “Only what is needed, in its proper place, clean and ready for use”. Its simplicity, practical applicability, and visual nature makes it an easy methodology for all types of companies from manufacturing plants to offices.

Katakana Terms

Katakana is typically used to write foreign words and the names of foreign individuals and places. However, katakana is sometimes used to write words that can also be written in hiragana or kanji. This is to emphazise the kanji words or to bring about rhythm in a sentence. The following are some words that are commonly used at work in casual chat or in meetings.

テーマ・ネタ　Topic

This refers to the topic of discussion.

オンスケ　Onschedule　｜　リスケ　Reschedule

The original words in english are on schedule and reschedule. On schedule means the meeting or plan is on schedule. If a schedule change is required, the term reschedule will be used.

クレーム　Complaint

This refers to an opinion or requirement from a customer in case of dissatisfaction w.r.t a defective product or bad service. The customer can demand either improvements or necessary actions.

イラスト　Illustration

The original english word is illustration. An illustration is a visual portrayal of a text, concept, or process that is intended for use in print and digitally produced media.

エビデンス　evidence

The english meaning of this word is proof. At a Japanese workplace this term is used to keep a record of interactions such as meetings, correspondence, and so on that can be retrieved later on.

ブレスト　brainstorming

The English word brainstorming refers to a group creativity process for product planning, new business start-up, team development, and other purposes. Here, efforts are made to collect a list of ideas spontaneously given by its participants.

ヒヤリング　hearing

At Japanese workplace, this term refers to the process of obtaining information through meetings or other formal interactions.

Reference :

• Handy Japanese Proverbs & Idioms
• Popular Japanese Proverbs and Idioms on Self-Development
• Good to know rules for those employed in Japan
• Japanese Workplace Etiquette
• Japanese Work Culture

Necessity of moving to the Cloud

As mentioned in one of my previous blogs, the benefits of moving to the cloud are many. I would like to highlight a few of the major points here.

• Reduces opex, improves speed and agility of business operations, enhances business outcomes.
• Accelerates time to business value, improves ROI.
• Streamlines and enhances operational efficiency, lowers cost.
• Increases innovation by providing a platform for experimentation.
• Organizations with a global footprint particularly benefit by migrating to the cloud.

Cloud Deployment Models

In case of AWS, the deployment will be in either the private, public or the hybrid format. Please refer to the description of each of these models done in my earlier blog.

Common Workloads on Cloud

With a lot of positivities to look forward to, next is to know what are the workloads that the customers would want to run on the cloud. Below are a few of the examples.

• Run customer facing web applications that power eCommerce, mobile, gaming, social media and marketing websites.
• Create customer business applications to support the need of internal functions like the HR, finance, sales etc.
• Process big data and high performance computing workloads like medical, imaging, web analytics, BI, genome sequencing etc.
• Use AWS services that support backup, DR, archiving of business critical data to the cloud.

AWS Cloud Services

The Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud model has transformed the way cloud computing and storage infrastructure services are attained and administered. Because of this, most of the organizations have migrated their legacy on-premise processes and applications to the public cloud, avoiding the costs and effort that goes into tasks like backup, archiving and so on. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a leader in IaaS as mentioned by Gartner. It has the broadest of services to offer on the cloud with more than 175 services.
AWS offers a broad set of global cloud-based products including compute, storage, databases, analytics, networking, mobile, developer tools, management tools, IoT, security and enterprise applications.These services help organizations move faster, lower IT costs, and scale.

AWS Security and Compliance

Security and Compliance is a shared responsibility between AWS and the customer. This shared model can help relieve the customer’s operational burden as AWS operates, manages and controls the components from the host operating system and virtualization layer down to the physical security of the facilities in which the service operates. The customer assumes responsibility and management of the guest operating system, other associated application software as well as the configuration of the AWS provided security group firewall.

AWS responsibility “Security of the Cloud” – AWS is responsible for protecting the infrastructure that runs all of the services offered in the AWS Cloud. This infrastructure is composed of the hardware, software, networking, and facilities that run AWS Cloud services.
Customer responsibility “Security in the Cloud” – Customer responsibility will be determined by the AWS Cloud services that a customer selects. This determines the amount of configuration work the customer must perform as part of their security responsibilities. For example, customers that deploy an Amazon EC2 instance are responsible for management of the guest operating system (including updates and security patches), any application software or utilities installed by the customer on the instances, and the configuration of the AWS-provided firewall on each instance. 

AWS has the concept of a Region, which is a physical location around the world where we cluster data centers. We call each group of logical data centers an Availability Zone. Each AWS Region consists of multiple, isolated, and physically separate AZ’s within a geographic area. Whereas, Edge Location is the nearest Data Center from where contents can be fetched easily. Edge locations are used to provide low latency access to the data.

AWS customers focused on high availability can design their applications to run in multiple AZ’s to achieve even greater fault-tolerance. AWS infrastructure Regions meet the highest levels of security, compliance, and data protection.

AWS Products

The products offered by AWS are compute, storage, databases, security, management tools, networking, analytics, mobile, developer tools, IoT and enterprise applications. I will brief on a few of them as follows.

• Compute
  The services here can be used to develop, deploy, run and scale workloads on AWS cloud. The most important service in this section is the EC2 compute service. Unlike your local server, you can launch or shut down servers at any time. No up-front investment, no hardware maintenance, elastic or scalable, flexible and secure are some of the prominent features.
• Storage
  AWS provides low-cost data storage with highly durable, available, scalable and secure place for data. Amazon S3 is the major storage service on AWS. It is highly durable, uses scalable object storage with 99.99% availability and reliability. It is elastic, flexible, low cost and secure with data transfer over transport layer.
• Database
  Databases are purpose built for specific application use cases. DB instance is an isolated DB environment deployed in private network segments in the cloud. RDS provides API to create and manage one or more DB Instances. Amazon RDS is cost efficient and is easy to administer. It is reliable, elastic, fast and secure.
• Security
  AWS provides security services like encryption, access management and securing regulated workloads. AWS Identity and Access Management is a web service that enables AWS customers to manage users and user permissions in AWS. The service is targeted at organizations with multiple users or systems in the cloud that use AWS products such as Amazon EC2, Amazon SimpleDB, and the AWS Management Console. With IAM, you can centrally manage users, security credentials such as access keys, and permissions that control which AWS resources users can access.
• Management
  With AWS Management and Governance services, customers can have both innovation and control in one service. With AWS, customers can enable, provision, and operate their environment for both business agility and governance control. Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring service for AWS cloud resources such as Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon DynamoDB tables, and Amazon RDS DB and the applications you run on AWS. You can use Amazon CloudWatch to gain system-wide visibility into resource utilization, application performance, and operational health. You can use these insights to react and keep your application running smoothly.
• Networking
  AWS provides the Networking tools and resources that enable you to securely connect to the cloud and then isolate, control, and distribute your applications across EC2 compute resources and all other relevant services in AWS. Amazon VPC is the networking layer for Amazon EC2. Amazon Virtual Private Cloud enables you to launch AWS resources into a virtual network that you’ve defined. It also has the benefits of using the scalable infrastructure of AWS.

AWS Partner Network

The AWS Partner Network (APN) is the global partner program for technology and consulting businesses who leverage Amazon Web Services to build solutions and services for customers. The APN helps companies build, market, and sell their AWS offerings by providing valuable business, technical, and marketing support.

APN Technology Partners
APN Technology Partners provide hardware, connectivity services, or software solutions that are either hosted on, or integrated with, the AWS Cloud. Technology Partner products are often delivered as components to broader AWS customer solutions and can be delivered globally by Consulting Partners through AWS Marketplace, bundled solutions, or directly from APN Technology Partners.

APN Consulting Partners
APN Consulting Partners are professional services firms that help customers of all types and sizes design, architect, build, migrate, and manage their workloads and applications on AWS, accelerating their journey to the cloud. APN Consulting Partners often implement Technology Partner solutions in addition to the professional services they offer.

Partner Tiers

Becoming a Select Partner makes you eligible for a range of funding benefits and marketing opportunities to help you grow your customer base on AWS. As an Advanced Partner, you will be able to take advantage of a wealth of additional resources to continue to grow your customer base and move forward with innovation in your solutions. This is the highest achievable tier for APN Technology Partners . Partners at this level are striving to differentiate their business to AWS customers.

Under APN Consulting partner, the Select Partner and Advanced Partner tier benefits remain the same as above. However, there is an additional tier called the Premier Partner tier. On becoming a Premier Partner, you will be recognized as an industry leader who consistently pushes the boundaries of your AWS-based practices in one or more regions. You’ll be able to take advantage of a wealth of dedicated AWS resources to help you continue to raise the bar.

The APN is structured to be performance-based within the Select, Advanced, and Premier (for Consulting Partners) tiers. All APN Partners join the APN as Registered Partners by signing up and creating a Partner account.

Implementation of AWS at Customer place

Any new technology to be implemented at customer place goes through the Experimentation, Limited Use, Wide spread Use and the Corporate Standard phases. Similarly the journey of AWS customer’s across all verticals would involve the following stages;

• Development and Test
  In some enterprises, development and test environments account for more than 50% of the overall infrastructure. With AWS, organizations can experiment more with no CapEx, resource projects instantly, eliminate idle servers, maintain consistency across teams.
• True Production
  In this phase the value of cloud implementation become clear. AWS cloud can be used to develop applications faster, augment existing data center resources, multiple data centers for high availability, auto-scale up and down with demand, hardware upgrades with no downtime, easy global deployment.
• Mission Critical
  This is the phase during which the customer wants to move mission critical workloads to the cloud. To reach this stage the customer would have deeply invested in leveraging the benefits of cloud.
• All-in
  This is the phase during which the customer aims to continuously optimize their environment without any physical hardware. In this phase, organizations can see virtual elimination of IT CapEx, flexibility in resource assignments, time to market, zero hardware maintenance, multiple availability zone deployment.

During the initial implementation stage, partners can provide advisory, infrastructure design, readiness and health check services. As customers move workloads to the cloud, partners can provide migration services. In case of long term customer relationship, partners can provide managed services for cloud workloads. Overtime, partners can provide consulting services to innovate and expand client vision.

Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF)

The AWS Cloud Adoption Framework(CAF) helps organizations understand how adopting cloud transforms the way they will function. CAF begins by identifying the stakeholders that are critical to cloud adoption. It groups related stakeholders into 6 perspectives. The perspectives allows us to understand cloud adoption from these stakeholder’s point of view. The perspectives are as follows and can be grouped under 2 categories;

Outcome Based Account Management (OBAM)

OBAM is the process, tools, competencies, and dialogue architecture for initiating and solidifying AWS customer-obsessed relationships, fixated on the journey of transforming the seller-customer engagement into a lifelong strategic relationship. It consists of the following four stages that works in a cyclic pattern:

• Explore
  Preliminary discovery and value hypothesis creation.
• Engage
  Solidifying credibility, earning trust, qualification & delivery, initial value proposition. This involves initiate, expand and transform phases that may take 18+ months in total.
• Empathize
  Relationship building and persona-centric engagement.
• Enable
  Building out account value proposition & defining roles and responsibilities of AWS resources.

Cost Optimization with AWS

Cost optimization is a continual process of refinement and improvement of a system over its entire life cycle. The following processes are used to show cost saving to customers in order to build and operate cost-aware systems that achieve business outcomes while minimizing costs, allowing business to maximize its return on investment.

• Gather requirements
  Grasp of the current on-premise customer environment and their expectation from AWS.
• Map requirements to AWS services
  Once the customer needs are identified, mapping needs to be done with respect to AWS services. In the process of refining the requirements along with mapping, frequent meeting with the customer on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) , capacity and license assessment would be needed. The result would be a project plan with appropriate solution and service instance.
• Right size service choices
  Right size the service choices like region, instance type, storage to AWS pricing models based on customer requirement. Right sizing is using the lowest cost resource that still meets the technical specifications of a specific workload. You can right size iteratively by adjusting the size of resources to optimize for costs.
• Evaluate pricing models
  In AWS, there are a number of different purchasing models that allow customers to use services and resources in the most cost-effective way that suits their business needs.The models are On demand, Spot instances, Reserved instances etc.
• Deliver estimate
  The AWS Simple Monthly Calculator and AWS Total Cost of Ownership Calculator lets one anticipate real-world usage costs for AWS deployments and compare the spends with on premise equivalent. The final Proof of concept ready for submission would need a review from the customer so that it meets all their requirements and can be closed.

GTM Strategy for Partners from AWS

Here i would like to highlight various programs undertaken by AWS to help Partners grow and/or gain traction.

AWS Partner Solutions Finder

The AWS Partner Solutions Finder provides AWS customers with a centralized place to search, discover, and connect with trusted APN Technology and Consulting Partners, based on customers’ business needs. Customers can use the AWS Partner Solutions Finder to find an APN Partner to help design, migrate, manage, and optimize workloads on AWS.

APN Partner Success Stories

Promote your business by creating case studies to outline your success with customers.

APN Marketing Tools

• APN Marketing Central
  APN Marketing Central provides marketing tools and resources that enable you to generate demand for your solutions on AWS. As a benefit for Select tier and above APN Partners, access self-service marketing campaigns that allow you to quickly co-brand and launch solution-based campaigns or engage participating agencies for select marketing services.
• AWS Global Sponsorship Program
  The AWS Sponsorship program has helped AWS Partners, customers and brands to grow their business. AWS Sponsorships offer in-person access to over 300,000 AWS customers and prospects each year. Here impactful benefits such as broad networking opportunities, brand awareness, thought leadership, custom activations, turnkey booths, and spaces for personalized customer interactions are offered.
• APN How-to Guides
  As an APN Partner, you will learn best practices for joint marketing initiatives with AWS.These guides provide simple steps to extend the skills of your marketing team and help you showcase your products and services when marketing with AWS. Find the guides under the Marketing Tab in the APN Portal.

AWS Training and Certification

• Partner Training
  Free digital training, classroom training, and accreditations designed to help APN Partners better serve customers.
• AWS Certification
  Exams to validate expertise with an industry-recognized credential.
• APN Navigate
  APN Navigate is the AWS Partner Network’s (APN) enablement program that provides prescriptive guidance from trusted AWS experts on how to transform your business on AWS. It provides a step-by-step path to help you build, market, and sell as an APN Partner.
• AWS Partner Transformation Program (PTP)
  The AWS Partner Transformation Program (PTP) is a comprehensive assessment, training, and enablement program focused on helping you build a successful and profitable AWS Cloud business. Whether you are new to the cloud or in the advanced stages of building your cloud business, this program provides partners with the guidance to accelerate the development of your AWS skills and expertise to better serve your customers’ journey to the cloud.

AWS Business Transition

• APN Training Partner Program
  The APN Training Partner Program is part of the AWS Partner Network (APN), the global partner program for Amazon Web Services (AWS). The AWS Partner Network allows customers to easily identify APN Partners that provide training which will enhance their knowledge of the AWS platform, while providing members of the APN Partner ecosystem with the business, technical, marketing, and go-to-market support they need to build a successful business on AWS.
• AWS Community
  This is designed to educate about the AWS platform, architecture best practices and new services. AWS brings together the APN cloud computing community to connect and collaborate.
• AWS Competency Program
  The AWS Competency Program is designed to highlight APN Partners who have demonstrated technical proficiency and proven customer success in specialized solution areas. Attaining an AWS Competency allows partners to differentiate themselves to customers by showcasing expertise in a specific solution area.
• AWS Marketplace
  AWS Marketplace is a digital catalog with thousands of software listings from independent software vendors that make it easy to find, test, buy, and deploy software that runs on AWS.
• APN Partner Central
  APN Partner Central is that the partner-only, section of the AWS website that gives all AWS Partners the tools and content they need to grow their business on AWS. Through APN Partner Central, APN Partners will access AWS technical and non-technical coaching, request promoting and business support, transfer partner-focused content, and connect with different AWS partners around the world.

AWS Partner Journey Summary

The various milestones of a partner’s journey with AWS would involve the following;

• Join the AWS Partner Network
• Build a Business Plan
• Get Trained and Certified on AWS
• Move up the Partner Tier ladder and unlock the benefits
• Join APN Partner programs that meet specific business needs
• GTM with AWS

On the supply side, young professional Japanese are increasingly shying away from the job-for-life security sought by their parents (and grandparents) at big firms as per the current trend. For the professionally mobile, the recovering economy offers opportunities: there are 1.2 positions for every job seeker in the country. Professionals with technical cum bilingual skills are in particularly short supply. Vendors/Staffing companies are helping to fill the gap in payrolls, especially in Japan-based foreign organizations, and in Japanese companies looking for bilingual staff.

There are various terms used with respect to staffing, namely, 派遣 / haken, 請負 / ukeoi, 出向 / shukkou, 委託 / itaku. In each of these, there is a relation between 2 companies, i.e, the vendor and customer. Let me touch upon each of the terms.

• 派遣 / haken – means causing a employee(s) employed by one person so as to be engaged in work for another person under the instruction of the latter, while maintaining his/her employment relationship with the former. Let us get into the details later on.
• 請負 / ukeoi – means causing a employee(s) employed by one person to work internally on the work order received from another person. Here the worker will work under the instruction of the former and has no relation with the latter.
• 出向 / shukkou – means causing a employee(s) employed by one person so as to be engaged in work for another person under the instruction of the latter, but the difference w.r.t to haken is that the employee will have to sign an agreement with the client in addition to the agreement with the employer. 在籍出向 / zaisekishukkou is what we just learnt about, one more type being 転籍出向 / tensekishukkou. In this type, everything is the same as earlier but the worker will sign an agreement with the client only. In other words, once done the employee will have no relation with the main employer and is equivalent to the employee changing companies.
• 委託 / itaku – 外部委託 / gaibuitaku or outsourcing is the more familiar word and it means to hand over certain task(s) to other company(s) who are specialized in certain field of work. This may sound similar to ukeoi, but the difference is that in ukeoi there are deliverables and the way of implementing it is entirely dependent upon the order receiving company. In contrast, gaibuitaku is more about handing over specific tasks like maintenance etc.

Haken

My point of focus in this blog will be haken, which is used by most of the local and Japan based foreign companies/staffing agencies to dispatch employees to client side. There are two types of haken:

(1) “Specified worker dispatching undertakings” whereby a Vendor/Staffing company hires employees on a regular basis and sends them on assignment to work at its client companies on temporary basis.

(2) “General worker dispatching undertakings” whereby a Vendor/Staffing company registers temporary employees and sends them to its client companies on a contingent basis by signing a per-job contract each time the agency receives an assignment from its client companies.

Worker Dispatch Flow

As regularly employed type dispatching secures stable employment of dispatched workers, Specified worker dispatching undertakings are considered to be preferable over the General Worker Dispatching Undertakings.

Conditions for employee dispatching services

The Vendor/Staffing company must clearly indicate labor conditions when labor contracts are concluded, must clearly state the amount of dispatching fee when dispatch employment starts at a client company (haken saki), and clearly specify employment conditions.

With the revision of the Worker Dispatch Law in 2015, working on the same job at the same establishment as a dispatched employee for more than three years is basically not allowed. After going through certain procedures, working for more than 3 years is possible, but the employee is required to move to a different “section”. Since September 2018, if a worker is being considered to be dispatched to the same “section” of the same establishment continuously for 3 years, it is possible to receive the employment stabilization measures (obligation) stated below from the dispatching vendor (haken gaisha). Those who are expected to be dispatched for more than a year but less than 3 years are subject to the same obligations but with certain efforts from the Vendor side.

The Vendor/Staffing company needs to take any of the following measures from #1 to #4 ,i.e, employment stabilization measures. In addition, when #1 fails to lead to direct employment, it is necessary to choose from one of the measures from #2 to #4.

1. Request for direct employment to the client company (if the company agrees to the request, the dispatched worker becomes their employee)
2. Provide new employment opportunities (dispatch destination) (The conditions are limited to reasonable items in light of competence and experience of the dispatch worker)
3. Offer indefinite employment (mukikoyou) in the dispatching company other than as dispatched employee.
4. Other measures to stabilize employment

Annual leave, Overtime pay etc.,

Labor laws, such as Labor Standards Act and Equal Employment Opportunity Law, are applicable even in dispatched labor.

Employers are required to grant annual leave with pay to employees who have been employed for six consecutive months and present at work for more than 80% of those working days. Annual leave may not be kept in reserve. The right to annual paid leave expires after 2 years. In principle, it is illegal to convert unused paid holidays into cash.

Employers must complete certain legal procedures to have employees work beyond legal working hours or on rest days. Employees who work beyond legal working hours are eligible for extra pay of more than 25% above the normal hourly or daily wages, and for work on rest days, a rate of 35% is applicable.

Onboarding formalities

Employees hired directly by a Japan based company, or the ones transferred through intra-company method for long term work in Japan will require the following during their tenure. Appropriate visa stamping being a prerequisite before landing in Japan.

• 在留カード / Residence Card – A residence card shall be issued to a foreign national who stays in Japan for a mid- to long term as a result of having obtained permits relating to the status of residence.This shall issued at airport/muncipal offices and updated with residence address at municipal government offices. A residence card contains the important part of the personal information held by the Minister of Justice, such as name, birth date, gender, nationality/region of origin, address, status of residence, period of stay, and whether or not he/she can work. If there is any change in these matters, the relevant person is obliged to notify the change.
• 住民票 / Certificate of residence – A Juminhyo is a registry of current residential addresses maintained by local governments in Japan. These resident records have been made for “medium-to-long term residents” who are residing in Japan for the medium-to-long term. When proof of residence is required in Japan, you will often be asked to submit a Juminhyo. If a foreign resident moves to a different municipality (city/ward/town/village), you must report your move out to the former municipal office, and to the municipality having jurisdiction over your new residence. Unless you complete these reports, you will not be issued a copy of your Juminhyo.
• 健康保険証 / Health insurance card – Employee Health Insurance (EHI), as the name suggests, is an employment-based health insurance; meaning, your employer pays half of your EHI premium. The other half is simply deducted from your monthly paycheck. The insurance covers 70 percent of your medical bills (and any of your dependent family members as well).The premium for this insurance depends on your income. To register for this type of insurance, all you have to do is become an employee; the company’s human resource department will take care of the paperwork, and you will soon be issued an insurance card.

The coverage under the Employees’ Health Insurance (EHI) and the Employees’ Pension Insurance(EPI) is compulsory by law, and it is not a contract which employers or employees may opt for the coverage or may withdraw.

The Japanese pension system is mainly composed of national pension insurance (kokumin nenkin) and employees’ pension insurance (kosei nenkin). All residents of Japan who are between 20 and 60 years of age, including foreign residents, are required to enroll in the national pension plan. Employees’ pension is mainly for those who are employed by private business corporations. Contributors to the employees’ pension are entitled to future pension payments and also to the use of various welfare facilities. When you are enrolled in the employees’ pension at work, you are also automatically enrolled in the national pension; you are paying extra premiums in addition to the national pension premiums.

Credits:
https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/0000077386.html
http://www.s-i-a.or.jp/en/qa/222
http://www.immi-moj.go.jp/english/tetuduki/kanri/hituyou_syorui.html
https://japanhealthinfo.com/japanese-healthcare-services/japanese-health-insurance/
Knowledge & Experience

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To better understand the word showateki, i feel it would be better to list out some of the eras in the recent Japan history as below, out of which the third one is showa or the post-war japan era which was known for hard work and the one we are currently in is the heisei era.

Japan Era List

Whenever we hear the word Japan, the first thing which comes to our minds is that its a country of hard working people. I would like to detail about the current mindset of Japanese, by taking into account the opinion poll conducted by “Works Mobile Japan” with employees of various companies about their work culture and the derived results. More than 600 employees of various large & small firms took part in the poll.

Opinion Poll Summary

The above survey summary states that, 54.6% of employees stressed that their workplace was showateki. Out of this, more than 60% of the employees in their 30’s replied in the affirmative. Employees view of showateki workplace stressed on points like difficult to get leaves, long work hours, evaluation based on more overtime work hours. Also the employees of large sized companies compared to the mid/small sized companies felt that too many participants taking part in the meetings, very high frequency of meetings,  too much time in decision making were other common showateki traits. On the other hand, employees opinion about present day work culture were easy to take leaves, environment wherein one could get home once the work was complete and evaluation system independent of overtime work.

Further, 18.1% of the employees were fine with the showateki trait of their companies, while 30.1% replied in the negative and 51.8% were not sure. Moving on to the bad points of showateki trait, the top 3 of which were as follows; overtime work can be seen most of the times, inefficient way of work and non utilization of  IT. Also the poll gave us a picture of the top 3 good points which were, promotion & salary hike dependent on length of service, easy to obtain overtime pay and close bonding between the co-workers. Here 39.1% of the employees in their 40’s voted for the close bonding between the co-workers while 28.2% in their 20’s-30’s voted for the same point.

One more opinion poll conducted by a different company by name ‘Sansan’ gave a similar kind of result. In this online poll, more than 1000 employees took part. Here about 83.3% of employees wanted a change in their workplace culture, of which 61.3% felt that the issue was with long work hours. Reduction in the overtime work hours, increase in the overtime pay and improvement of business time management were the top three expectations of the employees.

From Opinion Polls to Personal Opinion

From my many years of work in Japan, i have noticed the following about Japanese workplace which is completely different from the culture in my country or unheard elsewhere.

In India or in America, employees are more casual in the office than in Japan.The first thing is calling each other by their first names at work would be considered rude in Japan. As far as dress codes go, the idea of “business casual” does not appear to exist in Japan. Now with the arrival of many foreign MNC’s we can find the relaxation in the dressing code. Otherwise, in a typical Japanese company, the white-collar worker, called “salarymen”, wear gray, navy, or black suits and are almost always wearing ties, even in the summer. We can see several career women wearing the exact same outfit.

Japanese office desks are organized in an open plan (obeya seido), in which desks are grouped together in teams of coworkers. Each team has a leader, and the leader is responsible for outlining the day´s work in a morning meeting (chorei). One might be surprised to hear that smoking is not illegal in the workplace in Japan (there are exceptions, such as at medical facilities). Inorder to avoid the effects on passive smokers, there are separate smoking rooms setup at every office building.

The importance of “HoRenSo” in business communication comes up often and is considered a common sense in Japanese companies. “HoRenSo” is short for “houkoku” (report), “renraku” (contact), and “soudan” (consult) and are the basics to smooth progress in business. Reporting refers to keeping your superiors up to date about the tasks given to you, during and upon completion of it. Contact refers to informing those involved briefly about their duties or work. Unlike reporting, contact is initiated by anyone regardless of position which may be something as informing about coming late to meeting. Consult refers to asking your superior or a colleague for their opinion and advice for reference if you have trouble in making a decision. Any root cause analysis of a problem will be dealt first from the aspect of HoRenSo. Also, Japanese are particular about certain workplace manners, starting from greetings to many other aspects required for smooth functioning of day to day activities.

In the Showa era, it was common for salarymen to work long hours, additional overtime, to participate in after-work leisure activities such as drinking, singing karaoke and visiting hostess bars with colleagues, and to value work over all else.The salaryman typically enters a company after graduating college and stays with that corporation his whole career. Nowadays, the work environment has become more flexible and accommodates the needs of individuals according to their lifestyle and stage of life. Career changes are more common and easier. If one corporate culture is not a fit, moving on is an option and there is less emphasis on building relationships that need to last a lifetime.

After work parties are used as a means to enhance relationships at workplace. We can commonly find the tradition of kangeikai(new employee welcome party), Konshinkai(get-together party), bonenkai (year end party), shinnenkai (new year party) after work parties at most of the companies even today .

Get-together party Illustration

Based on the opinion polls it is clear that Japanese employees work for long hours even in the heisei era. In spite of the Labour Law, it is not unusual for employees to work more than the stipulated number of hours in a week. This has led to a phenomenon called karo-shi (death from overwork), where corporate employees have been known to spontaneously drop dead of exhaustion. Fortunately, instances of karo-shi are rare, and i haven’t heard of foreign workers being pressurized to log the same amount of hours as their Japanese counterparts, so one should not have anything to fear.

Credits :
Work Experience
https://line.worksmobile.com/jp/home/pr/20180724
https://news.mynavi.jp/article/20170201-a410/

Business manner is the basic necessity in-order to work smoothly in a society or a workplace environment. So if the foundation of business manner is strong, trust with others can be built easily leading to a good workplace environment. If a person is highly skilled it doesn’t mean that he/she will be assigned a job or project immediately, only after the foundation of trust is built he will be assigned a proper job. The trust factor here comes from a proper display of business manner which is based on the human skills like pro-activeness, judgemental power and expressiveness. The main thing expected out of a person in the business world is maintaining good people relations which is dependent upon the expressiveness of the person ,i.e, proper judgement of situations and proactively reacting to it.

So, in Japan a person who has gained the trust and has sufficient skill set will be called a true professional or a capable business man.

Important requirements for a working professional

Relationship

Good relationships start with good people skills,i.e, how well you collaborate, communicate and deal with conflict.
There are several characteristics that make up good, healthy working relationship:

・Trust
This is the foundation of every good relationship. When you trust your team and colleagues, you form a powerful bond that helps you to work and communicate more effectively. If you trust the people you work with, you can be open and honest in your thoughts and actions, and you don’t have to waste time and energy “watching your back.”

・Mutual Respect
When you respect the people who you work with, you value their input and ideas, and they value yours. Working together, you can develop solutions based on your collective insight, wisdom and creativity.

・Mindfulness
This means taking responsibility for your words and actions. Those who are mindful are careful and attend to what they say, and they don’t let their own negative emotions impact the people around them.

・Open Communication
We communicate all day, whether we’re sending emails and IMs, or meeting face to face. The better and more effectively you communicate with those around you, the richer your relationships will be. All good relationships depend on open, honest communication.

Understanding Business manner is about knowing the ‘activity model’ of social ethics or people relationship. Here, one needs to identify the morals and associated people relations with one’s heart. It is most important to connect the heart with human relationships which forms the core of business manner understanding. The word heart refers to concern and consideration.

Find below a couple of examples related to right attitude w.r.t human relationship and applying heart w.r.t human relationship:

1) No matter how close a person is to his colleague or senior at workplace, he needs to behave with the basic workplace etiquette in mind.
2) A newly appointed manager regarding whom there is negative feedback from various sources, should not be dealt with based one others feedback but with one’s viewpoint.

Manner

This is one of the basics of good business manner. To be considerate and have concern towards your subordinates and superiors. When this thoughtful behavior reverberates in your coworker’s heart it leads to smooth interactions and a pleasant working environment.Also the considerate nature always reflects in one’s bowing posture,business card exchange or in other behavioral attitude towards a client. So we can conclude that, when considerate nature reflects in a form or posture we have business manner put into practice.

Find below few examples of various instances which can be referred to as basic skills or core values of business manners in Japan:

・Greeting Manners

• Greeting everyone with a loud voice in the mornings when one enters the office.
• When leaving office in the evening one needs to wish the senior who is still working.

・Posture Manners
The three basic postures are shown in the figure below:

1. Eshaku – The body is bent 15 degrees in this posture and used to greet a subordinate or senior in the office in the morning and evening. Also can be 　a used as a casual way of greeting anyone at office in a day.
2. Keirei – The best situation to use this posture of bending the body 30 degrees is after introducing ourselves during customer visits.
3. Sai-keirei – The best case of using this posture of bending the body 45 degrees is while seeing off the customers which expresses gratitude.

・Manners when going out on a client Visit

• The appointment date and time should be prioritized as per client need.
• When client enters the meeting room, one needs to getup from one’s seat and greet. Later on introduce self(in case of first meeting) and hand over   the business card followed by the Keirei posture.In case of receiving the business card as well the same flow should be followed ending with the Sai-keirei posture which shows deep gratitude towards the client.

・Manners when client visits us

• In case of guiding client inside an elevator, one needs to enter first and press the open button and destination floor button and guide the client inside. However in cases wherein there are people already inside the elevator, one needs to hold the door with one hand and guide the client inside first and later enter. While getting off the elevator one needs to press the open button and guide the client outside first and later move out of the elevator.
• It is a good practice to knock the door of meeting room before entering. Also in case of door which opens on the inside of the room one needs to enter first and invite the clients inside. However in case of door which opens outside, one needs to hold the door and show the client inside first and later enter the room.

・Seating Manners
Seating manners are also too important in Japanese business. Refer to the various instances as displayed in the below figure.

The Senior most person will be given the seat farthest from the door in a meeting room while the junior most will be seated near to the door. In case of a taxi, senior most employee will be given the seat behind the driver while the junior most employee will be seated on the passenger seat next to the driver. In a train or aeroplane, senior most person will be given the seat next to the window in the direction of motion. Finally the position in a elevator will be behind the junior most person who will operate the panel. The 1,2,3,4,5 numbers in the below picture refer to the employees from the senior most to the junior most position in the order.

Communication style

All good relationships are dependent on how much we respect the other person’s thinking or values and his position. This considerate nature is the starting step in building a satisfactory communication.Lets get to know more about the considerate nature communication style used to connect with people.

Understanding the connection between communication style and relationships

“To make or mar depends on the telling” is the translation of a famous Japanese proverb. This simply means that, people may or may not get offended by the way you speak and mentioning “i didn’t mean that” might be too late to say once one is offended. However, if one is considerate and gentle towards others feelings even the unsaid things can be understood leading to a communication style which touches the other person’s heart. This considerate nature improves people relationships resulting in strong bonds and high efficiency within teams at workplace.

• Points to be taken care of when listening to others
  1) Make agreeable responses in order to make the person feel at ease
  2) Look the person in eye while making the agreeable response
  3) Listen to the person till the end of his conversation without interrupting
• Points to be taken care of when talking to others
  1) Use respectful words as much as possible even while speaking to a colleague or coworker
  2) When asked about a topic which one is not well versed about, avoid creating false impressions and convey your true knowledge
  3) Do not deny a person’s opinion outright.

Knowledge of the basic Keigo/ Honorifics

Keigo is the verbal expression of one’s respect towards the other person’s position or standpoint. We can say that keigo is the basic human skill required because incase our respect towards a person doesn’t match in words there is an imbalance which needs to be addressed to with high priority. There are some rules to use the Keigo which we will learn in this section.

Keigo consists of following types, which uses different expressions for different situations;

1. Honorific language (Sonkeigo)
   Sonkeigo, or the respectful form, is used to show respect to someone of higher position. This can be somebody in the same company of higher rank or a client for example.
2. Humble language (Kenjougo)
   When referring to him or herself in business, the Japanese will use a form called Kenjougo.The form essentially tries to show respect by deliberately referring to oneself lower than the listener (who typically are of higher rank or position).
3. Polite language (Teineigo)
   Teineigo is perhaps the easiest and the most commonly used by everybody (including native Japanese speakers). This is because the Teineigo is usually the first form of Keigo that is taught to students learning the Japanese language.

Below picture gives a pictorial representation of the above forms;

Refer below the Keigo list of various verbs;

Basic knowledge of situation based communication style

A true professional or a capable business person chooses different communication style for situations like reporting or explanation, requests, trouble resolution etc. The main motive here is the same as point number one above ,i.e, relating communication style to relationships. Planning of communication techniques based on positive response from the audience in-order to develop good relationships.

・Reporting
The purpose of reporting is to provide information. There are various types here like business reporting, management reporting, office reporting etc. The basic idea in all the reporting types is to communicate the information as it is in a simple and understandable way. The main point here is to start from the conclusion or summary and elaborate on that thereby giving priority to the superior’s time. This is the true quality of a considerate business person.

・Explanation
The purpose of explanation is to make the audience understand your point. Instances like explanation of new features of a product to the customer, explaining one’s point of view in a meeting, explaining the work procedure to one’s team etc are a few cases which requires explanation from a business perspective. The important thing here is to use simple words and be specific so that the other party can understand your viewpoint easily.

・Requesting
Where every one in the team is involved in their routine work, in addition to that if we need cooperation from the team on another task at hand we need to make a request. The way to request is, first ask about the status of the current work and express one’s understanding regarding the same.On top of that explain about the new task on hand and check the team’s co-operation on get involved.So the gist is to first understand the other person’s current status and get a frank reply regarding cooperation on the new task at hand. This is the way to make a request in-order for the other party to get involved wholeheartedly.

・Grievance Redressal
Whenever there are claims or complaints from the clients, first thing is to accept it and take the responsibility. The next important thing is to rebuild the confidence of one’s organization by wiping off the distrust factor. This is the main purpose behind grievance redressal. In most of the cases whenever there is a complaint we can see people replying as “not a problem with our product” or put the blame on handling the product etc. Here the first thing is to apologize followed by expression of gratitude towards instructions from the customer. By this way of communication we are trying to rebuild the confidence of customer w.r.t our company.

Socializing activities

Of the many socializing activities of a business person in Japan greeting colleagues and customers during end and start of the year, wining and dining with the customers, sending gifts to seniors to express gratitude, thanking a person who was of help are some of the instances during which consideration towards the other person are expressed.

The socializing activities mentioned here are w.r.t to work or business. Hence the person representing the company will be required to show a dignified behavior or business manner. The polite greeting towards the end or start of the year, hospitality shown through corporate entertainment, the gratitude shown by sending summer gifts(chuugen) or winter gifts(seibo) to seniors, the words of concern expressed during visit to a sick coworker or client are all dignified ways of showing one’s heartfelt considerate nature.

Other necessary skills

Information handling

Information gathering, organizing and communicating form the main components of business information cycle. Information here comprises of vital data which may be used for business related activities. The motto of information handling is to have fast access to precise information.

Though clients are the main source of information, we have occasions like business get together parties and pan-industry social events wherein important information can be gathered w.r.t to new business etc. The business manner to be displayed here is to listen patiently to the person providing information in-order to extract the precise information which we want.

The main intention behind organizing information is easy and quick access when needed. Information like business cards, sales or development documents etc are vital data relating to business, when handled properly is a proof that one is seriously involved in one’s work. Also the information managed by us should not be limited to us but must be actively utilized by all concerned in-order to maximize the gains. So organizing of information is vital.

Communicating the actual information in a proper way is of prime importance. The information provided here should be of value to the customer as well. Hence the routine gathering and organizing of information is vital to sharing the needed information to the customer. Also the information limited to us will be of little value when compared to information shared within the team thereby increasing the efficiency of the team. Information like business related documents, problem points etc can be of real help to anyone in the team.

Document management

It is common at workplace to communicate information in writing when the same can be done through a call like an order or notice. The reason behind this can be thought of as to keep a record of transactions, to communicate the point precisely, to communicate the information to multiple people at a time etc.

Communication in writing,i.e, documentation can be broadly divided into internal and external documents.The internal documentation or the document circulated within the company should prioritize on the efficiency aspect rather than politeness. Whereas an external document to be sent to a client should follow a specific format and must consist of polite words. Here we are following a writing format which keeps the recipient in high esteem.

The format above shows the layout of an internal document like a notice and the below format picture depicts an external document like a letter sent to a client.

One more section which falls under this section of necessary skill is meetings, regarding which we had discussed earlier in the situation based communication style and seating manners part.

To sum it up, i have tried my maximum to write in simple words regarding workplace practices expected out of a professional in Japan. I hope you find it useful!

Sources :
ビジナス実務マナー検定 受験ガイド(Business Practice Manner Test Guidebook), Work Experience

Economic Situation in Japan – The lost decade

Japan in the Post World War 2 Era

Japan made an impressive economic recovery in the decades following world war. Japanese incomes grew rapidly and companies developed a significant presence in the major global industries like automobiles and consumer electronics. Unfortunately, in the 1990s Japanese economy sank when the economic bubble burst. This not only brought the economy down but also upset the people as it exposed the corruption in governance.

Key events leading to bubble burst

Japan and west Germany had huge trade surpluses with the US in the early 1980s. The US dollar was strong partly because of the high interest rates. In 1985, leading economic countries met  inorder to reduce the huge trade deficit the US had with its major trading partners, by pushing the dollar down(called the Plaza accord). The logic was, by pushing the dollar down the Japanese yen would become stronger and the US exports would become more competitive in the international market compared to the Japanese exports. As a result of this accord, the US dollar fell sharply and the Japanese and the German exports became less competitive resulting in their respective economies getting hit massively. As a result of this, the GDP fell sharply.

In order to counter this, the Bank of Japan started giving loans with a reduced interest rate/discount rate. This resulted in expanding the credit in the economy. Many companies rushed to make use of this low interest credit by investing in stocks and real estate. The value of stocks and property prices rose exponentially. This fueled the economic bubble. Banks turned to the stock market to raise funds. The upward spiral of prices seemed out of control which worried the bank of japan who tightened the money supply by increasing the interest rate in 1989, effectively pricking the bubble.

Japan’s Corporate, Banking and Government Sectors – Post world war 2

Cross holding of stocks and lack of transparency

Once special aspect of company ownership in Japan is the Keiretsu, i.e, cross holding of stocks. This created a community of companies that looked out for each others interests. Banks held some of the stocks in their Keiretsu partners and vice versa. This cross holding was as high as 45% in some of the companies in the 90s. This connection between the companies was not always transparent, also banks were reluctant to ask for high interest rate with their Keiretsu partners even though their cost of obtaining funds from depositors was rising and squeezing their profit margins.

Banks tried to increase their returns through growth in assets whose value fell significantly once the bubble burst. The falling markets made it really difficult for the banks as the assets which they had taken as collateral for the loans they had given and also their assets, i.e,stock in others companies fell sharply. This made the banks less safe financially with the fall in value of assets.

To sum it up, Corporate governance had limited transparency which resulted in weakness and risks not readily apparent which would have been in-case of independent stock holders who would have demanded more information. This lack of transparency led companies to enter into commercial arrangements without any knowledge of full risks.

Corporate challenges

The bubble had created euphoria about market growth. To meet the market demand, companies invested a lot and hired more workers, finally when the bubble burst the demand vanished and companies realized that they had been misled and were now struck in maintaining underutilized factories and paying the surplus workforce. This had the ripple effect in slowing the economy hugely.

Another serious problem for companies manufacturing in japan was the increase in the value of Japanese yen. As the value of currency rises, the country’s product becomes more expensive in the global market. This had an effect on the competitiveness of Japanese products and also the economy.

Another significant factor was the wages to employees post war as the economy prospered the wages increased which resulted in the increase of Japanese product costs. As a result of this some of the companies moved manufacturing to other countries like Malaysia and China in-order to cut the labor cost, which had a negative impact on the economy as the jobs moved to other countries.

In the mid 90s the Yen retreated in value due to the softening of demand for Japan made products, which provided some relief for the companies manufacturing in japan. However, at the end of 90s due to the Asian financial crisis some of the countries like to South Korea and Thailand economies were severely affected in comparison to the Yen which wasn’t, resulting in their products coming into demand in the market thus reducing the competitiveness of the Japanese products again.

After the bubble burst, though companies tried to reduce cost, some of their own traditions were a hindrance like not firing lifetime workers who formed 25% of workforce. Also the Japanese weren’t individualistic as people of other countries like the US, also they lacked institutional arrangements which supported the formation and growth of new ventures. During the post war era, some of the factors of their culture like strong loyalty and group thinking were really beneficial but these very factors like loyalty between companies within keiretsu and group thinking backfired during the economic problem phase.

Role of Mafia in corporate governance

Stockholders had little stay in affairs of the companies.There was little discussion on important issues that may be controversial.
This brings us to one related problem in Corporate governance. Japanese managers were scared at the prospect open questioning at stock holder meetings. This made them vulnerable to extortion by mafia/sokaiya who had to be bribed to abstain from asking embarrassing questions. In-order to avoid sokaiyas, many Japanese companies used to arrange annual meetings on the same day. Over the years Japanese government tried to reduce the impact of sokaiyas by imposing strict regulations like arresting the executives who used to bribe them etc., which resulted in the reduction in numbers significantly. Gradually sokaiyas diversified into others areas like buying bad loans from banks and selling collateral property for a profit.

Role of politics in shaping the business environment

After world war 2, the US armed forces still present in Japan left the country in the early 1950s after which the Liberal Democratic Part(LDP) ruled the government for a long 40 years approximately. As corruption grew, it lost control in the 90s briefly to the opposition. The LDP had a number of factions that competed for influence, often the PM elected could not implement significant changes due to the influence of these factions. In case they tried to bring about changes, they would be forced to resign by these factions who were inturn answering to the Special interest groups or the farmers. In the 90s, Japan was in a political turmoil as 7 PMs resigned one after another mainly due to corruption charges.

Lets turn to another arm of government ,i.e, bureaucracy, mainly the powerful Ministry of Finance and METI(Ministry of Economic,Trade and Industries). A lot was said about METI which was hugely influential in bringing about changes in japan, in the post war era. These ministries mainly recruited talented graduates from the top universities who spent their whole career working there and were involved in drafting the policies of government. The bureaucracy provided continuity or stability in the midst of political turmoil in the 90s.However critics were of the opinion that, bureaucrats avoided risk which was evident in their slow response during the Kobe earthquake. Sadly, they were also increasingly implicated in corruption in 90s.

The bureaucrats and senior managers of industries had an interesting connection. Many had started out their careers at the same time after graduating together from top universities. They stayed in touch informally as their careers progressed in industries and government respectively. As they knew each other well, they could agree on strategies which would develop the country in the post war years. This also helped the companies a lot in globalization and also control the market from foreign intervention. However this connection had a negative side as well, as the companies with no close government connection were not given preference. Also this led to corruption and lack of transparency.

Recession in 1998 and Koizumi era

An economy can be called as being in recession when its GDP falls for 2 consecutive quarters. This recession happened in 1998 which resulted in increased unemployment. In the late 90s and early 2000s the economy was so depressed that the prices were falling year after year by a small amount. The deflation created a challenge for growth as people were putting off purchases with the falling prices and companies were under loss as they had lesser products to produce but had the burden of paying wages and maintaining factories.

In order to curtail this, the Japanese government introduced tax cuts so that people could spend more and fuel the economy. Also the government spending was increased to stimulate growth. These stimuli helped to soften the economic problems temporarily but failed to produce sustainable growth because the underlying structural problems didn’t go away and the government could not keep providing the stimuli. Due to these stimuli, the government ended up in huge budget deficits. These had to be compensated by huge borrowing.

In the late 90s as the economy was recovering with the stimulus provided, in order to check the huge budget deficits or debts the then PM removed the tax cuts and government spending which by then had improved the consumer demand without providing sustainable growth.The ill timed action, resulted in demand dropping which slowed down the economy and the government was forced to release a new stimulus to overcome this.

In 2001, LDP’s Koizumi came to power. Koizumi adopted the slogan “change the LDP to change Japan”, indicating the underlying factions,i.e, the special interest groups were the hindrance in implementing changes and drew power directly from the people. He used the Lion heart email magazine to communicate with the people. It is remarkable that he governed Japan for the full span of 5 years which none of his predecessors couldn’t complete.

The changes that were implemented during Koizumi’s tenure began to show results as the economy picked up. One of the main factor was increase in the imports to China as it replaced US as the main trade partner. By 2005, the Japanese recovery had blossomed into an expansion fueled by domestic demand, the stock index doubled since 2003, the banks raised the short term interest rates etc. However, Japan was becoming concerned about the aging population by then. The economy was expected to slow down again with the 2007 problem when the post war baby boomers began retiring and the shrinking workforce would reduce the output and increase the burden of supporting the retirees. To make matters worse, the country population started declining in 2005 owing to the falling fertility rate.

Corporate and banking sectors improved as well during Kozumi’s span. The non performing loans held by banks declined significantly by 2005. Furthermore, the ratio of corporate cross holding reduced from 45% in 1994 to 27% in 2002. Companies had gradually created a more flexible workforce, reducing dependency on lifetime employees through attrition and increased the intake of part time workers whose wages were much less compared to the full time employees.

Contemporary Japan

Economic challenges

Japan was deeply hurt by the global economic crisis of 2008. However, it began to recover pretty fast with the GDP rising in the coming years. In 2011, North-East Japan was hit by deadly earthquake and tsunami which killed thousands and brought about huge losses worth billions of dollars. Also people were forced to flee from the area to avoid the harmful radiation from fukushima nuclear reactor leakage.

All these disrupted the manufacturing supply chains, factories could not get critical parts and production came to a halt in the region and foreign countries which depended on the supplies from Japan. As funds flowed into Japan for reconstruction,this caused the yen to rise. As an effect of this the GDP turned slightly negative in 2011. Though it turned positive in the next couple of years it again slipped to the negative region in 2014 owing to sales tax hike. Another major challenge is very high public debt which is very high among developed countries. Abe’s reluctance to increase the sales tax is understandable as that would have increased the finances but would have risked slowing down the economy.

Abe’s current term

After Koizumi’s term got over and there was lot of work to be done and the PMs who followed him were not much effective. In 2008, the world was hit by the housing crisis in the US and the world economy was hit, from which Japan is still struggling to recover.The current PM Shinzo Abe assumed power in 2012, whose previous stint of one year was unremarkable.

When he came to power in 2012, he curbed the power of factions within LDP and gave greater power to the cabinet. He had focused to concentrate on important priorities rather than a larger more diffused set of objectives. This initiated an impressive economic turn around which led LDP to win majority in both the upper and lower houses of the parliament making it possible to legislate reforms for long term prosperity.Despite having such a strong mandate, Abe is being careful not to rush for changes that could be unpopular and eventually would remove him from power. After such a long term in power, people have become increasingly doubtful about Abe’s ability to bring about structural reforms.

Abe’s trademark strategy, Abenomics has three components referred to as the three arrows i.e., fiscal stimulus, monetary stimulus and structural reforms. Abe started out strong reviving the economy in 2013 with the first two of the three arrows as he got the parliament to approve an economic stimulus package. Inflation picked up and the urban property prices began rising. Since Abe assumed office the Yen depreciated significantly helping imports. The impact is limited as a lot of Japanese manufacturing companies moved abroad in the earlier years.A big challenge facing today is that the wages haven’t risen though the inflation is increasing causing hardship.

The structural reforms would belong to institutional changes section ,i.e., the third arrow of abenomics. For sustainable growth, Japan needs to remove impediments that hold back the economy and keep productivity low and discourage investment. The impediments are regulations which hinder business like creating rigidity in labor market by avoiding intake of women and foreigners.This results in scarcity of talent that is essential for making Japan globally competitive. Abe began to moved the Pension Investment funds to companies listed in the stock market so that he could improve the corporate governance through stock holders.He also announced reducing the very high corporate tax, the impact of which is still unclear as big companies are flushed with cash and don’t seem to invest unless there is demand picking up. On the other hand consumers have been hurt with rising consumption tax with no rise in wages.Also there is no progress on the Special economic zone creation promise. Progress on the Trans pacific partnership for trade has also been very slow, which is partly due to the US political situation.

Rise of China and Japan Diplomacy

Balance of power in the world is changing as China and India are emerging in the world market. The rise of China as both economic and military power is causing concerns to Japan, given its close proximity to the country and its strange relation with its neighbors. Both China and Korea have remained hostile and refuse to accept responsibility for their aggression in the first half of 20th century. Yasukuni Shrine is an example where the war heroes of Japan are buried who are classified as war criminals in China and Korea for their role in world war 2. PM Abe visited the shrine in 2013 which angered the neighbors and Abe has refrained visiting the Shrine since then.

Relations between Japan and China are also due to the territorial disputes over gas deposits near to the senkaku islands in the east China sea. China claim the islands as their own until it was annexed by Japan in the 1800s. But Japan say that it was not claimed by anyone until the 1800s and China started staking their claims after gas deposits were found. Japan’s territorial disputes with China can have serious economic impacts as there are boycotts over Japan’s products in China when tensions rise resulting in lower sales. Japan is trying to look for other trade markets by reducing China’s influence like taking part in the Trans-pacific partnership trade agreement. Japan was getting more interested in building relations with India whose trade is a mere 1% of its total trade.

The territorial disputes was leading to rising nationalism in the neighboring countries who were launching missiles to showcase their power. China launched one in late 2010. Abe is keen to enhance the military power and favors changing the constitution which was written during US occupation of Japan post ww2.The article in constitution renounces the use of force to settle international disputes. Overtime Japan has created a self defense force which is not meant for committing war but would defend the country from aggressors. Also new defense strategies were set up so that it could stand up to China and North Korea.

Given the way the balance of power is shifting, Japan is anxious not only to ensure US support but is also actively exploring collaboration with other countries like India and Australia to counter China’s rising power in the Indo-Pacific region.

Sources:
Online certification on International Business Environment
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