7 Strange Moments in Japanese Corporate Life
Behind the scenes at Japanese corporate giants
Hello! I’d like to share the strange experiences I had while working at Japanese companies. I started working for a Japanese electronics manufacturer in 2006 and continued working until I left my job at a major Japanese IT company to move to Hong Kong in 2015. So I spent the majority of my career in Japan.
Because of Japan’s cultural isolationism, trends and information from outside don’t assimilate quickly. As a result, Japan struggles to keep up with the rapidly changing global landscape. Also the lack of diversity leads to a uniform way of thinking, and it escalates when nobody criticizes it. That is why some Japanese office customs can appear quite bizarre.
Especially in traditional corporations where I used to work, mostly staffed by middle-aged Japanese men, there were many strange situations. Here are some of my personal experiences.
1. A massive stamp culture
In Japan, it’s pretty common to stamp documents with a seal. It starts with a person in a lower-ranking position like me and goes up to my manager, then to their boss, and all the way to the top, with each higher-up adding their stamp. This way, it’s recorded on the document that all the necessary people in the approval chain have signed off on it.
During my time working at a traditional Japanese corporation, I used the stamp with the date on it, called a “hizukein (日付印)”. There are hizukein products that you can turn the numbers to set the date, but the one I used required me to manually insert a rubber piece with the date into the stamp using tweezers.
It was quite peculiar to see everyone at a company that claims to be ‘a cutting-edge technology company’ open a box of rubber pieces and use a tweezer to change them out every time they needed to stamp a document. It was like a scene out of a dark comedy.
In addition, they use a calendar system that only people in Japan can understand, where the year is based on the reign of the emperor, such as “Heisei” (平成) or “Reiwa” (令和).
When I started working, it was Heisei 18, and I received rubber pieces for the years 18, 19, 20, 21, and 22. But when we moved from Heisei 22 to 23, there was a delay in ordering rubber pieces with the number 23, which led to months of document approval paralysis within the company.
2. You got the job! Please resubmit your resume written by hand
This is what happened to me after I got hired by a major Japanese IT company. I submitted my resume as a PDF because this was not the 1980s, it was the 2010s. Luckily, my application passed and interviews went well, so I got the offer. However, I got an unbelievable request from HR. They told me to, “Write your resume by hand this time and submit it again.”
I didn’t want to risk getting rejected over a trivial matter, so I reluctantly rewrote my resume by hand and resubmitted. But I couldn’t stop thinking about whether it was really necessary to make applicants rewrite their already submitted documents by hand. Especially after they’ve already been accepted for the job.
3. I apologize that I will leave on time today
In the Japanese corporation where I worked, working overtime was quite common, not necessarily due to workload. Many men would stay late to avoid house chores, while others would kill time reading internet news to receive overtime pay. There were also those who were convinced that they were too important, and that the company would not function without their dedication (which, in my opinion, was a delusion).
I worked efficiently and usually finished my work on time, but if I wanted to leave on time, I had to send an email to the entire department, apologizing that I had “special circumstances” that day.
The the idea was that “leaving on time while everyone else is working overtime is a selfish act.” This mentality reflects the collectivism of Japan, where standing out as an individual is highly discouraged, regardless of what the contract or common sense dictates.
Employees receiving overtime pay caused higher costs for the company. As a result, some employers implemented a salary system that doesn’t include overtime pay, or started initiatives like “No Overtime Wednesdays.” However, it was not easy to change the deeply ingrained “overtime is default, leaving on time is special” mindset.
4. 1 second late and you have to use a half-day leave
The work hours at my first company were officially from 9 am to 5:30 pm, which was 8.5 hours in total, including a 45-minute lunch break. We had to scan our ID cards to clock in and out. If we worked on the 10th floor, we had to use the card reader on the 10th floor. We had to clock in before 9:29:59 am, so 9:30:00 am was recorded as ‘late’.
If we were late due to a delay in public transportation, we could submit a ‘delay certificate’. However, if we clocked in after 9:30:00 am without a valid reason, we had no choice but to use half a day’s leave. It was frustrating to take vacation time just because we were a few seconds late, especially when we were already at the office and couldn’t go home to enjoy that half-day leave.
5. New employees have to shout ‘Good morning!’ in front of the elevators
A the IT giant that required a handwritten resume, newly employees straight out of school had to stand in front of the elevators shouting ‘Good morning! for months.
Japanese companies place great importance on values such as endurance, patience, and overcoming challenges. There is a Japanese saying, ‘Endure for three years even on a rock (石の上にも三年),’ which is often quoted as advice to new employees to ‘hang in there for at least three years’.
6. Get out of the office and sell TVs for 2 months
I used to make TVs. My job was to implement the control algorithm in software embedded inside the television.
However, I didn’t do any actual work for about a year after joining the company. For the first few months, we had to attend training sessions to learn about various topics such as laws, compliances, patents, and business etiquette. After that, we worked on team projects and presentations with other new employees.
When the chilly winds started blowing, we were instructed to go out and sell TVs at consumer electronics stores for two months. I understood that even for engineers like me, it was important to interact with real customers. If the purpose of this ‘sales training’ was to help us empathize with end users, I wouldn’t remember it as such a painful experience.
In reality, there was a strangely unequal relationship between electronics stores and manufacturers. People said that makers like us had to beg the stores to “please sell our products.” When I asked why this was the case, everyone just said, “That’s how it’s always been.” During the end-of-year rush when consumer electronics were selling like hotcakes, new employees at manufacturers were dispatched to the stores. We were just extra hands.
It was a terrible experience. Every time I entered the store, they inspected my bag as if they thought I might steal something. The store managers were always angry with me. If I didn’t actively approach customers who were just browsing, they scolded me. “You’re useless, just go home.”
Even though I was actually selling TVs relatively well, I couldn’t avoid their wrath. When the day’s work was over, I even had to clean the products on the entire floor. The managers complained, “There’s still dust here!” I was not getting paid a penny by the store, so why should I be scolded this badly?
Japanese companies used to assume that employees would work for the same company from the age of 25 to 65. That’s why the focus of the first year is training. They think it’s okay to waste a year because there are another 39 years remaining, but now it seems like a total wasted year.
7. New employees have to impress the bosses by entertaining them
After working hard selling TVs for two months, I was told that we had to prepare for the newcomer’s performance at the year-end party.
The seniors said that this was even more important than work, so we had to take all the time we needed to prepare. They kept pressuring us, mentioning that last year’s newcomers weren’t that funny. They said we had to make ‘important people’ laugh to be promoted in the future.
I was one of 3 new employees in the TV development department that year, along with a female colleague I was close to and a guy who liked to brag. He said he could break 10 ceramic tiles with his bare hand and spin plates, so I wrote a script where we dramatized our efforts to sell TVs by breaking ceramic tiles, spinning plates, and even getting hit in the face with a pie. It was like an SNL skit with over-the-top exaggeration.
The performance was a huge success. The seniors were laughing their heads off. The guy who said he could break ceramic tiles hit the pile of 10 tiles with his fist, but it only made a sad, hollow sound and didn’t break at all. I was a little panicked, but soon everyone burst out laughing because the situation was quite funny.
The department head said that it was the best newcomer’s performance in history, and the seniors said that we were talented. (They asked if we purposely didn’t break the tiles just to be funny. Haha, I had no comment on that.)
Although the culture of forcing newcomers to perform at parties disappeared a few years later, those who were good at socializing and hosting events, even karaoke and drinking parties, were always overrated. They were the ones who got promoted quickest.
As someone who strongly values work performance, I find it difficult not to harbor some resentment towards a culture that places a high premium on those who excel at socializing over drinks, karaoke, or even hostess clubs.
The department head once invited me to a party because he’d heard I was a smart young employee. But once he sensed that I was capable of ‘critical thinking,’ he never invited me again. He even talked behind my back, saying, ‘That girl has a thorn.’ It turned out that what he needed for his drinking club were obedient people who didn’t have strong opinions — a bunch of ‘Yes men’.
But due to my ‘thorn’, I was able to protect myself and raise questions. I could say no to the suffocating Japanese corporate culture and was capable of leaving.
Because of the sharpness of my thorn, I can write this article and connect with readers like you. I hope my voice can be helpful in grasping the real world of Japanese corporate society.
