Japan｜Economy ｜Opinion
Why Japanese Companies Going “English Must” Is Just Plain Silly
Imposing a blanket policy forcing everyone in the company to communicate in English is a pointless and misguided move
More and more Japanese companies are facing the imperative to globalize by adopting English as the official company language.
More than a decade ago in 2010, Japanese tech company Rakuten made the news by announcing that the official language at the company would transition to English by 2012. The CEO, Hiroshi Mikitani, even coined a word for this policy, calling it “Englishnization.”
Then more big-name Japanese companies started to do the same. Notable names like Fast Retailing, the parent company of Uniqlo, and the auto-manufacturer Honda, among others.
And then, in June 2022, Sharp Co. — which had been acquired by the Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry a few years ago in 2016 — also announced the same policy. The new incoming CEO declared that by 2023, official company communications would be in English.
I might be offering an unpopular opinion, but a blanket roll-out of an English-language mandate at Japanese companies without a deeper consideration…
