The reason why Japanese business persons seldom speak English
Nearly five years have passed since I started working for an Europeancapital company in Japan after thirty years of service for aJapanese manufacturing company. The reality of Japanese ”GLOBAL”companies is that English speaking employees in Japan are used as handymento support (incompetent) bosses who cannot speak English.
What surprised me after joining a foreign capital company is that mostof the employees except for upper management are not good at speaking andwriting English either.
I think there exists several reasons:
1. Necessity: Since foreign capital companies focus on the Japanese marketand customers, there is not so much need to use English as a dailycommunication tool.
2. Motivation: In principle, performance appraisal is implemented based onindividual performance. High performers in non-managerial positions arepromoted nothing to do with their English level. They get rattled whenreaching upper positions where they must use English to communicate withtheir foregin counterparts.
3. Basic scholastic achievement: In general, proficiency in English fornon-native speakers is linked with basic scholastic achievement. In theJapanese corporate hierarchy, smartest talents tend to join Japanese largecompanies rather than foreign capital companies, most of which in Japanare small or middle sized ones.
4. Shyness: Most of Japanese enjoy watching TV programs on foreign cultureand travel but hesitate to have direct communications with foreignersin foreign languages such as English. They worry themselves thinking“ What shall I do if my English is not understood?” or “Is my pronunciationcorrect? If not, do native speakers make fun of me?”
We do not have to worry about our pronunciation as long as we canconvey messages since English is just an communication tool. Tomy ears, English spoken by the world leaders such as the Secretary General ofthe United Nations do not always sounds fantastic. But to most of Japanese itis a shame if they cannot speak “perfect” English which is taught in thelanguage schools.
Years ago, I participated in a two-week-global leadership programsponsored by a Japanese leading company. All the participants are from big-namecompanies in the world. All the lecturers were invited to Tokyo fromHarvard. All the sessions were filled with heated discussions led by Indiansand western people but Asian people including Japanese were relatively quiet.
Among the participants, I had a Japanese acquaintance, who was an elitehaving 5 years working experience in the US with over 950 TOEIC score. To mysurprise, he did not speak one word through the two week programs whilerest of the participants tried to speak up at least few times.
after completing the entire sessions I asked him over a drink “WHY were yousilent all the time?” He said showing signs of embarrassment “Every timeI tried to say something, you already spoke up and I could not find anychances…”I guess true reasons were he was afraid of losing face by sayingsomething out of focus( a few years later, he was promoted to a companyexecutive ) . I wonder if such too sensitive Japanese leaders in theJapanese “GLOBAL” firms can really compete with tough businessleaders in the world.
