I got the following story from David Willoughby, a freelance writer now living in Tokyo:

Whilst in Japan, I happened to find myself seated next to another foreigner who recognised me from the gallery event we had both just attended. We chatted amicably for a while … A little while later, he stood up to leave. “If you like art,” he said to me, almost as an afterthought, “you might be interested in this.” And he nonchalantly tossed onto my table his business card on which he had biro’d the details of some upcoming event he was attending.

It wasn’t just the contrived nature of his networking spiel that made the exchange so unforgettable, it was in the small details. It was in the way in which he dealt his card onto the table rather than to me directly, minimising the chance that it might be rejected. It was in the fact that he waited until the final seconds of our encounter to produce it so that neither of us would have to endure the awkwardness of the moment. Before I had a chance to digest what was written on the card he had vanished.

The exchange would have been amusing for any watching Japanese who are, of course, far more comfortable with the use of business cards, or ‘meishi’. In the West, business cards are strictly for networking and careful consideration must be made about if and when to proffer the card – not so in Japan.

www.tokyoartbeat.com

Find more information about cross cultural differences in the exchange of business cards by clicking on the following links:

Top Ten Tips on passing business cards with cultural fluency

Japan: everything you need to know about business card ‘meishi’ etiquette

U.S.,  Britain, Australia: Business Card Etiquette

The art of business card giving: an East West perspective

Watch a Video on Chinese Business Etiquette

We all know the Far East is THE place in the world to buy fake Rolex watches, fake designer clothes and FAKE anything – but why is that so? Is it because of their cheaper manufacturing arm or could there be another, deep-seated reason?

Unfortunately, many western companies dealing with the Far East have learned to their cost that the region has a very different take on Intellectual Property  from people in the West. Confucius, the world-renowned great thinker in Chinese intellectual history, passed on a moral and ethical code that has long influenced the ways of that part of the world. He believed that ideas once in the public domain and belonged to everyone – so ideas written down belonged to humanity. So the Chinese have never grown up with the concept of copyright. In reality, IP wars can be argued to be the tussle between the intercultural dimension of Individualism and Communitarianism. Knowledge and ideas are seen as one’s own indivuidual property in the west. Not so in the East. So, cross-cultural differences exist.