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Review focus: tradition, Japanese, Westerners, haragei, managers, companies, foreigners, revenge
Asian Business Code Words Index NTC/Contemporary Publishing Company Asian Business Strategy & Street Intelligence Ezine
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In the world of the Japanese, the stomach has traditionally played many of the roles that Westerners assigned to the heart. From ancient times, the Japanese believed that the stomach - not the heart - was the center of one's being. It was the stomach that the Japanese looked to in their efforts to understand other people - something that was referred to as haragei (hah-rah-gay-e), or "the art of the stomach." Until recent times, most Japanese men wore a band of cloth called haramaki (hah-rah-mah-kee) wrapped around their stomachs in the wintertime to keep them especially warm. And, of course, when Japan's feudalistic samurai were called upon to commit ritual suicide, hara-kiri (hah-rah-kee-ree), it was the stomach they cut open. Because of the importance of the stomach in Japanese life, there are many sayings and colloquial expressions that refer to this part of the body. When people get angry, for example, their stomach "stands up," hara ga tatsu (hah-rah gah tot-sue). One of the most meaningful, and somewhat humorous, of the common references to the stomach, is heso wo mageru (hay-soe oh mah-gay-rue), or, literally, "to bend the bellybutton." Because the stomach is seen as the site of human emotions, any tinkering with the heso, or "bellybutton," can have serious consequences. "Bending the bellybutton" refers to getting emotionally hurt, something to which the Japanese are extraordinarily susceptible; offended sensitivities are responsible for an enormous amount of suffering on the part of the Japanese. One of the most famous incidents in Japanese history - the saga now known as "The Forty-Seven Ronin" - involved a relatively minor provincial lord whose heso was bent by a highly placed official in the shogun's court. When the angry lord drew his sword and attempted to avenge the insult, he was taken into custody and ordered to commit suicide. Upon his death, the lord's fief was confiscated by the shogun, and as a result of this, the lord's retainers, who have become ronin (roe-neen), or "masterless samurai," vowed to take revenge against the official. A year and a half later the ronin raided the official's mansion in Edo, captured him, cut off his head, and took it to the grave of their lord. They then surrendered to the government and killed themselves when ordered to do so. Dealing with the Japanese, and especially managing them, is difficult because of extreme care must be taken to avoid "bending" anyone's navel. The propensity of the Japanese to feel that their bellybuttons have been twisted is often a special problem for foreign business people in Japan because the Japanese who feel emotionally offended ordinarily do not speak up and openly complain about it. In Japanese companies, Japanese managers are generally sensitive enough to the nonverbal signals sent out by people who have been emotionally hurt to recognize the situation and to do something about it. The most common method of getting the problem brought out in the open is for the manager directly concerned to take the emotionally offended person to a bar or cabaret if it is a man or to a coffee shop or restaurant if it is a woman and in such a ritualized setting discuss the situation and come to a mutually acceptable solution. Foreigners who are not fully tuned into the cultural wavelength of the Japanese generally miss the usually subtle signs of a heso out of shape, and they may not be aware that someone has been slighted. If these situations are not quickly and effectively addressed, the injured parties continue to grieve in silence, with their anger building up as time passes. Eventually, they will do something to resolve the situation themselves. In some cases they simply quit their job without any explanation. In other cases, they carry out some kind of revenge against the persons they hold responsible. This revenge may be subtle criticism of the responsible persons in an attempt to tarnish their image. It may also be an attempt to attract enough support from others in the same section or department to boycott the individual and eventually get the person fired or transferred. There have been many cases in Japan in which employees of foreign-owned companies, who felt slighted by their foreign superiors, have managed to make their superiors look so bad that they were eventually recalled by their parent companies. It is essential that foreign managers who cannot recognize the symptoms of heso wo mageru have good enough relations with Japanese employees so that one or more of them will keep them informed of any problems regarding heso wo magery.
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Boye Lafayette de Mente is one of our regular monthly columnists at the 
| This month's column is excerpted from NTC's Dictionary of Japan's Business Code Words, by Boye Lafayette De Mente available from NTC/Contemporary Publishing Company |
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