The Japanese "yes" and the French "non"

The meeting ends. The French side is in high spirits: "They said yes to everything. All that's left is the contract." The Japanese side is quietly exhausted: "Did they actually hear our explanation?" Both were sincere, both behaved correctly, and yet the two attended entirely different meetings. As interpreter and advisor, I've witnessed this scene many times.

Let's start with a famous misunderstanding. The Japanese "hai" is often not agreement but a signal of "I'm listening." This has become well known. But the deeper misunderstanding is about where decisions are made. A French meeting is "where you decide." You debate on the spot, push back, and reach a conclusion. A Japanese meeting is, in many cases, "where you confirm," and the real decision is made before and after the meeting, in the nemawashi (the groundwork). To the Japanese side, a French person demanding an on-the-spot decision looks like "someone ignoring the process."

Silence and debate, and what each means

There's a misunderstanding in the other direction too. In French business culture, objecting to the other side's proposal is proof you're seriously considering it. Debate is the expression of respect. Yet to the Japanese side, being contradicted in front of a superior, in front of a subordinate, is often taken as an insult. Meanwhile the Japanese side's silence — time spent considering — reads to the French side as "no reaction means no interest," and, unnerved, they talk more, sometimes voicing needless concessions.

The prescription isn't complicated. Send the materials two weeks before the meeting (to give the internal process time). Don't call the second meeting, where the same agenda from the first repeats, a "stall" (it's progress). Wait out the silence to the end. And rather than persuading the person in front of you, hand them the material they can easily explain internally. Your real counterpart in the negotiation is the people who aren't in the room.

The gulf between Japan and Europe is one you cross once, paying the cost properly, and then you're done. With someone beside you who knows how to cross it, that one time gets far cheaper. And the trust waiting on the other side lasts, in both cultures, surprisingly long.