Helping international leaders succeed in Japan | Market Entry & Cross-Cultural Strategy | Founder @ JBI | Author “Getting to Yes in Japan”
Every time I host overseas visitors in Japan, the same thing happens during our week of customer visits to Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka: they're amazed by the train system. Reliable. Clean. Smooth. Punctual to the second. They notice the little things too. The conductor pointing precisely at the platform before departure. The white-gloved staff bowing as trains enter the station. Most Westerners dismiss these as exaggerated gestures, odd Japanese rituals that seem a bit over the top. But these small actions point to something much deeper about how systems work in Japan. A few years ago, I had the chance to join night shifts with a Shinkansen maintenance team. One cold night, we went out to inspect sensors along the track. I watched the neighboring crew methodically checking rails and bolts, examining things that seemed perfectly fine. The kind of thoroughness that might look like overkill from the outside. But what impressed me most happened at the end of the shift. The maintenance team didn't actually fix anything that night. There were no failures on the track. They didn't use a single tool. But as they came off the tracks, instead of rushing home after a long night, they did something unexpected. They opened their toolkits. One by one, they took out every single tool, checked each item off a list, and placed them back neatly. Every wrench. Every bolt. Even the pencils and towels. I asked them why. "Safety," they said simply. "What if we lost one towel or torch on the tracks?" That small oversight would mean going back to search in the dark. Or reporting it to headquarters, which would trigger an investigation. The entire Shinkansen system could be delayed the next day because of one missing towel. That's when it clicked for me. The conductor's pointing isn't theater. The meticulous tool check isn't perfectionism for its own sake. These are the small disciplines that compound into a system so reliable that trains arrive within seconds of their scheduled time, day after day, year after year. In market entry, we often look for the big strategic moves, the bold differentiators. But success in Japan is built on these small, consistent actions that most people never see. The attention to detail. The discipline even when no one is watching. The understanding that one small failure can cascade through an entire system. The secret to Japan's legendary train punctuality isn't technology or infrastructure alone. It's the commitment to the little things that compound into excellence. What small disciplines are you building into your Japan market-entry strategy?
It's called Shisa Kanko 'Point and Call’ and is a powerful method for building quality into the process. I was told that Japan Railways conducted a study in the 1990s showing that error rates dropped by roughly 85% and is why you see this consistently applied today when you ride the rails. This was a part of my formal training at Toyota Motor Corporation — a simple yet profoundly effective habit that we, in the West, have never fully adopted.
Here is a large discipline that has proven way too much for international companies: to try to get their comic books sold in Japan. Despite the fact that billions of Japanese manga flow OUT, sold in various countries around the world, the amount of foreign comic books coming IN to Japan is tiny. Not even 0.01% of the amount going out. A great missed opportunity for international connections and business. And no foreign companies even try anymore...the train has very much left the station.
The pointing is a crucial use of the brain's hard wiring to focus attention on the point of importance. What looks as though it is just a performative ritual is actually also a firm way to make sure that all safety (in this case) points are checked (like the tools in the kit bag). In the west, we might try to look as though all this is done without being evident, but we are relying on memory rather than facilitating our natural attention processes and so are more likely to miss something. It is not just for appearance. Train drivers in Japan also point-and-focus in order to maintain and revitalise their attention even though nobody else sees them doing this.
Rick Brown
4d
I spent one month recently in Japan. There is a myth about Japanese trains always running on time (100%). I am not talking about hour long delays or anything, but while there, I experienced a number of train delays. In fact, I was a little surprised how often I came across the delay (ranged from 5-10 min.), including SHINKANSEN. Clean, courteous staff and all that? Yes, your description is accurate.
That’s such a great little thought. But it is also because every cog is respected. No person is considered unimportant or disposable, and good work ethic is respected. That is a huge cultural shift that needs to happen in most nations worldwide, where the higher we go, the less we pay attention to those people and processes that allowed us to get to those heights (including myself in that mindset).
David Teller
4d
Sadly, in tech, most of what I've witnessed is us heading as fast as we can in the opposite direction. Getting rid of checks and tests in the name of productivity. Outsourcing safety, security and much of our tooling to incomplete third-party blackboxes in the hope to gain a few more percents of productivity. Are we surprised that our systems are so easy to break/break into?
Their attention to detail is wonderful and permeates more than just engineering or public service. It's in their entire culture. You see it even at the level of their art, their customer service, cuisine, social behavior. This ability to pick up cues that most of the world struggles with is such a strength. I'll take a risk here and say that if it weren't for their hierarchical rigidity and fear of failure (among other smaller faults, that many other societies have), it'd be an almost perfect society.
Japanese railway is a good example of Japan's ability to master technical & systemic complexity to make it perfectly reliable and suitable for everyday use by a mass society. Even if it is known how this can be achieved, Pascal Gudorf's article, like many reports on Japan, highlights something that, interestingly, has been numerous lips in Germany for several years now, albeit in completely different contexts, namely ‘mindset’ (Haltung). In relation to the national product, this means, above all, a sense of duty towards the quality of one's own work, one's own contribution to performance and an accepted responsibility. For a long time, this was a German virtue determining the country’s economic success and enabling the social prosperity (still) enjoyed. While some of the ‘repairs’ at Deutsche Bahn cannot be done overnight, the road back to a mindset that ensures our international competitiveness may be longer and much harder. Behavioural changes take time, even if it is only a matter of rediscovering old virtues. Incidentally, the Japanese were long referred to as the Prussians of Asia, which certainly ignores quite some intercultural aspects. But the comparison should encourage us Germans. We actually already know how to do it.
Lee Feng
4d
In terms of being safety minded and truly professional, the same happens in the bus system- I had one with JR buses, even in small towns in Japan. They do their job with self consciousness, and with pride. No empty words. Just work with high sense of responsibility. They set the highest professional standard - with amazing consistency.
I once visited the ANA maintenance facility in Haneda (highly recommended, but popular & needs reservation). There we were told that every mechanic’s personal toolbox is inspected for any missing tools at the end of the shift & locked until the next day. “Forgetting a driver inside an engine” does not happen in Japan!