Importance of the Japanese Meishi

It is not only businessmen who carry cards. So do Buddhist monks, gangsters, taxi drivers, prostitutes, artisans and military officers. But relatively few women have them in this male-dominated society. — Japan’s time-honoured ritual of exchanging business cards face-to-face is under pressure as the government promotes a “new lifestyle” to combat the coronavirus. —Above, Japanese job-hunting students dressed in suits practice swapping business cards during a business manners seminar at a placement centre in Tokyo. ... The ‘meishi koukan’ (名刺交換) is considered to be a formal introduction, when Japanese meet in a business setting for the first time, and they present business cards.
May 28, 2012. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo

Meishi Card: It’s Not Who You Are

Like the American cowboy and his six-gun, the Japanese male seldom ventures out without the security of his business card.

He is almost certain to need it. Every day in Japan, about 10 million to 12 million of the 2-by-3-inch meishi are passed in precise ceremonial exchanges of bows that help glue this status-oriented society together.

In receiving a card, a person learns the name, address and telephone number of the other person. More important, he learns his rank, making clear how this new acquaintance must be treated, what class of honorific words should be used, who is senior and who is junior.

But the card is just as much for the giver’s benefit. In Japan, the link to a company or organization is a major source of self-esteem. The card abbreviates his identity in society, acting like a sort of printed security blanket.

“People are not much confident about themselves merely as themselves,” said Masahiro Yonemura, a Tokyo stationery store salesmen who helps customers order cards from close to 500 designs. “They cover this lack of confidence with a meishi. “

Foreigners never quite master the etiquette of the exchange of cards, no matter how many times they do it. Japanese often get it right only through formal instruction as company trainees. It is invariably conducted first thing in a first meeting.

With one hand, the giver deftly produces from a pocket the special folder, often made of expensive leather, in which cards are carried.

With the other, he deals out one with a crisp little snap of the wrist, something like a casino dealer’s. Simultaneously, he calls out his name and makes a brief bow.

It is bad form simply to pocket a newly received card. You should study it for a moment with a furrowed look of interest. Any notes you want to scribble on it to help you remember the new acquaintance must wait until he is gone. The next time you meet him, you must not offer a card again, because that would mean you had forgotten him.

Buddhist Monks, Gangsters, Taxi Drivers

To snub someone, you can take his card and offer none in return, without explanation. Businessmen sometimes complain that they get this treatment from bureaucrats. You have thus established that he is the inferior.

It is not only businessmen who carry cards. So do Buddhist monks, gangsters, taxi drivers, prostitutes, artisans and military officers. But relatively few women have them in this male-dominated society.

People sometimes use the cards to express themselves. Gangsters, who fancy themselves as guardians of the feudal samurai code of honor, sometimes have theirs done in old-fashioned, hand-brushed Chinese characters.

Designers often proffer brightly colored ones, resembling slick advertising layouts. Wealthy teen-agers might have theirs done up with catchy phrases for passing out at discotheques.

Guides to doing business in Japan invariably underline the folly of trying to get by without meishi. Japan Air Lines even allows foreign executives to order cards from the airline in their home countries and pick them up on arrival at Tokyo’s international airport.

Takaharu Iwasaki, an economics commentator, tried, as a sociological experiment, to do without a card several years ago. It created confusion and suspicion at every turn. Factory gate guards in particular, he recalled, eyed him with distrust. Now he carries one, but it bears no title. “That creates many troubled expressions,” he said.

Generally, the lower the rank, the more information on the card. A junior office worker’s card will lay out in encyclopedic detail where he stands in the bureaucratic heap: title, office, division, bureau, department, company. At the scale’s other end are cards such as the prime minister’s, which reads simply: “Yasuhiro Nakasone.” Or, in the supreme condensation, the emperor’s: “Hirohito.” The emperor does not hand out these cards himself. They might be included with gifts sent from the palace or delivered by retainers as thanks for official banquets.

Importance of Big Title

The cards have many side uses, too.

If you are at a restaurant and find you have no money, all is not lost. Often, you can leave your card with the cashier and make arrangements to pay later.

In fact, a meishi carries much of the authority of an official identification card.

“Japanese people trust the meishi, especially if it carries a big title,” said Yoshito Horiguchi, president of the Heiwado Inc. printing company and lifetime student of the business card’s place in Japanese society.

Since anyone can order any card and printers make no effort to verify their customers’ credentials, the custom is also custom-made for crime.

By far the most celebrated example is the “Imperial Bank incident” of 1948, in which a man posing as a health official fatally poisoned 12 employees of one of the bank’s branches in Tokyo and then robbed the safe.

The man gained entrance to the bank after closing hour by presenting a card identifying him as Dr. Shigeru Matsui. Later, a painter named Sadamichi Hirasawa was convicted of the murders, and an important part of the evidence against him was that he had exchanged cards with the real Dr. Matsui several months before the crime. Hirasawa is still fighting the verdict from the death row of a Japanese prison.

Petty fraud is more common, however. Some years ago, taxis in the northern city of Sapporo offered to allow passengers to leave their cards with the driver and pay later. It was discontinued after riders repeatedly handed over other people’s meishi.

Most uses, however, are above board. In every man’s life comes the time when he must give up the card. In some cases, dismissed employees ritually destroy each card to mark the separation. Those who make it to retirement often feel anxious about having no meishi in their pockets.

Iwasaki, the economics commentator, advises people to get private cards, with no title or company, at about the age of 45 and get used to handing them out.

“Use it in your community and try to establish yourself as yourself,” he said. “If you start this habit at a certain age, you won’t feel so lonely when you’re no longer a company man.”— By John Burgess, Washington Post, Tokyo, 1986 

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia