Standard business cards are exchanged every day by Japanese from all walks of life. Does that seem funny? Carrying cards for purposes of introduction has long been a popular custom in that country, not just for salarymen but many other kinds of people as well. It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that in Japan, folks use standard business cards as conversational ice-breakers!
The inclination towards using signs and symbols as masks formed the subtext of the hilarious “Good Morning” from director Yasujiro Ozu. While set in postwar Japan, the society shown onscreen is a fairly comfortable one and would not seem too much out of place in our own times for the most part. The film is notable for humorously noting such meaningless exchanges of social etiquette, a routine very much related to the practice of trading business cards.
Of course, all human societies revolve around signs and symbols; we are creatures whose first impulse seems to be to indulge in abstract thinking. Yet traditionally in Japan such impulses have achieved a very developed form, such that the very language makes constant use of different suffixes and the like in order to denote social standing between speakers!
And so today’s practice of trading business cards. It’s the ultimate in getting to know one another in a way that’s really important: one’s relative ranking! This is Japan, after all, a country with a cultural heritage that doesn’t pretend to be egalitarian and so has no qualms about formally identifying people’s social standings.
Perhaps a little militaristic, yes. It isn’t limited to Japan, of course – at least not in kind, though few other places can match it to the degree of its intensity, the degree of its prevalence and common observation.
And it happens to be one that’s great for business!
Business cards. Indeed, much too much could be made of something so straight-forward. Still, there’s enough cause for a consideration: things don’t just happen for no reason at all.
Americans trade business cards quite often, too. Indeed, the practice originated in the West, with Europe and America. But there isn’t the same “moral authority,” for lack of a better phrase – there isn’t the same “cultural force” (for continuing want of a good way of putting things) – attached to the business card in the West as there is in Japan.