News Japanese companies: execs making English mandatory

It was in 1999 that Nissan Motor Co. tied up with Renault and instructed its employees to speak in English during business meetings when non-Japanese participants were present. In 2010, Rakuten Group Inc. announced that English would replace Japanese inside the company. Business meetings, along with internal memos, are in principle exclusively conducted in English. Then, in 2012, Fast Retailing Co., the operator of Uniqlo, made it mandatory for its employees to interact with one another in English. Now Sharp Corp., affiliated with Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., announced in late June that its employees will be required to use English for all business-related activities in the future.

[...] the decision to make English the official in-house tongue astonished some employees. One exasperated staffer said he had "never heard of that" happening in the company. Others bitterly complained that being mandated to converse in English would prove meaningless, given that sales representatives in Japan and other staffers have no need to do so on a daily basis. The company has yet to divulge what training programs it has in mind to transform the way it conducts business. "The scope of the official language project, such as whether divisions engaged in overseas businesses should exclusively be covered, and whether Japanese employees will be obligated to communicate with each other in English, is still being considered," said a Sharp representative.

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Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., whose 18-member board of directors comprises 13 non-Japanese, conducts its board meetings in English. Japanese is used in domestic offices, while English and other languages are spoken during gatherings involving non-Japanese attendees.

As companies become more global it is just the obvious way to go. Like it or not English has pretty much become the de-facto common language that most people can bumble through. When two people from countries with different native languages meet, assuming neither is native English in the first place, the most likely language for them to converse in is English.

Time to start a JREF traveling business eikaiwa, offering regular classes to bring Japanese office workers up to snuff!

nice gaijin said:

Time to start a JREF traveling business eikaiwa, offering regular classes to bring Japanese office workers up to snuff!

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Yes, we must teach any Japanese managers about using copious amounts of buzzwords anytime they speak. That way he can synergize his team into de-obfuscating their problems and bifurcating their solutions in order to ensure maximum realization of potential for the fluid business units they champion for.

Oh, and something about Gartner Magic Quadrants too. Can't forget the magic after all!

Petaris said:

Yes, we must teach any Japanese managers about using copious amounts of buzzwords anytime they speak. That way he can synergize his team into de-obfuscating their problems and bifurcating their solutions in order to ensure maximum realization of potential for the fluid business units they champion for.

Oh, and something about Gartner Magic Quadrants too. Can't forget the magic after all!

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I'm afraid I might need to take some lessons to brush up on this version of English