Why do the Japanese has such a bad reputation for playing hard ball, standing alone and being inflexible during international negotiations?
There is no Japanese, or even Japanese English, translation for the expression “win-win”. In Japan, people are divided into kachi-gumi and make-gumi: the tribes of winners and losers.
A million (well, a hundred) other Japanese explanations on the Japan Explained blog.
I disagree with the international negotiations thing. The Japanese can be very flexible, if you know how to negotiate with them. If you try to corner them, try to force them, or try to hammer something home with them, they will turn you away. Hardball meets a hard wall, or something like that. If you respect their position, there’s not much they won’t do to reach an agreement with you. It just takes time and subtlety – two things often missing from, say, the American style of negotiation. As they say, if you accommodate the Japanese in matters of style, they will accommodate you in matters of substance.
Any concrete examples of such negotiations?
Examples of the opposite: whaling, ownership of islands, joint commitees on Asian history etc.
I should point out that big Japanese companies are just as uncompromising when it comes to getting a good price out of their suppliers, the only difference being that they can’t use cultural difference as a weapon.