When I first came to Japan I worked as a trainee in a restaurant. This was obviously great for my Japanese. I was hearing Japanese all day long. Those first few weeks were tough trying to understand what my co-workers and customers were saying. One of the first words I learned at my restaurant was “Okyakyu-San” which I took to mean just “customer’. Every time customers walked into our restaurant they were greeted by shouts of “Irasshaiiamse” and then asked how many were in their party. One thing that surprised me was the staff would address the customers “Okyakyu-San”. I thought it a bit odd to be be calling or addressing customers with the word “customer/s”. In English we only use customer to refer to patrons or guests. We never actually say customer to someones face. As my Japanese in the following months improved I think I wrote this term off as just another polite but impersonal Japanese word.
Okyaku-San
Now that I am a little older with close to a decade of living in Japanese under my belt I believe I do understand the word “Okyakyu-San” on a deeper level. “Okyakyu” means “honored guest” as well as customer. Adding san gives it a Mr., Mrs, or Miss. meaning. Like with most things in Japan it is all about history. Back in the good old Samurai days the hierarchically arranged society meant that in order to survive the inferior class had to provide “service”, extreme politeness and deference to their superiors. The common people were at the mercy or the elite Samurai ruling class. Although the Samurai were a “barbaric sword wielding mob” ( in Western eyes) , they did have extremely high etiquette standards. The Samurai were also in charge of enforcing them. To put in vulgar Western terms:It was kiss ass or your ass would be kicked.
This sort of set in a superior/customer is GOD type social conditioning that was ingrained in the Japanese over a period of more than a thousand years. It became an integral part of social and political systems. Etiquette was everything. It also evolved the Japanese language to extreme mind boggling polite standards. Nowadays, the concept of “Okyakyu” has weakened – there are no sword wielding mobsters keeping the high etiquette standards alive. Particularly, the formal language and certain social customs among younger Japanese is disintegrating at an alarming rate and is in fact something of a major concern.
In business customer is still God and Japanese go to great lengths to build harmonious relationships even before actually doing business. It is very different to the somewhat self absorbed “Lets do business” mentality of the west. However, it can take a while to found out just what your prospective business associates want and when and how they want to get business done. Japanese tend to build business relationship with a long term vision in mind, rather than building business to serve short term purposes or meet goals.
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