Standard Business Cards and Social Psychology

by William Gold
http://williamgold.bravehost.com

Standard business cards are exchanged every day by Japanese from all walks of life. Does that seem funny? It's been long observed, since The Eighties if not The Seventies or even before that, how the typical Japanese, and not only the average salaryman, carries around business cards to exchange with people by way of an introduction. 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.

It's true that human beings are naturally drawn to abstractions and thus sign and symbol-making. But the Japanese are justly noted for having taken such instincts to a higher level of development, of formalizing them so much more elaborately than many, to the point that their very language reflects social status by offering alternating forms of address depending on the listener's place in the greater hierarchy: words will take on different suffixes simply to recognize such social distinctions!

And so we come to the exchange of business cards. It's the ultimate in getting to know one another in a way that's really important: one's relative ranking! It's all very important in Japan, where the culture avoids the false modesty of an egalitarian myth by plainly stating expectations beforehand; right from the get-go one knows what duties are owed, by oneself or from another.

Perhaps a little militaristic, yes. Not one unique in kind to Japan, it must be noted again, but certainly one with few peers elsewhere insofar as degree, intensity, is concerned.

And it happens to be one that's great for business!

Business cards. True, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." Still, there's enough cause for a consideration: things don't just happen for no reason at all.

Indeed, non-Japanese businessmen and women trade cards all the time as well. In fact, the custom started outside Japan. Yet nowhere else has the practice such force; nowhere else has it become so much a part of the culture.

Author William Gold recommends PrintingAndMailingDirect.com for standard business cards and other custom printing jobs.

Article submitted Friday, June 10, 2011 & read 3 times.

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