Negotiating that Deal

Abstract

On reading many of the popular books on doing business in Japan, and more particularly those on negotiating with the Japanese, you would think this is not the 21st century but the 1850s when Japan was just being opened. You are not a rather ordinary businessman come to sell widgets but Commodore Perry, who has arrived with his “black ships” on these inhospitable shores. And the Japanese are not equally ordinary businessmen out to buy widgets but the Shogun’s retainers who hardly know what a foreigner is and certainly do not like dealing with one.