Aisatsu 挨拶 means greeting. When you arrive at your work place in the morning you say “ohayō gozaimasu” おはようございます (Good Morning) and when you leave you say “osaki ni shitsurei shimasu” お先に失礼します (pardon my rudeness for leaving before you). If you pass someone in the hallway at the office or if someone leaves for the day you should say “otsukaresama desu” お疲れ様です (you must be tired). These are standard greetings.

When I first worked part time at an izakaya in Roppongi many many years ago, the manager sat me down and taught me these phrases. He said they were very important. I thought “yeah, whatever” and forgot about it until the next day when we had an impromptu meeting with all the staff in front of the dirty dishes. The meeting was called to basically scold me for having left the night before without saying “osaki ni shitsurei shimasu” to everyone. Geez, how anal, I thought at the time.

A few years later I found myself working in a sales office in Omotesando doing cold calling for an English Language School. The sales office had about 40 people. They had very strict procedure for aisatsu which was drilled into me during the first week of eigyou boot camp. When I arrived in the morning, I had to go to every person in the office in turn and say “ohayo gozaimasu” while performing a kind of bow-handshake hybrid. If someone arrived after me, they would approach my desk and I would have to stand up and say “ohayo gozaimasu” and do the bow-handshake thing. At first I tried to come earlier to avoid having to deal with this but realized quickly that it didn’t matter if you arrived early or late, the number of people you had to greet was the same. I had to do this regardless of if I was on the phone, smoking a cigarette, eating food etc. What made it even weirder was that more than half of the people were foreigners and I felt like I was in some sort of international-japanese-language-school-religious-cult. After everyone arrived, people who made a sale would go to the front and make a short speech followed by everyone else having to go up and shake they hand, again, and say “omedetou gozaimasu” おめでとうございます (Congratulations). During the day, if you were going to meet a client you had to go to everyone still in the office, shake their hand and say “itte kimasu” 行ってきます (I’m going and coming back) and they had to stand up and reply “itterasshai” いってらしゃい (go and come back). It was very exhausting to say the least and I didn’t really see any point to all this nonsense. I would say that a good chunk of my energy was spent doing aisatsu and I must have caught a whole pile of germs having to shake each person’s hand at least a half a dozen times per day. This was of course an extreme case, where part of the reason for all this ritual was to maintain the illusion of activity and develop a cult like culture in the sales office. Most Japanese companies aren’t this bad. Although recently at my workplace I moved to a quieter part of the office and every morning through the walls I can hear the company next door doing their rah rah chanting, shouting, jumping or whatever it is they are doing to boost energy.

Only recently have I really begun to see the importance of aisatsu and think a healthy amount of office ritual goes a long way to provide a pleasant and cordial atmosphere. Especially in Japanese culture where a good part of society relies on the safety of ritual to maintain the “wa” (harmony).

My current company is a British company and not a Japanese company although 95% of the staff are Japanese. There are no aisatsu imposed from management. When I started working here, the first thing that stuck me was that nobody said “Good Morning” or “Ohayo” when they arrived and people just left work without any kind of greeting. When you pass someone in the hall, they look away and pretend you are not there. Unless you know them. The phone often goes unanswered. At first, I would say ohayo, otsukare etc but I gave up when I realized that nobody was listening or couldn’t be bothered to greet me. This was not because they were rude people. When I got to know co-workers individually most were fairly friendly so it’s something about the culture of my company that creates this awkward atmosphere. This may be the case in other countries too but I think Japanese people function better when there are certain social norms present. It reminds me of the Yasujiro Ozu film Ohayo where two boys decide not to speak to anyone until they father buys them a TV set. They fail to say “Ohayo” to their neighbour which causes a chain reaction and subsequent breakdown of the neighbourhood ecosystem. A very cute little film.