Irasshaimase (いらっしゃいませ): welcome. Said to customers as they come into a shop.
Kashikomarimashita (かしこまりました): I have respectfully understood. The humble way to accept a customer’s request.
Shōshō omachi kudasaimase (少々お待ちくださいませ): please wait a moment. The customer service manual of the city of Ikoma lists all three among its basic phrases, each said with a 30-degree bow.
Heiso wa kakubetsu no ohikitate o tamawari atsuku onrei mōshiagemasu (平素は格別のお引き立てを賜り厚く御礼申し上げます): we deeply thank you for your exceptional patronage at all times. A standard opening line of a Japanese business letter.
Kisha masumasu goseiei no koto to oyorokobi mōshiagemasu (貴社ますますご清栄のこととお慶び申し上げます): we rejoice in the ever-growing prosperity of your company. Another set phrase for the same place.
The customer service manuals of the city of Ikoma and of Gifu Prefecture define three bows. Eshaku, the light bow, tilts the upper body about 15 degrees forward from the waist. Keirei, the standard bow, tilts it about 30 degrees. Saikeirei, the deepest bow, tilts it about 45 degrees.
In September 2013, a customer at the Naebo store of the clothing chain Shimamura in Sapporo made a female employee kneel in dogeza, the deepest bow of apology. She posted a photo of it on Twitter. On September 21, the image spread widely.
On October 7, after the employee reported the harm to the police, the customer was arrested on suspicion of kyōyō, coercion.
On October 4, 2024, the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly unanimously passed an ordinance to prevent customer harassment. It was the first such ordinance in Japan, and it took effect on April 1, 2025.
It defines customer harassment as seriously disruptive conduct by customers toward workers in connection with their work, which harms their working environment. Article 4 states: “No one shall engage in customer harassment in any setting.”
In 2011, Ikeido Jun won the Naoki Prize for his novel Shitamachi roketto (Downtown Rocket). In 2015, TBS broadcast it as a drama. Teikoku Heavy Industries, Japan’s largest aerospace maker in the story, offers the small manufacturer Tsukuda Seisakusho two billion yen for a patent.
In the episode of November 1, 2015, Tsukuda does not sell the patent. Instead, it proposes to do business by supplying the parts.
Nekime wa keiei (値決めは経営): setting prices is management. This is the sixth of the twelve management principles of Inamori Kazuo, the founder of Kyocera.
He writes that the price must be the highest price at which the customer will gladly buy. Only the top manager, not a sales manager or a salesperson, can find that point.
A Japanese etiquette guide calls it a typical Japanese business scene: bowing deeply until the elevator doors have closed completely.
At a gate or a car, the guide advises seeing the guest off from a distance at which the guest can still see the host bowing. It asks the reader to imagine a guest who turns around to bow once more and finds no one there.
A writer on Japanese hot-spring inns suspects that many people, when they think of an okami, the proprietress of an inn, picture her kneeling and bowing politely. Greeting guests on arrival and at mealtimes is an important part of her work.
Japanese has two respectful words for “your company,” onsha and kisha. Their meaning is the same. Onsha is used in speech, and kisha in writing.