Japan, Customer, Omotenashi Ideal

Rikyū’s Seven Rules

Seven rules for the tea ceremony are traditionally attributed to the tea master Sen no Rikyū. They are known as Rikyū shichisoku. Make tea so that it is good to drink. Lay the charcoal so that the water boils. Arrange flowers as they grow in the field. Make it cool in summer and warm in winter. Be early. Have an umbrella ready even when it is not raining. Be mindful of the other guests.

A children’s tea ceremony leaflet from the town of Chikujō in Fukuoka explains each rule. The first teaches kikubari, attentiveness. The rule on summer and winter teaches omoiyari, consideration for others.

O-mo-te-na-shi

On September 7, 2013, at the IOC session in Buenos Aires, Takigawa Christel presented Tokyo’s bid for the Olympic Games. She spoke one word syllable by syllable, with a gesture: o-mo-te-na-shi.

The word was one of four joint winners of the grand prize of the 2013 New Words and Buzzwords Award.

The Customer Is God

Okyakusama wa kamisama desu: the customer is god. The line is famous as the words of the singer Minami Haruo. In his book Kagei no tenchi of 1984, he explained that in this sense the audience is a gathering of absolute beings, and that he had been taught that the absolute between heaven and earth is god.

His daughter, Minami Miyuki of his management company, says that the true meaning of the phrase is entirely different from its use today in cases of customer harassment.

Once in a Lifetime

Ichigo ichie (一期一会): one lifetime, one meeting. A tea ceremony phrase. Host and guest should treat each gathering as one that will happen only once in their lives, and act with complete sincerity.

It first appears in the record of the tea master Yamanoue Sōji as ichigo ni ichido no kai, a gathering once in a lifetime. Ii Naosuke later stressed it in his tea treatise Chanoyu ichie shū.

Certified Hospitality

In August 2016, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced the omotenashi kikaku ninshō, the Omotenashi Standard certification. It certifies businesses that provide high-quality service. Certified businesses receive a mark, so that users can tell good service from bad.

The Book of Tea

In 1906, Okakura Kakuzō published The Book of Tea in New York. He wrote it in English, to bring the essence of Japanese culture and the Japanese sense of beauty to the West through the way of tea.

Otōshi

At many Japanese izakaya, a small dish called otōshi arrives without being ordered. Most are charged, usually 300 to 500 yen. A lawyer quoted by President Online says that the customer must pay if the dish was explained on entry or clearly shown on a sign or menu. Without such notice, no contract exists, and the customer can refuse both the dish and the charge.

Disputes with foreign visitors have occurred, and some shops now let customers decline it.

The Customer Is God, So

In 2018, the economic commentator Kaya Keiichi wrote in Newsweek Japan that 73.9 percent of the people in a survey had suffered nuisance behavior from customers at work. He described the reasoning behind it: in Japan, the customer is god, so a worker cannot stand up to a customer’s high-handed behavior.

Quality Without a Price

In 2017, the Japan Productivity Center surveyed 500 Japanese who had stayed in the United States and 500 Americans who had stayed in Japan. Both groups said that Japanese service was better than American service in almost every field. The center measured the difference by asking how much more they would be willing to pay.

It concluded that, in 25 of 28 categories, the higher quality was not fully reflected in Japanese prices.

Motenashi

Omotenashi (おもてなし) is motenashi made polite with the honorific prefix o. A Japanese dictionary gives the meaning of motenashi as treating another person as precious, looking after them, and receiving them with care. An early Japanese-Portuguese dictionary glosses it as inviting a person and treating them generously.