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.
Ongaeshi (恩返し): returning a favor received, as in sewa ni natta hito ni ongaeshi suru, to repay someone who has looked after one.
Giri (義理): what one must do for others, or return to them, because of one’s position or as a moral duty in social life. An encyclopedia notes that always returning gifts given at weddings, funerals and other ceremonies is also called girigatai, being true to one’s obligations.
On o ada de kaesu (恩を仇で返す): to repay a favor with harm.
A family that receives kōden, condolence money, at a funeral sends a return gift, the kōden gaeshi, later. The usual rule is hangaeshi, half return: the gift is worth about half of the money received. The Mitsukoshi department store notes that many people return between a third and a half.
On White Day, March 14, gifts go back to those who gave gifts on Valentine’s Day. Its origin is disputed. The confectioner Ishimura Manseidō says that the day began with its Marshmallow Day campaign on March 14, 1978.
The national candy makers’ association says that it set up the day at its general meeting in 1978 as a day for giving candy, and held the first one in 1980. Both claims still stand side by side.
Under furusato nōzei, the hometown tax donation system, municipalities send return gifts to donors. A revision of the Local Tax Act set up a designation system from June 1, 2019.
A designated municipality must keep the value of its return gifts at 30 percent of the donation or less. The gifts must also be local products.
At a Japanese inn, a guest may give the nakai, the attendant who serves the room, a kokorozuke, a token of thanks in money. An etiquette guide advises wrapping it in a white envelope or folded paper, and gives about 10 percent of the total bill as a guide.
A personal finance site notes that, in Japan today, it is not a rule that must be followed.