A Japanese company can keep a lawyer under a komon keiyaku, a retainer contract for ongoing consultation, instead of hiring one for each case.
In a survey published by the Ministry of Justice, 45.1 percent of small and medium-sized companies that had used a lawyer had such a retainer. Among startups that had used a lawyer, the share was 78.2 percent. A lawyer interviewed for the survey said that many retainers at his office ran at 50,000 yen a month, and some at 500,000 yen.
In July 2017, the Financial Services Agency published a report on rotating audit firms. It looked at 96 of the TOPIX 100 companies that had also been in the index in 2007. Over the ten years to 2016, 91 of them, 95 percent, had kept the same audit firm. Five had changed.
Agency materials of 2022 described the same pattern: audit contracts had become fixed, and companies were not changing audit firms of their own accord.
In the first half of 2026, Tokyo Shoko Research counted 91 changes of auditor. The most common reason given, in 42 cases, was the length of the audit tenure itself.
In April 2002, the IT news site ITmedia recalled a bid for a document management system of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. The system had a budget of 85 million yen. Hitachi bid 750 yen. The writer placed the bid in the previous year, as far as he remembered.
An explainer on CIO.com describes the same scheme in copiers. A vendor won the machine itself for one yen and made its profit on the maintenance contract and the toner and ink cartridges that followed.
In Sazae-san, Saburō works for Mikawaya, a liquor shop. He is the shop’s goyōkiki and delivery man, who calls on households to take their orders. A Japanese character guide describes him as a likable young man. He is known as Sabu-chan.
He took over from an earlier Mikawaya employee, Sanpei, who married and returned to his family home in Yamagata.
Deiri (出入り): going in and out. The Nihon Kokugo Daijiten defines it as visiting a household regularly as a familiar, and also as doing business with that household as a regular customer.
Kakaritsuke-i (かかりつけ医): the doctor one is attached to. The Mypedia encyclopedia defines it as a doctor or dentist who can be consulted in daily life and who also deals with emergencies.
The temple builder Kongō Gumi gives 578 as its founding year. Shitennō-ji in Osaka was founded in 593. From then until the Edo period, Kongō Gumi worked for the temple as its own miya daiku, temple carpenters.
In a ranking of Japan’s oldest companies, not counting religious bodies, Kongō Gumi comes first. Since 2006, a new company in the Takamatsu Construction Group has carried on its business, and the Kongō family no longer runs it.
In 2024, Toyota presented its purchasing policy at an event of the Japan Auto Parts Industries Association. The aim is to buy the best goods in the world, at the lowest cost, at the right time, and chōki anteiteki ni, in a long-term and stable way. One section is titled “Mutual prosperity based on mutual trust.”
Japanese companies often concentrate their borrowing, their deposits and their transfers at one bank, the mein banku, main bank. A business guide describes a tacit understanding. When the borrower falls into difficulty, the main bank watches over it warmly.
The guide also notes a limit. This support may end when the trouble comes from the borrower’s own poor management.
Tokuisaki (得意先): a customer who always buys from one, or a partner one trades with as a matter of course. A dictionary gives torihikisaki, trading partner, as its synonym.
Kongo tomo yoroshiku onegai itashimasu (今後ともよろしくお願いいたします): we ask for your continued favor from now on. A business magazine explains that the phrase expresses a relationship that will continue over a long span.
A business etiquette guide advises an employee who is being transferred to visit clients together with the successor. This makes the handover smoother and reassures the clients. Some also give a thank-you gift, such as individually wrapped sweets worth 2,000 to 3,000 yen. Only when a visit is impossible is an email acceptable.