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 July 2022, a network failure at KDDI cut off service for millions of au customers. KDDI took 200 yen off the bills of all 35.89 million subscribers under contract during the outage. Customers who had been without service for 24 hours or more also had two days of fees deducted.
At a press conference on July 29, president Takahashi Makoto apologized. The 200 yen, he said, carried the company’s feeling of apology.
Benkyō shimasu (勉強します): literally, we will study. The Daijisen dictionary gives a merchant’s sense of benkyō: to cut the price of goods and sell them cheaply.
Makeru (負ける): literally, to lose. The Daijisen dictionary gives the sense of lowering a price, or adding something as an omake, an extra.
Nasake wa hito no tame narazu (情けは人の為ならず): kindness is not for the other person’s sake. Kindness to others comes back to oneself in the end. The national opinion survey on the Japanese language for fiscal 2010 found that fewer than half of respondents understood the proverb in this original sense.
A guideline of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry for the casting and forging industry, last revised in April 2019, describes a case under the Subcontract Act. A buyer obtains a price cut from a supplier on the promise that it is only temporary. When conditions recover and the supplier asks to discuss the price, the buyer keeps it down on its own, without enough consultation.
The guideline treats this as kaitataki, beating down the price.
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.
In 2021, Japan’s Small and Medium Enterprise Agency designated every March and September as a Price Negotiation Promotion Month. The first one was held in September 2021. Its purpose is to encourage buyers to let suppliers pass on rising labor and raw material costs.
On December 27, 2022, the Japan Fair Trade Commission published the names of companies that had kept their purchase prices unchanged without discussing them explicitly with suppliers during price negotiations. It published them under Article 43 of the Antimonopoly Act, in an investigation of possible abuse of a superior bargaining position. About 4,030 other companies received warning letters but were not named.
The commission stated that publishing the names did not mean that the companies had broken the law.
Toyota negotiates with steelmakers such as Nippon Steel, buys steel in bulk, and sells it at low prices to its affiliated parts makers. The price of this supplied steel is reviewed every six months. It is linked to the cost of raw materials such as iron ore and coking coal.
In April 2018, Xiaomi made a public promise: “From now on, Xiaomi formally promises users that the overall after-tax net profit margin of its hardware business, including phones, IoT and lifestyle products, will not exceed 5 percent each year. If it does, we will return the part above 5 percent to Xiaomi users in a reasonable way.”
Reports on the promise repeated a Xiaomi phrase: gandong renxin, jiage houdao, touch the heart, honest price.
The drinks chain Mixue Bingcheng sells fresh ice cream for 2 yuan and iced lemonade for 4 yuan. At the end of 2024, it had 46,479 stores around the world. On March 3, 2025, it listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.