Standard business cards are exchanged every day by Japanese from all walks of life. Did you know that? It’s been long observed, since The Eighties if not The Seventies or even before that, how the typical Japanese, and not only the average salaryman, carries around business cards to exchange with people by way of an introduction. In fact, the practice is so commonplace that it’s become quite the stereotype for Japanese people the world over!

The movie “Good Morning” parodies this cultural tendency to substitute meaningless signs and symbols for real conversation and real connections. The social milieu depicted in the film is that of postwar Japan in the 1950s, though relatively few signs of want are to be found and indeed no mention whatsoever of war. This was a long time before handing out business cards became a customary greeting on par with the handshake, but the psychological motivations remain the same – as so ably and mostly humorously pointed out by the movie.

It’s true that human beings are naturally drawn to abstractions and thus sign and symbol-making. But the Japanese are justly noted for having taken such instincts to a higher level of development, of formalizing them so much more elaborately than many, to the point that their very language reflects social status by offering alternating forms of address depending on the listener’s place in the greater hierarchy: words will take on different suffixes simply to recognize such social distinctions!

And so today’s practice of trading business cards. This way, one knows immediately one’s place, which is to say, how to relate to one another. It’s all very important in Japan, where the culture avoids the false modesty of an egalitarian myth by plainly stating expectations beforehand; right from the get-go one knows what duties are owed, by oneself or from another.

A militaristic mindset, potentially. Not one unique in kind to Japan, it must be noted again, but certainly one with few peers elsewhere insofar as degree, intensity, is concerned.

And it happens to be one that’s great for business!

Business cards. True, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Still, there’s enough cause for a consideration: things don’t just happen for no reason at all.

Americans trade business cards quite often, too. Indeed, the practice originated in the West, with Europe and America. But there isn’t the same “moral authority,” for lack of a better phrase – there isn’t the same “cultural force” (for continuing want of a good way of putting things) – attached to the business card in the West as there is in Japan.