A Field Guide To Standard Business Cards
Standard business cards are all the range in Japan. Did you know that? Carrying cards for purposes of introduction has long been a popular custom in that country, not just for salarymen but many other kinds of people as well. It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that in Japan, folks use standard business cards as conversational ice-breakers!
The movie “Good Morning” parodies this cultural tendency to substitute meaningless signs and symbols for real conversation and real connections. While set in postwar Japan, the society shown onscreen is a fairly comfortable one and would not seem too much out of place in our own times for the most part. 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. Yet traditionally in Japan such impulses have achieved a very developed form, such that the very language makes constant use of different suffixes and the like in order to denote social standing between speakers!
And so we come to the exchange of business cards. It’s the ultimate in getting to know one another in a way that’s really important: one’s relative ranking! 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.
You could call it a rather militaristic mindset, even. It isn’t limited to Japan, of course – at least not in kind, though few other places can match it to the degree of its intensity, the degree of its prevalence and common observation.
One most conducive to modern business.
Business cards. Yes, too much can be made out of such simple things. Still, there’s enough cause for a consideration: things don’t just happen for no reason at all.
Indeed, non-Japanese businessmen and women trade cards all the time as well. In fact, the custom started outside Japan. 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.
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GENERAL SHERIDAN~ advertisment tradecard ~CLARK’S SPOOL $32.00 |
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MAJOR GEN. GEORGE H. THOMAS ~ ADVERTISMENT TRADECARD ~ MINNESOTA $32.00 |
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Clara Barton Civil War Nurse Gum/Trade Card $28.99 |
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JEFF DAVIS TRADECARD??? $39.00 |
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GAR Courtland Saunders Post no.21 TRADE CARD ~ 1882 MEMORIAL DAY PHILADELPHIA PA $15.00 |
