Big in Japan – Perspective From 35 Years of Living in an Aging Country

Welcome, Debbie!

Thank you so much, Keren. It’s wonderful to be here. 

You spent most of your career working in Japan. That’s quite a long way from Texas. How did you get started? 

Well, I was actually raised in South Carolina. I was working in Atlanta, Georgia, and I had worked about nine years for a major fortune 500 company in corporate communications, but I was a little bored. And I had a best girlfriend from childhood who was living in Japan, in Tokyo as a travel writer.

And she was sending me these tantalizing letters about the Far East. And I became really charmed and needed to take a gap year at 31. And so I did, and because she was in Tokyo, I started in Japan and I was going to do a one year trip around the world but I never left Japan. It was so exciting to me … and I got a job there right away. I didn’t anticipate that. I was going to just fool around if you want to know the truth.

They kind of say that you can run, but you can’t hide! And I was there for about two months and I started dabbling around, interviewing, and I got a job with McCann Erickson, which was joined at the time with Hakuhodo. So I went to work for the market research agency of a large ad agency in Tokyo. 

So since you’ve been working in Japan for decades and you’ve been helping major companies enter this market; what would you say is the number one misconception foreigners have on Japan as a market?

Well, I think most people who are listening will know that Japan is famously difficult – not just the regulations, but also the consumers are very tough. And I think what surprises me over and over again (and I’ve been working in the market for 30 years) is how surprised foreigners are … at how different Japan is.

So it’s kind of like they come in with their briefcases, especially the Americans. And I can say that because I’m an American … with their briefcases and after one week of appointments, they’ll be going, we couldn’t sell anything. We didn’t get an order. I end up laughing actually, because it is such a difficult market.

And so to, to imagine that Japan is going to be anything like your home market is a big misconception. 

In what ways is it different? Like what do people find so overwhelming? Is it like the culture? Is it the language? Is it the food?  

Well, the language and the food … the language, you can use an interpreter. If you use a good one, you’re going to be okay.

The food is fabulous. If you’re into food … those are both different things, but the culture is what’s so different there. So for example, in Tokyo especially it’s, it’s all form and little substance in the early days of meetings. So you’ll be spending hours in these meetings, talking about things that you never thought you’d have to talk about and having questions (asked) that seem ridiculous to you from your home country’s viewpoint.

I think another real interesting difference that I see very large companies, even large famous companies elsewhere in the world, come to Tokyo or Japan, and nobody really knows or trusts them. And they have that mentality of being, you know, I’m a big company. I’m not going to name any names, but “I’m a big company and we’re famous in the world.”

But actually the Japanese people don’t know them. And I’m talking about end users, whether they are consumers on the street or B2B type consumers.

So what you’re actually saying is that international brands don’t necessarily have the same brand recognition in Japan. So they come in with like their head held high and they basically get a bummed out by the way that no one is perceiving them as like the big shots in the room. 

It can be pretty disappointing, Keren. I mean, imagine, for example, I’m just going to name Facebook, for example, that is huge everywhere else in the world and it’s in Japan, but it is not as well used in Japan as it is in other places in the world. And there’s a homegrown version called line in Japan. L-I-N-E that’s much more prevalent among all age groups than Facebook is.

Coca-Cola is another example. It’s not a Pepsi who is the competitor in Japan. It’s all the plethora of other, not only soft drinks, but tea, drinks, and all kinds of other things that are put out by large Japanese trusted manufacturers who pump products down through the channels and own the distribution.

So, you know, it’s just a different ballgame. And that’s why I say that. Now remember I’m a market researcher, so I I’m prejudiced to tell you to do your homework, but honestly, if you went to another market … if I came to Israel, I would want to do the homework on Israel so that I would understand your market.

I don’t really know anything about Israel. So I would be thinking as a person, as a person who has a lot of experience in a market that’s difficult to understand … my first job for me in going to another market would be learning the landscape. How is it different from my own market? Where are the problems that I might not have thought of?

And that’s often solved by doing a lot of good research and homework. 

You probably don’t know what you don’t know. And if you’re a total novice, like where do you even start? So from your experience, what does it take for foreign companies to actually make it in this market?

Is there one particular theme that all companies, all foreign companies that have made it in the Japanese market, have in common? 

So what we say at Carter JMRN is that building trust … establishing trust and then building that trust … is the most important thing that a foreign company can do. Obviously if people are not aware of your company, you need to build up that credibility and brand awareness. And, and again, the trust, the trust factor is, is very important. We know that one of the reasons Japanese consumers believe in technology and trust technological innovations for example, is that they can … they’ve seen Japanese companies actually deliver products that work. And so there’s an inherent trust in the contract with the consumer there. And so foreign companies need to establish that trust as well. 

As a second side of that, though, I would like to say you don’t do that by being Japanese per se; you have to embrace your foreignness because you will never NOT be foreign in Japan.

You will always be a foreigner, even if you learn how to eat with chopsticks and you look pretty good doing that. Everyone knows that you’re a foreigner. There’s no way to get around that. So you need to embrace that. And use it, use it to your advantage. McDonald’s is an example of a foreign brand that has become almost assumed to be Japanese by little, little children, for example, who have grown up seeing it. They don’t question that McDonald’s is foreign. There are research studies that show that many kids think McDonald’s is a Japanese thing. And, and even (with) the sport baseball, there are some people in Japan that think baseball originated in Japan.

But of course we know it didn’t. But it takes years to get that kind of traction and we would not recommend that. We would recommend (being) who you are and what you are, and use that to your advantage and bring in the credentials and the evidences of how you are successful elsewhere in the world. And the third one is to reset the agenda to, to your strategy.

So understand the landscape. Understand who you are. This is kind of like personal branding actually. And use that being authentic to reset the agenda and create your strategy and your game plan, rather than playing someone else’s game plan. 

You recently published an excellent White Paper about agetech in Japan I will pull a link to it in the show notes. Everyone should definitely read it. So what are some of the unique characteristics of the Japanese agetech ecosystem? 

One of the most important factors is that 30% of Japan’s population of 128 million people is 65 years or older.

That is the highest percentage in the world. The next highest would be Italy, right on Japan’s heels, coming up on 20%. The US has 15% by comparison. And most of the developed countries are somewhere in there. 15, 16, 17%. There’s a little bit of variation. The Asian countries are coming along as well, but Japan, having 30% of its population at 65 or more is, is an amazing opportunity there … just to look at aging and caregiving in a society. I think within that ecosystem, if you will, we have an aging population that is very young at heart. So if we compare Japan’s aged population to let’s say the United States, we will see a better quality of life.

We will see more active, older people, riding bicycles and doing things even working later in life. We have many, many people in Japan who want to work until they’re 75 and 80 even. They’re also exercising three times a week, and doing brain training and things to keep their minds fresh.

So I think the proactiveness of the Japanese people, especially the aging population keeps them very young, giving them a quality of life.

I think another factor is the financial stability. We have less division between rich and poor in Japan. So a much broader middle-class and many more older people with security and no worries about money. as they get older … and that’s very, very different than in many countries in the world. I’m not saying we don’t have problems in Japan. I’m saying that there are many fewer problems than other places in that, in that financial area.

And the third one is open-mindedness about anology because we have 30% of the population over 65. Everyone has seen the impacts of aging and they have felt that in their families. We also have many of the elderly being taken care of at home and in family settings, as opposed to outsourcing the care. And that means that younger people also see their grandparents aging and they understand the impacts of that.

So we have a very high and open-mindedness towards technology because we know we need it. Does that make sense? 

Speaking of technology and being open to adopting technology, I’ve heard it said before that because the Japanese culture is so open to technology, Japanese older adults tend to be more accepting of technology than Westerners who might be slightly squeamish about like humanoid robots.

So what are some of the other cultural differences that need to be taking into account when developing tech enabled products and services for this market? 

Well, one of the most important things that I’m hearing over and over again in focus groups and ethnographic interviews is this idea that if I use something too soon, I may weaken myself. In other words, I don’t want to have a crutch because it’s better for me to suffer and struggle and try. And I’m sorry to say it, but the Japanese are very stoic. I’ll give you a good example of that. I heard a 72-year-old woman the other night in a focus group saying she had given up her walking stick recently because she felt she was becoming too dependent on it.

And she thought that using it … she rationalized that using it would actually weaken her. And so she decided she would tough it out. Now we can all argue about whether that’s true or not. But I’m just saying that’s a reality I hear over and over again .

Let’s say pre-pandemic, when people would be going to the grocery store and they would go to the grocery store in Japan maybe three or four times a week, because it’s more of a small store, fresh food type culture. And we proposed some robotics solutions where they wouldn’t have to go to the store and they can order and have it delivered or they could have the robot actually go to the store and pick things up.

They did not like that. Because for them. Again, I’m talking about 75-, 80-year olds … that was a social thing for them to go to the store and  for them, they got exercise, they got social neighborhood exposure and it was kind of fun. It was like a field trip for them. And so I think when we’re developing technologies for Japan, we need to remember that.

Certainly in positioning and marketing things, we can address this issue of not becoming a crutch and not weakening them, but we need to just keep that in mind that people are very much of the mindset that if I do it myself, I will stay strong and it’ll keep my mind strong and my body strong. Does that make sense?

I totally get why going to the grocery store would be a social experience and why people wouldn’t want to give that up, especially if it’s like this one time of the day when they actually get to go out and talk to another human being. 

Another thing we picked up from the focus groups and ethnographics is that in the West, we don’t want cameras in our homes. We have a resistance to being monitored. The Japanese people … older people … and we’re never saying ALL of anyone … we’re saying they tend to be very open-minded to being monitored because again, the penetration of the aging problem is so great.

They’ve seen news stories about other people who have died alone. And so they see the camera and the monitoring as a way to prevent that. So that’s a second thing that is quite different from the United States or other Western markets. And the third one I wanted to mention is: onboarding users to use anything.

It doesn’t even have to be technology. The Japanese love instructions and a lot of detailed and information. And so anything we can do when we’re developing technology for Japan to help the user in more ways than we helped them in the West will go down well, not only with aging people, but their caregivers.

All the challenges of aging are pretty much universal. That also comes across from your report and from your research. 

You mentioned Japanese older adults being more accepting of monitoring solutions because they realize they might fall in their house and no one will notice. What are some of the more innovative solutions that you’ve seen emerge from Japan and that could apply in international markets? 

This is one of my favorite subjects. I’m going to give you some foundational differences that really are the big things that we need to address systemically in a lot of our other cultures. So Japan has a great national health care system. And of course there are some really interesting things that happen in terms of support for in-home care through that healthcare system.

But because … maybe partly because of the penetration of the aging population. Japan has done a wonderful job educating and building awareness among aging people about staying physically active, staying mentally active, staying socially involved with different generations. And this is something that we see over and over again.

I mean, we see individuals taking responsibility for their physical and cognitive state of being and, and preserving that and maintaining that. And I don’t think we see as much individual accountability at least in the US I’m not going to speak about other countries … but I, we see a lot of lifestyle diseases in the States that we do not see the prevalence of in Japan. Again, we have them, we just do not have them to the same degree. Obesity is not a problem in Japan the way it is in the States … diabetes, heart disease … lots of the things that we see that cause older people, many, many problems over the years to come and impact quality of life … are not as much of a factor in Japan because they’ve done such a great job of education and awareness building.

And there is that individual accountability. I would even go so far as to say that Japan is not as ageist a society as we have in the US for example. In the US everything is young, young, young … and I can tell you, I’ve felt that myself …  but in Japan, old age is revered and respected and older people are taken care of in a different way. They’re not outsourced to an assisted living place or a nursing home. They are taken care of in the home. Some of that has to do with penetration problems of assisted living and that sort of thing, but that cultural underpinning is there. And, and I think that that’s a very good thing because it keeps the older person in a family setting.

Traditionally the oldest son in Japan would be the inheritor of everything. The, the other kids don’t get anything. The older … some of this is  changing … but I’m talking about traditionally, the older son would get everything. And the reason is … that they would take the parents’ home at some point (when they get about 65 or 70), they will raze it and build a new dwelling for that original older family and the nuclear family of the older son. So the older parents live in the house there, and you have an inter-generational living situation.

The penetration of multi-generational households has definitely lowered over the years because of the growth of the nuclear family. And we are seeing more assisted living facilities and that sort of thing in Japan … but culturally speaking keeping the family together (which is the old way we used to do it in the West) has been, I think, a contributing factor to something very good in Japan for the aging population. But we also know that many of the aged population in Japan lived independently. So they may have their own apartment, but they may live, let’s say two blocks or within one hour of a child who will be helping them and visiting them on a regular basis.

These are not strange concepts when we talk about Western countries either. But I think in Japan, it’s, it’s more well penetrated. And so that’s not exactly innovation as you have asked the question, but I think it’s very important to understand that systemically that kind of thinking and that kind of viewpoint is a very positive thing for an aging population.