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Comment by dustintrex | Hacker News Reader

Japanese companies structure apologies very differently from US ones, because the legal consequences are very different. In the US, an apology is considered an admission of responsibility and is often the starting point of legal action against the culprit, while in Japan, a sufficiently sincere* apology may well defuse the situation entirely.

* 真 makoto, a word often glossed as "sincere" but not identical in meaning: it's about the amount of effort you're willing to take on, not how "honestly" you feel something

Also, the culprit here is not HP proper but their consulting/SI wing HP Enterprise, which has a, uhh, less than stellar reputation for competence.

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Apologies, both personal and corporate, are taken very seriously in Japanese culture[1]. They're a way of preserving honor that dates back to the samurai era. You can see this in the custom of bowing, where the length and extension of a bow reflects the gravity of the situation. The act of seppuku can be considered an extreme version of this.

I'm not a Japanophile, but find their culture fascinating.

[1]: https://theculturetrip.com/asia/japan/articles/sumimasen-beh...

On the other hand, the failure is generally frowned upon and avoided at all costs.

Because Japanese culture accepts failure. Admission and acceptance preserves honour. Western culture, particularly in north America, punishes the admission of failure. Everyone is supposed to fight things out to the last, to never give an inch. Even when companies settle cases they rarely admit wrongdoing publicly. Notice that this Japanese company talks about re-educating/training personnel. An American company would be expected to sack all involved and sue the consulting firm.

Weren’t Japanese soldiers in WWII instructed to kill themselves instead of being captured to “preserve honor?” That doesn’t sound like the acceptance of failure to me.

Citizens were also instructed to kill themselves.

It's far too much to go in to in the HN comments section from a phone, but removing the key military leadership who pushed this mindset, a new government structure, and the rejuvenation of business under e.g., Deming caused a significant shift in Japanese culture following the war.

Edit: This is not necessarily in support of the grandparent comment; rather, a caution against judging a culture based on historical anecdotes.

But at least you won't end up in court.

That's exactly what acceptance of failure sounds like to me. E.g. you abandon a chess game when you accept you'll lose. To just keep pushing for a situation you know is irredeemable is to deny you've failed.

A captured solider in war doesn't get to go home and try again after apologizing.

Also, going to war is inherently already a massive corruption of culture.

They were instructed to avoid capture by any means because they had been indoctrinated by propaganda that indicated horrific treatment by Allied POW personnel. While this was obviously false, it's interesting to note that Japanese knowledge of America's history with slavery, segregation, and Indian removal would have made this assumption not unreasonable, and further, may have influenced Japanese treatment of American POWs. After all, a major consideration in Japan's decision to go to war in the first place was the leadership's understanding that their lack of status as a white power would hamper their colonial ambitions. They were only a few decades removed from being excluded from the Berlin Conference, for example.

> they had been indoctrinated by propaganda that indicated horrific treatment by Allied POW personnel.

Sources? I have never heard of that yet.

I can't remember where I initially read it, but it's mentioned on both https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_prisoners_of_war_in_W... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_Japan_during_the... and presumably in the associated citations.

Can I ask where your disbelief is sourced?

Not true, there are lots of sources of information that gives the entire picture: it is a tradition from the ages of samurai.

That's an oversimplification. Pre-existing notions about warrior conduct certainly played a role, but "samurai" were a class (bordering on caste); attitudes descending from bushido were a top-down mandate, enforced by the officer class, not something widespread in common civilian life (save for knowledge of how one is supposed to act towards high-ranking personnel).

If you think that the domestic propaganda machine wasn't running at mach speed in order to shape public perceptions to what would be most beneficial to the Imperial Army and Navy, I don't know what to say. They definitely were, and they definitely pushed, from multiple angles, the idea that surrendering would result in a worse spiritual, material, physical, and psychological outcome than the alternatives (take your pick of whichever motivates you most effectively).

Only certain classes of officers if I remember correctly, and it more likely was motivated by preventing the leaking of intelligence under interrogation by the enemy, rather than really being about preserving honor. Of course it's probably easier to carry out seppuku if you convince yourself its honorable, rather than to just do it based on rationality.

Not all failure results in capture, so one particular failure scenario does not speak of the general view on failure.

When you learned about that, you did not read the entire paragraph: being captured was traditionally considered a dishonor (for the past 500 years, at least), it is a huge failure for a soldier (or samurai). Ritual suicide is the solution to that dishonor.

There are degrees of failure, some is considered to be beyond fixing.

That sounds like saying that the ongoing US war crimes at Guantanamo are important for understanding Google app engine service contracts. Just because Japan is far away doesn't mean that everything that happened there happened in the same place at the same time.

There were misunderstandings that there will not be good chances of dying painlessly if one was to be captured alive, based on Japanese norms and very scarce knowledge on American cultures. Better to pull the pin while you can than having to beg them for days to stab just an inch towards arteries, that's what "preserve honor" ultimately means.

Hmm. I suppose it’s subjective, but isn’t America’s acceptance of failure often cited as an element in the success of its entrepreneurial spirit?

And, wrt to samurais and failure, seppuku?

> isn’t America’s acceptance of failure often cited as an element in the success of its entrepreneurial spirit

Yes, the parent comment is entirely wrong. The US culture is hyper accepting of failure compared to most other prominent cultures, including Japanese culture (which in fact does not tolerate failure very well at all).

Yes, I think op is conflating the terms of apology and failure in this instance.

America accepts failed ventures, not individual mistakes. A business that collapses is a learning experience. But, while they are operating, a business must never admit to wrongdoing impacting customers or the public. There is great respect for failed business judgment, but very little for weakness.

Maybe it depends on the region/prefecture, but after 3 years working in Japan, my experience is quite different. The project suffers massive delays because nobody wants to make any decision and take any responsibility. My former boss (Japanese, but had worked for many years in the US), told me that Japanese managers don't want to take risks, because if something fails they need to apologize in public, and that is pretty much social suicide there.

Japanese firms are interesting to work with. I enjoyed the culture, personally. I have two anecdotes.

The old white box PC shop I worked for, back in the 90s, quoted PCs to a Japanese-owned auto parts manufacturer. The Customer accepted the quote, paid an up-front deposit, and requested the PCs not be built and delivered until some construction at their site was completed in a few months.

In the meantime component pricing went down and speeds/feeds went up. When the PCs were built we ended up being forced to source higher clock speed CPUs and larger hard disk drives. It took some cajoling to get the Customer to take delivery. They felt they should pay more for the upgrades. (We were actually making more money on the deal even with the upgraded components anyway!)

My current company once pitched a support agreement to a Japanese-owned firm. We offered a discount for annual commitment versus month-to-month. I'd copy/pasted the month-to-month terms for the annual but forgot to alter the minimum notice period for ending the annual option. Both month-to-month and annual indicated a notice period of 30 days rather than the intended 180 days for the annual option.

The Customer's contact questioned the notice period being the same. He asked why they wouldn't opt for annual commitment, get the discounted rate, and also have the 30 day notice period. My partner, who had worked with Japanese firms in the past, responded: "We know you wouldn't choose the annual option if your intention was not to work with us for at least a year." The Customer agreed and we ended up getting the gig on an annual basis.

> The Customer's contact questioned the notice period being the same. He asked why they wouldn't opt for annual commitment, get the discounted rate, and also have the 30 day notice period. My partner, who had worked with Japanese firms in the past, responded: "We know you wouldn't choose the annual option if your intention was not to work with us for at least a year." The Customer agreed and we ended up getting the gig on an annual basis.

That's a really cute answer by your partner, I like it a lot, even ignoring that it manages to save face while paying serious respect to the purported customer.

Writing the parent comment gave me, if nothing else, an excuse to publicly document that exchange. I was, and still am, in awe of his ability to think on his feet and come up with such a wholly appropriate response.

Unfortunately it can also be taken a bit too far. It’s not uncommon to essentially buy yourself out of punitive criminal justice via an apology and some cash (jidan/gomen money). It’s not totally unlike a settlement here, except it’s much more acceptable as an opening move (as a victim, you should seriously consider it). It seems to be inline with the goal of preserving social harmony and making “it” go away asap.

> a sufficiently sincere* apology may well defuse the situation entirely.

> * 真 makoto, a word often glossed as "sincere" but not identical in meaning: it's about the amount of effort you're willing to take on, not how "honestly" you feel something

While it's true that makoto can be translated as sincere(ly) in constructions like "makotoni moushiwakearimasen" (I sincerely apologize) (although this is written 誠に rather than 真に), it is unlikely that the word makoto would be used in a phrase like "a sincere apology" or in discussing how sincere an apology was, so I don't really think introducing the word "makoto" in your comment sheds any additional light on japanese culture surrounding apologies.

You could actually make the exact same comment about how "real" in English can also effectively mean sincere in "really sorry" and draw the same conclusions about American culture.

My take away (as westerner with zero direct Japanese culture exposure) from the comment you’re replying to was that in Japan, companies are incentivized to take on some measure of ownership and voluntary restitution, because there is some legal notion in Japan around “honest mistakes not being litigable if they are genuinely rectified.”

I think it’s more that legal measures would not be employed, rather than that they are legally unactionable.

You could have an uphill battle against an unsympathetic judge in front of you if you sue anyway though.

In the US "genuinely rectified" is the standard for civil suit ("actual damages" for negligence, and "specific performance" or monetary equivalent for contracts). Punitive damages are added only for malicious intent.

The reason many US companies don't apologize is because they don't want to make restitution, and can get away without paying.

“In the US, an apology is considered an admission of responsibility and is often the starting point of legal action against the culprit, while in Japan, a sufficiently sincere* apology may well defuse the situation entirely.”

——-

“hospital staff and doctors willing to discuss, apologize for and resolve adverse medical events through a “collaborative communication resolution program” experienced a significant decrease in the filing of legal claims, defense costs, liability costs and time required to close cases.”

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/you-had-me-i-m-sorry-im...

HP and HPE are now two separate companies, split from post-Fiorina HP.

HP does consumer grade stuff only, while HPE does the enterprise side (not just consulting, in fact non trivial portion of HPE consulting arm was spun off and merged into DXC)

I think "sell the HP-35 for 3.14 × cost of materials" cool-HP became Agilent, right?

If I wanted to follow the trail of awesomeness what forest should I be sticking my nose to the ground in? :)

now Keysight, Agilent is medical equip.

That depends on which trail of awesomeness you are after.

The trail that maintains the legacy of DEC and Silicon Graphics and Cray is in HPE (where I work). The Cray legend is still very much alive, but you can still detect the whiff of the the spirit that made HP and DEC minicomputers extraordinary.

Well, I suspect the SGI legacy is now in better hands than when it was controlled by Rackable with branding filed off. The only good parts they sold us were the Ultraviolets, and those were probably the most nonsensical purchase (protip: do not buy supercomputer modules just to run 8 VMs on it, it's waste of money even if the hw is awesome)

More specifically, it spun off and merged with CSC to create DXC.

I agree with your point, and want to add that HP does commercial grade end-user compute and printing along with the related enterprise services. They have a whole set of offerings for the medical industry [1], industrial printing [2], and enterprise PC fleet management services [3].

[1] https://www.hp.com/us-en/printers/3d-printers/industries/hea...

[2] https://www.hp.com/us-en/industrial-digital-presses.html

[3] https://www.hp.com/us-en/services/manageability.html

> In the US, an apology is considered an admission of responsibility and is often the starting point of legal action against the culprit

source? this is a popular theory among non-lawyers, but not, as far as I can tell, well-supported by the evidence. http://jaapl.org/content/early/2021/05/19/JAAPL.200107-20 has extensive citations including for their claim that "In theory, telling a patient about an error may make patients more likely to pursue litigation. In practice, however, bad outcomes alone are typically not reason enough for patients or their families to file malpractice claims."

Medicine may not fit the pattern (personally I'd want to know where I stand, even if the news is bad), but I took the OP to be saying "American firms prefer not to go on record saying they screwed up, since that would naturally be brought up in subsequent legal proceedings".

I flip table rage quit my 15 year job at a university over a new C-suite from who knows where throwing HPE equipment/software/consultants at me for a big sort of project and finding them all so utter crap that I would be a part of that stupidity. I have my standards.

Before I left HPE post Cray acquisition, some of the folks in the consulting/"cloud" division insisted that to use their tooling, we had to insert a windows machine into clusterstor, that mounted lustre, so that they could run their powershell script to gather usage metrics.

What I found working with these teams, was that the desire to flip tables was quite strong after meeting with them. I tried to address their concerns, one point at a time. They were bewildered that windows could not mount (modern) lustre. Really bewildered. I offered to help rewrite their scripts in another (portable) language, so we could avoid these problems. Still they were bewildered.

They were not why I left. Merely a confirmation that my decision to leave was the right one.

HPE is known for its acquisitions and, with that, there are diverse hardware teams who approach engineering differently. This can be a source of amazing innovation or power battles. The folks inside HPE need to learn how to engage in technical conflict better to prevent these catastrophic scenarios.

And yes, your decision was the right one.

I once caused a blank box to appear on Rakuten's homepage for several hours. My boss had to fly to Japan to apologize in person to their CEO.

Or that is what he used to justify a free (likely business class) flight to JP.

No, I don’t work for Rakuten, but the in-person apology from an appropriately senior person is hugely important for large Japanese organizations.

In my current company I have the opportunity to work with several large Japanese banks. Various members of our C-Suite and senior management travel occasionally for this purpose.

A sufficiently sincere apology with the appropriate level of ceremony can be the difference between maintaining and losing a substantial contract.

I don't know a huge amount about Rakuten. Don't they purposefully adopt a pretty flat communication structure, and the CEO travels around a lot, as well as English demanded in senior roles?

I was deeply impressed some--30?--years ago when there was a minor scandal in sumo wrestling: some kid, who had been advanced too quickly did a few stupid things, as I recall the sort of thing you can find in American sports pages every week. The heads of the sumo wrestling association acknowledged that they had contributed to the situation, and docked their own pay. Do you think Roger Goodell is going to do that?

> 弊社100%の責任により

Voluntarily stating 100% responsibility is consequential and not typical, smells politics.

I presume there were extensive discussions between the two parties about the wording before this statement was published.

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