Explaining Japanese enterprise deals to a US headquarters

“They love the product. Why can’t they sign this quarter?”

If you’re the Japan person at a US tech company, you’ll hear some version of that question every quarter. I’ve been answering it since November 2021, when I joined Vercel as its first Japanese-speaking customer success hire, working from Osaka for a company headquartered in San Francisco. I now lead customer success for Asia Pacific and Japan, and since September 2025 I’m also interim country manager for Japan. The titles changed; explaining Japan to people sixteen or seventeen hours away didn’t.

The customer side of that work is in Customer success in Japan; this one is about explaining Japan to headquarters.

The conclusion, if you want to skip the rest: in a Japanese enterprise, the person who loves your product is rarely the person who approves it, and the customer’s calendar matters more than yours.

Ringi and nemawashi: who actually decides

Most large Japanese companies approve purchases through a ringi (稟議, a written proposal that circulates up the chain for sign-off). Your champion writes it, and each level above them approves it, these days usually in a workflow system rather than with hanko stamps. Before it circulates there’s nemawashi (根回し, literally “going around the roots”): the informal conversations that make sure nobody is surprised when the document reaches their desk.

The point here is that your champion is making your case to people you will never meet, in a document you will never see. How good that document is depends on what you give them:

• A one-page summary in Japanese they can paste in.
• Pricing in yen, with the assumptions written down.
• A comparison with alternatives. Many companies require competing quotes (相見積もり) above a certain amount.
• Security answers and Japanese references (more on both below).

Ask one question early: which meeting does this have to go through, and when is it? Miss that meeting and the deal moves a month, and nobody on the customer side will think of that as a delay.

And learn to hear maemuki ni kentō shimasu (前向きに検討します, “we’ll consider it positively”) for what it is: not a yes. It isn’t always a no either. Ask what the next step is and who else needs to see it.

The April fiscal year sets the pace

Most large Japanese companies and the public sector run their fiscal year from April to March, split into a first half (上期, April to September) and a second half (下期, October to March). Next year’s budget is usually drafted in the autumn and winter and approved before April. If you’re not in that budget, a mid-year purchase needs its own justification, or it waits a year.

Dates HQ should have on its calendar:

• End of March: new contracts and renewals pile up at fiscal year-end (and, on a smaller scale, at the end of September).
• April: personnel rotations (人事異動). Your champion may move, and their successor has to learn why they’re paying for you.
• Golden Week (late April to early May), Obon (mid-August) and the New Year holidays: very little gets approved.

This matters most for renewals. If you plan to change pricing or packaging, Japanese customers need to hear about it before their budget is drafted, which for an April renewal means the previous autumn. A price increase announced in February doesn’t fit the number that was already approved, and fixing that means another ringi.

Currency is the same problem. The budget is approved in yen. If you bill in dollars and the yen weakens, the approved amount no longer covers the invoice. Quote in yen where you can, or leave a margin and say so in the proposal.

Invoices, bank transfers and vendor registration

Japanese enterprises pay by bank transfer (振込) against an invoice, usually on terms like 月末締め翌月末払い: billed at the end of the month, paid at the end of the following month. Many can’t pay for enterprise software by credit card at all.

Before the first order, you have to be registered as a vendor (取引先登録). That can mean company documents, bank details and an anti-social forces check (反社チェック), and it can take weeks. Nobody on the customer side can skip it for you. Then comes the paper trail: quote (見積書), purchase order (注文書), invoice (請求書).

Since October 2023 Japan also has the qualified invoice system (インボイス制度), and accounting teams check invoices for a registration number. Whether yours need one depends on how you sell: from the US entity, through a Japanese entity or through a reseller. Ask your finance team before a customer’s accounting department asks you.

Japanese documentation, support and the security checklist

Developers will read English docs. The people who approve, operate and audit the service usually expect Japanese: the proposal, the support process, the incident report. A Japanese reference translation of your terms (参考訳) saves their legal team time.

Be just as clear about support. A problem reported at 10:00 in Tokyo arrives at 17:00 or 18:00 the previous day in San Francisco. Say in writing, in Japanese, who answers, in which language and by when. (I wrote up the time-zone math separately.)

Then there’s the security checklist (セキュリティチェックシート): usually a spreadsheet, often hundreds of rows, in Japanese, and different at every company. A SOC 2 report helps, but it rarely replaces the sheet; they want an answer in every row. Build a master answer sheet in Japanese, link each answer to its source (a report section, a docs page) and keep it current. The first checklist is painful. After that it’s mostly reuse.

Why Japanese reference customers matter

“Do you have customers in Japan?” (国内の導入事例はありますか) is one of the first questions you’ll get. A US logo is interesting. A Japanese company in the same industry is evidence the approvers accept, and a case study in Japanese is something your champion can attach to the ringi.

Invest in those early. It’s also why I spend time on meetups, partner hands-ons and talks like my Qiita Conference keynote: in Japan, being visible in Japanese is part of selling.

SIers and partners

Many Japanese enterprises don’t build in-house. They work with a system integrator (SIer), and the SIer’s engineers may be the ones using your product every day. An SIer that’s comfortable with you will recommend you; one that isn’t will quietly keep using what it already knows.

Resellers and partners also take over what HQ finds hardest: yen invoicing, vendor registration, first-line support in Japanese. When a partner deal looks less profitable on paper, count the steps it removes. Joint work pays off too; in October 2025 we ran a hands-on session with AWS and Classmethod at the AWS Startup Loft Tokyo.

Turning it into a forecast HQ can act on

What HQ needs from you is dates it can plan around. Replace adjectives with answers:

What HQ asks	What to find out in Japan
Is there budget?	Is it in this fiscal year’s budget, or next April’s?
Who decides?	Who approves the ringi, and which meeting does it go through?
When will they sign?	When is that meeting, and is vendor registration done?
What could go wrong?	The security checklist, the exchange rate, April rotations

Forecast to the customer’s calendar, not to your quarter-end. If your quarter doesn’t end in March or September, say early which quarter the Japanese deals will land in, and hold that line. End-of-quarter discounts don’t make a ringi move faster; mostly they make the approvers wonder about the first price. Offer what removes a step instead: a yen quote, Japanese materials, a finished security sheet.

Advice for both sides

If you’re the Japan person:

• Never stop at “Japan is different.” Name the step and the date.
• Write it down in English, in HQ’s tools and with HQ’s stage names. A short weekly note beats a long monthly call.
• Build the reusable pieces once: the Japanese one-pager, the security answers, the yen price list.

If you’re on the global team:

• Ask about the calendar: when does their fiscal year end, and which meeting approves this?
• Fund Japanese documentation, support hours and case studies before you expect growth in Japan.
• Give the local team room on yen pricing, payment terms and paperwork.
• Come to Japan for the meetings that matter.

Next time a Japanese deal slips, ask which meeting it missed.