Business Japanese: A Complete Map of the 6 Areas (+ 90-Day Roadmap)

Table of contents

Who this guide is for

• Foreign professionals who have recently started — or are about to start — a job in Japan and want the whole landscape before drowning in detail
• People with an accepted offer who want to know what to learn first, and in what order
• Self-learners past the textbook stage (around JLPT N3–N2) who can speak some Japanese but freeze the moment work register is required

Most guides to business Japanese try to teach everything on one page and end up shallow on each topic. This one is a map, not an encyclopedia. It shows you the six areas of business Japanese, helps you find your weakest one in 30 seconds, hands you a starter set of phrases, and then routes you to a focused deep dive for whatever you need next.

What business Japanese is

Business Japanese is the register of Japanese used at work — in meetings, email, phone calls, and client visits — built on keigo (敬語), the system of honorific language. It differs from textbook Japanese in three ways: you switch register depending on who you are speaking to, you phrase requests indirectly and cushion them, and you lean on fixed set phrases. The grammar is the Japanese you already know; what changes is which level you pick, and when.

That last point is the whole game. A Japanese speaker chooses, sentence by sentence, how much respect to show the listener and how much humility to show about themselves. Get the choice right and you sound reliable; get it wrong and a correct sentence can still land as rude or childish. The rest of this guide is about making that choice less of a guess.

The six areas at a glance

Read the section for whichever area you need today; the rest will keep.

Where are you right now? A 30-second self-check

Answer these five questions. Each “no” points you to the area to fix first.

1. Can you greet your team and accept a task without thinking? (otsukaresama desu, shōchi itashimashita) — if no, start with everyday office (area 6).
2. Can you tell, mid-sentence, whether to use respectful or humble language? — if no, start with keigo (area 1).
3. Can you write an email to a client without staring at the opening line? — if no, start with business email (area 2).
4. Can you open, steer, and close a meeting in Japanese? — if no, start with meetings & phone (area 3).
5. Have you been caught off guard by an etiquette rule — meishi, seating, timing — in your first weeks? — if no harm done, skim workplace culture (area 4); if it stung, read it closely.

If you answered “no” to several, do not try to fix them all at once. Work top to bottom: everyday phrases first, then keigo, then whichever channel (email or meetings) your job leans on most.

The 80/20 starter kit — the first 20 to learn

If you learn only twenty things this month, learn these. They cover the daily glue, the safe requests, and the set phrases that buy you time. Pair this section with the printable Japanese Business Phrases PDF and the 50 essential email phrases for the full set.

Say each one out loud a few times until it comes without translation. These are muscle memory, not vocabulary.

The three operating principles behind everything

Before the channels, three cultural habits sit underneath all of business Japanese. Learn the words later; understand these now, because they explain why the language behaves the way it does.

• Report, contact, consult — hō-ren-sō (報・連・相). The expectation that you keep others informed: hōkoku (report progress), renraku (share information), sōdan (consult before deciding). When in doubt, over-communicate; silence reads as a problem in Japanese offices.
• Inside and outside — uchi (内) and soto (外). You speak humbly about your own side (your company, your boss to a client) and respectfully about the other side. This is why you drop the honorific from your own manager’s name when talking to a customer — a rule that trips up almost every newcomer.
• Hierarchy — senpai (先輩) and kōhai (後輩). Seniority shapes who speaks first, who pours the drink, and how direct you can be. You do not have to like it; you do have to notice it.

These three explain the keigo, the indirect requests, and most of the etiquette rules in the sections below.

Area 1 — Keigo: the one decision that runs through everything

Keigo is the system that scares people off, but you only need one decision rule to start. We use an A/B/C framework throughout this site: A is the casual/plain register you would use with close peers, B is the everyday polite register (-masu/-desu) that is safe with most colleagues, and C is the elevated register — sonkeigo (尊敬語, respectful language for others) and kenjougo (謙譲語, humble language for yourself) — that you reach for with clients, senior people, and apologies.

The move you make all day is: default to B, and step up to C when the other person outranks you or stands outside your group. Get that habit and you are most of the way there. The fine detail — which verb becomes which honorific form — is worth learning steadily, not all at once.

Deep dive → Keigo Guide: The A/B/C Framework for Workplace Japanese is the home of this model. For the respectful-versus-humble split specifically, see Sonkeigo vs Kenjougo, and for the errors to dodge, 8 Keigo Mistakes Non-Natives Make.

Area 2 — Business email (the written track)

Japanese business email follows a fixed shape: a greeting (osewa ni natte orimasu to outsiders, otsukaresama desu internally), your name and company, the purpose stated early, the request cushioned, and a set closing. Recipient order in the TO/CC line signals hierarchy, and lines are kept short — broken at roughly 15–25 characters for readability.

You do not have to compose from scratch. Most workplace email is assembled from parts you reuse, so the fastest path is to learn the parts, then the process, then keep templates on hand.

Deep dive → learn the parts in Japanese Email Phrases: 50 Essentials, the composition process in How to Write a Japanese Business Email, and grab finished Japanese Business Email Templates for eight common scenarios.

Area 3 — Meetings and phone calls (the spoken track)

Meetings run on phase-specific phrases: opening (sorosoro hajimemashō ka), discussing and disagreeing softly, deciding, and following up afterward. Online meetings add their own layer — when to keep your camera on, how to ask someone to repeat, how to hand off the floor. Phone calls are their own small ritual, opening with your name and company and leaning on shōshō omachi kudasai and kashikomarimashita.

The skill that pays off fastest is the polite way to disagree or buy time without stopping the meeting cold.

Deep dive → Japanese Meeting Phrases: A 6-Phase Guide from Opening to Follow-Up covers all six phases with copy-ready lines.

Area 4 — Workplace culture and the mistakes that bite first

The language sits inside a set of etiquette and culture rules — how you exchange a meishi (名刺, business card), how deeply you bow, how strict “on time” is in practice, and how feedback is delivered indirectly. These rarely end a career on their own, but they shape the first impression that colors everything after.

The highest-leverage move here is to learn the handful of mistakes that newcomers make in their first three months, so you can sidestep them before they form a pattern.

Deep dive → Common Japanese Business Mistakes: What to Avoid in Your First 90 Days sorts them by severity with one-line recovery scripts. For names and titles specifically, see the Japanese Honorifics Chart, and for apologies done right, How to Apologize Politely in Japanese.

Area 5 — Japanese for tech and IT roles

Engineering teams run on their own dialect: standups, code review, ticket updates, and spec discussions, mixed with a heavy layer of katakana loanwords. Much of it runs in English at global companies, but the rituals — the morning check-in, the careful way disagreement is raised in review — still follow Japanese workplace norms.

Deep dive → Japanese for IT Professionals: A Working Engineer’s Guide maps the engineering rituals to the phrases that carry them.

Area 6 — Everyday office phrases and self-introduction

This is where most people should start, because it is the daily glue: the chōrei (朝礼, morning meeting), greetings as you arrive and leave, small requests, and the self-introduction you give on day one and at every client visit. Get these automatic and you free up attention for the harder registers.

Deep dive → 10 Polite Japanese Phrases for the Office for the daily set, and Japanese Business Self-Introduction Templates for jiko-shōkai across chōrei, client visits, and interviews.

The channel matrix — same message, different register

The same intent shifts register depending on the channel it travels through. A quick “got it” to a peer on Slack is not the “got it” you send a client by email. Use this as a sanity check before you hit send.

When a channel is fast (chat), people relax the register; when it is permanent or outward-facing (email, client calls), they raise it. Match the channel and you rarely go wrong.

Your 90-day learning roadmap

You cannot learn all six areas at once, and you do not need to. Sequence them by when each one first becomes job-critical.

If you want a deeper, drill-by-drill plan for the keigo piece specifically, Best Way to Learn Keigo: A 90-Day, 3-Stage Roadmap extends this timeline into a full study schedule.

Proving it on paper — where JLPT and BJT fit

Two tests come up in hiring. The JLPT (Japanese-Language Proficiency Test) measures general reading and listening; N2 is the common bar for Japanese-language roles, N3 for English-friendly ones. The BJT (Business Japanese Proficiency Test) measures workplace Japanese specifically and reports a score rather than a pass/fail, which some employers prefer for business roles.

Neither test teaches you to speak business Japanese — they certify comprehension. Treat them as proof for recruiters, and treat this guide and its deep dives as the thing that makes you usable in the office.

Frequently asked questions

What is business Japanese?

Business Japanese is the register of Japanese used in the workplace — meetings, email, phone calls, and client visits. It differs from textbook Japanese mainly in its heavy use of keigo, indirect phrasing, and set expressions. The language and the etiquette around it are tightly linked, which is why this guide treats them together.

How is business Japanese different from regular Japanese?

Register, structure, and vocabulary change. You switch from plain or polite-form Japanese to keigo, requests become indirect and cushioned, and set business phrases replace casual words. The underlying grammar is the same; what changes is which level you choose, and when.

What level of Japanese do I need to work in Japan?

It depends on the role. English-friendly and engineering roles often accept N3–N2; client-facing and traditional-company roles expect N2–N1 with comfortable keigo. The BJT is sometimes asked for instead of or alongside the JLPT.

What are the most useful phrases to learn first?

The daily glue: otsukaresama desu, osewa ni natte orimasu, and yoroshiku onegai itashimasu, plus shōchi itashimashita for accepting tasks and osore irimasu ga to cushion a request. The 80/20 starter kit above lists the full set.

Do I need keigo to work in Japan?

For most office roles, yes — at least polite -masu form plus the common set phrases. You do not need perfect keigo on day one; what matters is recognizing when to step up to a higher register and reaching for the safe phrase.

Where to go next

Start with your weakest area from the self-check, then come back here to pick the next one.

Keigo

• Keigo Guide: The A/B/C Framework for Workplace Japanese — the home of A/B/C politeness
• Sonkeigo vs Kenjougo — respectful versus humble, decided in seconds
• 8 Keigo Mistakes Non-Natives Make — the errors to dodge

Business email

• Japanese Email Phrases: 50 Essentials — the parts
• How to Write a Japanese Business Email — the process
• Japanese Business Email Templates — finished templates

Meetings, culture, and everyday office

• Japanese Meeting Phrases — the six phases of a meeting
• Common Japanese Business Mistakes — the first-90-day landscape
• 10 Polite Japanese Phrases for the Office — daily office phrases
• Japanese Business Self-Introduction Templates — jiko-shōkai for every setting

Reference and tests

• Japanese Honorifics Chart — names and titles
• Japanese Business Phrases PDF: 30 Scenarios at 3 Politeness Levels — print-friendly reference
• Best Way to Learn Keigo: A 90-Day, 3-Stage Roadmap — a study plan

Get the starter set on one page → Get the Essential 30 PDF on Gumroad (free, no signup). Keep it next to your keyboard for your first three months and you will have the what to say for every situation on this map.