Intercultural perspective on the Ghosn affair

Japan and the “Carlos Ghosn affair”

On the occasion of the publication of Carlos Ghosn's book Le Temps de la Vérité, it is interesting to situate this affair in the Japanese cultural context.

In November 2018, the former CEO of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance was arrested and then imprisoned in Japan. A quick intercultural overview of this “Carlos Ghosn affair” and its incredible consequences allows us to return to the fundamentals of Japanese culture: respect, humility and trust.

Is “the Carlos Ghosn affair” surprising?

If you make a Japanese person lose face, you must anticipate or assume the risk that he will take revenge.

The Nissan teams compiled a file which was served in court at a time of a peak of tension between Nissan and Renault.

As for how Carlos Ghosn made his Japanese interlocutors, counterparts and collaborators lose face, the extraordinary personality of this leader who perhaps indulged in excess provides the beginning of an answer.

What attitude should we adopt in Japan?

Carlos Ghosn quickly called it a conspiracy. Is this the right attitude to adopt in Japan?

What we might expect from a Japanese leader is to make amends, to apologize. He could have said:

"If there has been embezzlement or elements that do not correspond to Japanese tax policy, I am leaving all of my papers open to investigators so that the light can be shed. I thought I would act within the framework of the law and I offer my deepest apologies for the inconvenience suffered by Nissan and Japan.”

What are the parameters to control in Japan?

Trust

By doing the opposite, everyone turned on each other. In Japan, we operate on trust. That Ghosn was able to express his resentments was very poorly received. For the Japanese justice system, trust was broken.

Respect for form

What is important in Japan is form. If you don't respect it, there can be no social relations. So, when it comes to a defendant, he is expected to keep a low profile, because his name is tarnished, and to apologize with humility, even more so if he is a foreigner. .

The Japanese are afraid of foreigners who commit crimes and leave their territory (there is a serious history around the American base on Okinawa in particular) so they put them in prison.

The importance of the face

To escape as Carlos Ghosn did is to cause justice, the State, its lawyers, everyone to lose face and therefore expose oneself to other vengeance.

What do you think of the Japanese judicial system?

Criticism has been leveled at Japan's justice and prison system for being oppressive and one-sided.

Influence of the Napoleonic civil code

The Japanese judicial system is a judicial system like any other, whose laws are partly inspired by the Napoleonic civil code. Its specificity is that it is based on confession. Police custody can therefore be extended – one of the most famous lasted 164 days.

As for the interviews with the prosecutor, there is no lawyer to assist the defendant, of course, but everything has been filmed since 2018.

Absence of prison overcrowding

Furthermore, in prison, your laundry is washed, you are fed three times a day, prison overcrowding does not exist. Conversely, in France, the Fresnes prison center, for example, is overcrowded, dirty and decrepit.

In France, we easily put people in prison. During the "Yellow Vests" period, 4,000 police detentions led to 3,000 convictions in immediate appearance and 1,000 imprisonments. In Japan, if the police arrest you, it's because they have a real case. Whatever the evidence, you must confess.

Don't make trouble

The figures speak for themselves: 99% of defendants are convicted. And yet, it is a country of great permissiveness: you can be a gangster or a mafioso (and there are!) as much as you want, as long as you don't create trouble.

“The Carlos Ghosn affair” illustrates the mistakes not to make as a manager when faced with this type of event. Japanese public opinion expects the powerful caught at fault to show humility, to take responsibility for their actions or the actions of their collaborators and to publicly apologize for the disorders created. These are the best ways to emerge from a media storm with your head held high.