'About Japan' webinar series 275: Negotiation and Closing - From Agreement to Long-term Partnership

Why do first meetings with Japanese companies so often go well, and then go nowhere?

A yes is not the end of the work, and a contract is not the relationship. Inside your counterpart's company the decision still has to become official. On paper the agreement carries less weight than it would at home, because much of what holds it together sits outside the document. And after the signature the partnership is kept alive by reporting rather than by delivery: in Europe silence usually means there is nothing wrong, and in Japan it reads as absence. What a European company can expect from a Japanese partner, and what that partner expects in return, are both specific and both learnable. This session gives the mechanics, the values underneath them, and the behaviour each side expects from the other, with real European cases.

The webinar covers five things in fifty minutes. First, how the decision is really made: the ringi process, why "who decides" is the wrong question, and what to feed it while you wait. Second, the forms a Japanese no takes: how to read silence, indirect answers and "maybe", and how to disagree without damaging the relationship. Third, what a Japanese contract is for: what it leaves out, what it puts in, and why the durability your partner praises is also a lock-in. Fourth, turning a contract into a partnership: two ways of keeping a relationship alive and how each side's version looks from the other end, the reporting rhythm, the people and the rotation, and what to report when there is nothing to report. Fifth, keeping the market warm once the deal is running.

The webinar is for EU founders, sales leaders and account managers waiting on an answer that has not come, holding a signed contract that has gone quiet, or running a Japanese partnership into its second year. The cases include European-Japanese joint ventures and acquisitions as well as supplier relationships. It is the second of the three sessions in the series, following First Meetings and Sales on 13 October; Entering the Japanese Market follows on 19 January 2027. Attendees leave with the mechanics of how a Japanese decision forms and how a partnership is kept alive after the signature, and with a clear view of what each side expects from the other.

In 50 minutes from your desk, discover:

- How decisions really form inside a Japanese company, and what to feed the process.
- How to read silence, indirect answers and "maybe", and how to say no yourself.
- What a Japanese contract is for, and why durability cuts both ways.
- Two ways of keeping a relationship alive, and why silence from Europe reads as absence in Japan.
- What each side expects from the other once the deal is running.
 

Programme:

• Introduction
• Expert’s presentation
• Q&A Session

Registration deadline: 12/10/2026

Speaker: Patric Sawada / Head of Growth / Silkdrive

Patric Sawada is the founder of Silkdrive, a cross-cultural growth marketing agency in Amsterdam, that helps European companies enter and grow across markets in Europe and East Asia. Silkdrive provides international digital growth marketing, cross-cultural insights and training for market entry into Japan and doing business with Japanese partners.
He now has eleven years of international marketing experience, with over fifty clients in more than thirty industries across Europe and East Asia.
 

Moderator: Sofia Smerzi, Business Support Coordinator, EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation

Organiser: EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation - Brussels Office

Deliverables 

Coming soon...