Cultural missteps while researching women founders in Japan

My topic, Expat Life: Three Cultural Missteps I Made While Researching Female Founders in Japan, grew out of research interviews in Kyoto and conversations with women building businesses in Japan. I was an economics researcher from Australia, accustomed to workplaces where individual initiative, direct questions and a confident pitch often appeared to be clear signs of entrepreneurial intent. My aim was to understand how women founders described the choices, pressures and opportunities around them.

The project changed how I listen. A measured answer can carry more meaning than a quick agreement, and a business that looks modest from the outside may be deeply embedded in a community. I also began to see how my position as an international researcher shaped the exchange. Participants were generously explaining their decisions to someone who could turn their words into an academic narrative.

What follows are three mistakes that were mine to own. They involved assumptions about personal boundaries, indirect communication and the meaning of entrepreneurship. I have since presented part of this research at National Taiwan University, but that presentation did not erase the need to correct my method. These reflections offer a practical account of expatriate life, fieldwork and the responsibility of writing about people whose working lives rarely fit an outsider’s first framework.

Asking personal questions as though curiosity were consent

My first mistake was treating questions about money, family and risk as ordinary items in an Australian business interview. I wanted to understand why a founder had left secure employment, so I asked whether family members had supported the decision. I also asked whether the financial risk had been worthwhile. The questions seemed reasonable in a research schedule, yet I had confused my interest with an invitation to answer.

In many Japanese business settings, tact and consideration for relationships shape how personal information is shared. A participant might give a general answer, change the subject or offer a polite response without explaining why. Several women founders spoke openly to me about ambition, pressure and leadership. Others were more guarded about household finances and private disagreements. Their differing levels of comfort did not reveal a single national personality. I had been treating disclosure as evidence of cultural familiarity instead of something each participant sets.

The correction began with better preparation. I explained why I was asking, offered an alternative phrasing and made it clear that a participant could skip any question. I also separated permission to discuss a subject from permission to publish identifying details. My own expatriate experience sat alongside broader expatriate perspectives that reminded me how much learning happens through repeated social encounters. Cultural competence began to look less like memorising rules and more like noticing when someone had established a boundary.

Reading indirect answers as a lack of confidence

My second mistake was interpreting pauses, qualifications and indirect answers as uncertainty. A founder who said she would “consider various possibilities” sounded hesitant because I expected a decisive statement about funding, expansion or independence. I had made Australian workplace directness into a measuring stick. An answer that avoided a neat conclusion came to look like a weak commitment.

A Japanese CEO interview about leaving high-paying employment for a bakery gave me a better model than my dramatic-leaving template. The founder’s career transition was presented as a considered response to working life, with continuity between her previous experience and her new venture. I had been searching for a clean break, while the interview described a more layered relationship with employment, craft and autonomy. That difference mattered because my interview questions had been built around the story I expected to find.

What I initially heard	What closer context suggested	My revised research approach
A pause meant indecision	The speaker was weighing relationships, timing or obligations	I asked which factors mattered instead of pressing for an immediate decision
Consulting others indicated dependence	Consultation can be part of responsible leadership	I explored the decision-making process without treating networks as obstacles
Modest plans suggested a weak business	The founder valued stability, local service or community impact	I asked about the founder’s own definition of success
Senior figures were unlikely to disagree openly	Deference may reflect hierarchy, while disagreement may be offered privately	I protected anonymity and followed each participant’s lead on titles and address

The lesson was not that Japanese speakers are indirect or hesitant. Confidence, authority and commitment cannot be read from a single conversational style. One founder might be highly direct with investors and careful with family; another might speak boldly about her goals while keeping criticism of colleagues private. I began asking how a decision was reached instead of demanding the decision itself, and I stopped turning an expected answer into evidence of the reality.

Translating entrepreneurship into familiar market language

My third major misstep was carrying English business concepts into interviews as if their meanings were universal. “Startup”, “scaling”, “disruption” and “personal brand” sounded neutral, but they came from pitch decks, business journalism and my assumptions about what entrepreneurship should look like. A woman running a longstanding neighbourhood business might reject the startup label, while another founder might use the language of innovation enthusiastically. The same label could conceal very different ambitions.

Australian small-business culture made that translation easy to overlook. In Melbourne, a solo food operator might build a following around a neighbourhood café; a Sydney consultant might depend heavily on corporate clients; a Brisbane wholesaler might navigate regional supply chains and a small team. These examples were not rules, but they showed how market size, customer expectations and work culture shaped ordinary decisions. When a founder used different words, I initially treated the difference as a communication problem. It might instead expose assumptions embedded in my questions.

Japanese business settings added other contexts, including long-term customer relationships, family responsibilities, employment histories and ties to local communities. A decision to become self-employed could involve continuity with an earlier career rather than a rejection of conventional employment. Some women described entrepreneurship partly through service, independence and contribution to their communities. I learned to ask what the business made possible instead of assuming that revenue growth or personal autonomy was the central measure. Translation involved concepts, but it also involved power: whose definition of success could occupy the centre of the account?

Learning to ask about context rather than categories

After these corrections, I changed what a useful interview could contain. I asked about customers, employees, financing, care responsibilities and professional networks. Questions about the founder’s definition of success produced richer material than broad prompts about motivation. The answers revealed the social infrastructure of a business alongside its financial structure, making it possible to discuss gender, entrepreneurship and economic security without treating women founders as a single category.

Australia provided a useful point of comparison, but it was never a template for Japanese businesses. The local market contains many sole traders, partnerships and family-run firms. Some operate below the A$75,000 turnover threshold for GST registration, so a modest-looking enterprise may have no obligation to charge GST. That detail says little about ambition. A business below the threshold still has obligations under Australian consumer law when marketing its products or services. Commercial size, legal requirements and entrepreneurial drive are separate questions, and interviews became more precise when I stopped using one as a substitute for another.

Noticing everyday Australian habits also sharpened my attention to equivalent details elsewhere. A coffee bought before work, a quick lunch before the afternoon rush, public transport timetables in Sydney and Melbourne, and the expectation that service is included rather than rewarded with a large tip all formed part of a working routine. Japan’s largely no-tipping custom prompted me to ask what customers understood as respect in a commercial exchange. The value of comparing habits was not ranking cultures. It exposed the assumptions hidden inside words such as professional, independent and successful.

A research practice built around consent and context

The most durable change was to treat every interview as an agreement that could change. I now explain the research purpose, recording arrangements, anonymity protections and publication process before moving into sensitive subjects. I ask how a participant wants to be named and whether particular comments may be quoted. When an answer is translated, I preserve uncertainty and avoid polishing away hesitation that might carry meaning. Interpreters need to know which expressions affect the analysis, and participants deserve a way to correct a translation that changes its significance.

For research conducted within Australia, the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles provide a useful legal and ethical reference for handling personal information. They do not turn consent into a compliance exercise. Informed agreement also requires attention to power, embarrassment and cultural expectations that a form cannot capture. A participant who understands the purpose may still hesitate to answer a particular question. Recording that hesitation as a methodological instruction, rather than a gap in the evidence, changed the quality of my qualitative interviews.

I also began keeping field notes that separated what was said, how it was said and how I interpreted it. Comparing accounts across women-led businesses helped me avoid using gender as a shortcut for motivation. A founder in Kyoto might describe a business embedded in local relationships and community reputation, while another might place individual independence first. Both accounts deserved careful contextual reading. The practical takeaway is to make the agreement explicit: a plain sentence should state what a participant can decline, how their words will be recorded and translated, and what may appear in the notes. Their response must then guide the method, including any changes needed before publication.