Negotiating moves contributes to the understanding of typical negotiation strategies shared by Japanese business professionals, with an emphasis on empiricism. Given that only anecdotal evidence is available from prior investigations of Japanese conflict management, Yotsukura conducted her study based on a large number of naturally occurring interactions extracted from more than 540 authentic business calls at companies in the Kanto (eastern) and Kansai (western) regions of Japan. Major thrusts of this study include its ingenious framework of analysis, which goes beyond the traditional “context-free” approach of conversation analysis (CA) (p. 2). It integrates ethnographic dimensions into analyses and interpretations and adapts the Bakhtinian notion of speech genres. Genres are derived from commonalities and shared communicative activities that native speakers are assumed to develop through recurring experiences in their everyday lives. This study also rigorously explores cultural reasons why Japanese people behave linguistically in certain ways, based on some metalinguistic traits unique to the culture. While it may be quite debatable whether all of these theses bear fruit in research outcomes, the actual negotiating processes to which Japanese business professionals typically resort are well documented and described in a manner comprehensible even to a general audience, as well as to learners of Japanese as a foreign language.

Chap. 1 presents the theoretical framework of the study, which stresses the necessity of accommodating ethnographic elements in the analysis and the utility of Bakhtin's notion of speech genres as a heuristic tool for identifying the rigid rules of interaction observed by Japanese people in a particular communicative situation, such as telephone calls. Following brief critical overviews of previous studies on Japanese business discourse and negotiation, as well as those in a Western context, actual spoken data and their sample analyses are presented, along with a brief introduction to language-specific elements such as maeoki ‘pre-announcements’ and the extended predicate construction (n[o] da, n[o] desu). In the end, the author presents the four specific goals of the study: (i) to describe how the service recipient facing problems conveys information to the service provider; (ii) to identify what particular types of linguistic functions and forms the service provider typically uses in response to problem reports; (iii) to account for the ways in which those functions and forms identified in (ii) are linked to the notion of speech genres as well as larger cultural norms and values; and (iv) to supply practical information to linguists, business professionals, and teachers of Japanese regarding Japanese ways of problem presentation and resolution that are cross-culturally distinctive.

Based on a critical review of the potential deficiencies of linguistic data elicited by such intuition-based tasks as discourse completion and questionnaires, chap. 2 first discusses the rationale for data elicitation, particularly arguing for the advantages of ethnomethodological approaches to naturally occurring interactions. The present database is then described in detail in terms of collection methods, volume and quality, informants, and the purposes – the study of problem reports and their resolution. The rest of the chapter is devoted to formal discussions of various definitions of speech genre as well as register and style, relevant findings of prior CA studies (e.g., adjacency pairs) with illustrative examples from the present database, and a review of previous studies on offers in Japanese.

Chap. 3 centers on structural descriptions of the canonical structure of Japanese business telephone calls. The canonical sequential organization consists of reciprocal call openings involving self-identification, formal salutations and personal greetings, transitional moves to business transactions with extensive use of maeoki in conjunction with the extended predicate, the main points of business (to be discussed in detail in chap. 4), pre-closing strategies, and closing moves with a variety of terminal routines. Specific linguistic features that are typically used in many of those phases are also described, and their illocutionary functions are interpreted as “contextualization cues” (168). For example, a maeoki statement with the extended predicate moosiwake nai n desu ga ‘it's that it's inexcusable, but’ can function as a transitional device to help the participants zoom in on the upcoming reason-for-call or the topic of business. In addition, some cultural explanations of those features are explored. For example, such strategies of “company-affiliation-as-self-identification” as Kansai Yunyuu de gozaimasu ‘This is Kansai Imports’, which is typical of call openings, are attributed to Japanese emphasis on “situational position rather than individual attributes in a given frame,” which is fostered by strong group consciousness and orientation prevalent in the culture (107–8).

Chap. 4 provides more detailed accounts of three specific types of business transactions: general inquiries, merchandise orders, and shipping confirmations. The author stresses striking similarities in the sequential organization of moves commonly exploited by the participants in each of the transactional types. Those similarities are again colored by extensive use of maeoki and the extended predicate construction.

Chap. 5, the nucleus of the book, deals with Japanese culture-specificity in problem presentation and resolution based on two contrasting types of conversations, which are labeled as interactional “synchrony” and “asynchrony” (203). In the synchronic negotiation, a service recipient (trouble-teller) and a service provider (solution-giver), who interact with each other on a regular basis, work smoothly together toward an amicable resolution, whereas in the asynchronic negotiation, two parties who share no established business relationship face some difficulties in communicating their intentions. In both cases, however, the generic organization of a series of negotiating moves, as well as particular linguistic features adopted (e.g., the extended predicate, conjunctive particles such as kedomo ‘but,’ the consultative –masyoo ka? ‘shall I/we … ?’), are strikingly similar. Elements of Japanese maeoki are also commonly used to frame the context of problem reports effectively.

The author argues that the key to success in reaching a satisfactory resolution lies in the participants' familiarity with or cultural knowledge of this particular genre, which has been shaped over time through recurring everyday encounters in the culture. As evidence that the above-mentioned patterns of problem report and resolution are specific to Japanese culture, the author compares them with interactions of a similar type from English. Though the author admits that the English database is rather limited in terms of both quality and quantity, her analyses seem to indicate that Japanese problem reports differ from their English counterparts in terms of sequential organization of moves and the alignment of turns between the caller and the recipient, and also that they are less direct, with more mitigating devices and hesitation markers. As for problem resolution, Japanese strategies and English equivalents are quite parallel, with synchrony as the interactional goal. But the former in particular can be characterized by stronger cultural preference for maintaining harmony. For example, the extended predicate, along with conjunctive particles (e.g., ke[re]do), is exploited to create a common ground between the trouble-teller and the solution-giver, which represents another negotiating device – called nemawashi ‘groundwork preceding formal decision making’ – that is unique to Japanese culture.

In chap. 6, the author tries to tie what has been discussed in the preceding chapters to a wide range of well-known Japanese cultural norms and values in order to account for why Japanese business calls are conducted as they are. While what the author calls “metalanguage” concepts, such as ki and sassi, omoiyari and kikubari, ma, norms of enryo-sassi communication, uti-soto deixis as well as high-context cultural traits are all clearly explained, her argument here seems rather shaky, in that the observed phenomena are related exhaustively to abstract descriptions of cultural values and norms, but the argument suffers from a critical lack of direct support from her empirical findings discussed in the preceding chapters.

In chap. 7, “Conclusions,” the author evaluates how the above-mentioned four goals of the book are met, summing up all her major findings and arguments regarding the culture-specific strategies for reporting problems and arriving at appropriate resolutions. In doing so, she sets up further inquiries to recapitulate the main points of her findings as well as highlights the significance of the notion of genre, which is closely linked to the behavioral norms of the culture in question. The chapter ends with a few comments on potential topics for future research that might build upon the results of the book.

Although the overall objectives of this book are quite appealing and its innovative framework of analysis, which supplements CA tradition with the affirmative use of an ethnographic perspective, is, I believe, on the right track, it seems to me that the author's ambitions are not fully accomplished, producing research outcomes partly incompatible with what the reader expects to gain from the book. The fundamental problem I find with this study is an overgeneralization of complex realities, which is typically derived from the lack of an internal perspective – the indigenous standpoint of the members of a given culture (Saville-Troike & Johnson 1994). One of my foremost reactions against this study is concerned with the author's a priori, at times stereotypical presupposition that Japan consists of a single culture in which all its members put the same cultural norms and values into practice in harmony (chap. 6). Though I do not mean to reject the idea that those behavioral norms are a significant part of the very foundation of Japanese culture, I, as a legitimate member of the culture, cannot help acknowledging the other, “dark” side of indigenous realities: It is a too common experience, even for the members of this allegedly homogeneous culture, to be displeased with or even offended by the consequences of service encounters (Hama 1996, 2000). This quite ordinary breakdown in the cultural model of negotiation is presumably due to a mismatch between the participants' expectations regarding those behavioral norms and their variable ways of practicing them in actual social interactions.

Throughout the book, however, the author highlights as the culturally constructed genre exclusively the commonalities of Japanese negotiating moves based predominantly on ordinary interactions between the informants who share regular business contact. Though the author provides a very brief sketch of interactions between people with no established business affiliations (e.g., the Hahaha no hanasi call), I believe that the very target for this study to fully accomplish its general objectives should rather be the other type of business negotiation, one that is potentially threatening to the participants' expectations regarding cultural norms and values. Although the author's findings provide very useful information on “typical” patterns of negotiation, particularly for such readers as learners and teachers of Japanese as a foreign language, internal diversity or “atypical” elements in the use of negotiating moves are perhaps a more critical part of the reality experienced by the members of the culture. I believe that more extensive discussions of the latter type, in which behavioral norms are breached and the participants are obliged to exploit culturally appropriate strategies for remedy, would provide a true service for potential readers such as business professionals who are likely to confront serious conflict.

The overgeneralization of Yotsukura's theses can also be confirmed by some empirical evidence from domestic studies on regionality in service communication. While the author points out the scarcity of research on Japanese negotiation from naturally occurring interactions, this perception turns out to be mistaken once we extend our scope of literature reviews to adjacent branches of scholarship. In fact, we can find a great deal of empirical evidence against Yotsukura's thesis of homogeneity in Japanese business negotiations, provided mainly by industrial psychologists working in Japan. Some of their studies eloquently demonstrate that Japanese patterns of communication in service encounters via telephone (Hama 1995, 1996, 2000) are far from being homogeneous, with a great deal of regional variation. Hama (1996, 2000), for example, compares service providers' responses to inquiry telephone calls at hotels, travel agencies, and restaurants in various regions, including Tokyo (Kanto region) and Kyoto and Osaka (Kansai region), and finds regional differences to a statistically significant extent for many of the variables investigated. As for Kanto (Tokyo) vs. Kansai (Osaka, Kyoto) regions – the two research sites of this book – the former is characterized as being least informative and dry in manner of response, whereas the latter is described as highly informative and more conscious of professionalism.

Despite these empirical facts, Yotsukura deals with the two major subcultures in Japan (Kanto and Kansai) as a single cultural entity. For her claims and arguments to be more persuasive from an indigenous point of view, however, the possibility of regional differentiation in her corpora needs to be addressed in some way for a future study. More specifically, I would suggest that the author at least provide some quantitative evidence to demonstrate to what extent the patterns of negotiating moves she identifies are actually shared by the two subcultures, since the primary concern of the book is a high degree of ubiquity in language use. Furthermore, the author should indicate some objective yardstick for what proportion of the entire database of 540+ calls represents “typical” or canonical patterns of negotiating moves shared by the members of Japanese culture, and what proportion was left out of consideration because of its deviant nature. None of these types of information is available to the reader. I am aware that such quantitative accounts are not contingent to the traditional CA approach, but they certainly lead to whatever the author intends to establish as the new framework of analysis of conversations.

Putting aside these fundamental questions, I find this study highly successful, particularly in portraying the vivid processes of negotiation typically employed by Japanese business personnel. In addition, the author's analyses and interpretations of the phenomena are generally precise and trustworthy. Her insight into a fruitful integration of CA and an ethnographic perspective is promising, and I certainly hope that this kind of theoretical challenge to the status quo will contribute to the emergence of large-scale discussions of analytical approaches to discourse for the future progress of the discipline.