our hope here that by a frank airing of the differences we may smooth the path for future relationships between Japanese and American firms. We are more alike than we are different, but it is the unrecognized differences and not the similarities that lead to misunderstandings between two well-intentioned firms or individuals. If you were to inventory the complaints voiced by American firms doing business with Japanese, you would most frequently hear: "Negotiations take too long"; "I was mislead"; "They reversed their position"; "I talked in confidence and then read all about our meeting the next day in the newspaper"; "There are too many firms or people in the middle between us and the ultimate customer"; "They used MITI to retrade the deal we had negotiated"; "They want to represent me and my competitor"; "They won't preserve the confidentiality of information"; "They don't operate the way we do"; "They were very hospitable but we never got anywhere"; "They discriminate against us". Some of these complaints could well be heard when two American firms deal with each other, but here we are concerned with the unintentional points of friction that arise out of the differences in the way Japanese firms operate and the way Americans ordinarily operate. While we recognize that not all Japanese firms conduct themselves the same way any more than all American firms perform alike, we must necessarily generalize here in the interests of time. There are four fundamental areas that seem to cause most of the difficulties. The first is the cultural differences and these differences in culture and custom are at the heart of many of the misunderstandings that arise.