Are customers God? Custom's genesis: Reflection between two Expos

This week in Small Business Japan (20 Apr, 2025)

Minami is also famous for his phrase 'Okyakusama wa kamisama desu' (Customers are God; お客様は神様です). It was in 1961, when Minami was performing at a theatre, that he said the phrase to the audience. 'This phrase expressed his profound gratitude towards every member of the audience for coming to listen to his singing,' according to Gemini. I can only imagine that Minami's heartfelt sincerity and humility inspired those words when he saw the customers who came to hear him sing.

Subsequently, this phrase gained widespread recognition and established itself as a symbolic expression of the spirit of valuing customers in the Japanese service industry. However, in recent years, it has also been noted that this phrase can lead to excessive customer supremacy and place undue burdens on service providers.

In this regard, kamisama-like treatment has been argued by some to have inadvertently contributed to the rise of customer harassment, known as kasuhara (カスハラ). The extreme interpretation of this idea can lead some customers to believe they are entitled to unreasonable demands and abusive behaviour, placing significant strain on service providers.

Tokyo has enacted an ordinance this fiscal year to prevent customer harassment. While it is purely coincidental that this aligns with the year of the second Osaka Expo, it may serve as an example of how it can take at least 50 to 60 years for a social custom to develop and for society to then take action to remove it.

By the way, my mum visited the Osaka EXPO as part of a school excursion 55 years ago, taking the Shinkansen for the first time. Thirty years later, her daughter, I, was taken to the Tsukuba Expo '85, which I thoroughly enjoyed in the futuristic scientific world. However, the most impressive memory is of the queue under the heat, as I went there during the summer holidays, following the previous year's visit to Tokyo Disneyland. In this regard, I may have been raised during a very vibrant period in the country.

Returning to the original point, the late Minami once said, 'To present a truly perfect art, I must achieve a state of absolute mental clarity, free from any wandering thoughts, as if standing in sacred prayer (あたかも神前で祈るときのように、雑念を払ってまっさらな、澄み切った心にならなければ完璧な藝をお見せすることはできないのです. Source: Haruo Minami Official Website, 'On "Customers Are God"')'.

The foundation of that experience was his military service after pausing his entertainment career at 20, and his subsequent four-year internment in Siberia after the War. He used to sing for his fellow detainees, encouraging them in their despair and keeping his hope alive. It was from this period that his intense focus on how to please others originated.