Are customers God? Custom's genesis: Reflection between two Expos
A well-known Showa-era singer, Haruo Minami, sang the theme song for the Osaka Expo in 1970, 'Sekai no Kuni kara Konnichiwa' (Hello from Countries Around the World). This song became an iconic tune of the Expo and is widely known as one of Minami's signature songs.
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.
From Minami Haruo's official Youtube channel
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.
「20世紀少年」完全版第8巻8月30日発売です！
— 浦沢直樹_Naoki Urasawa公式情報 (@urasawa_naoki) August 28, 2016
今巻は、この黒いページからの流れが見ものですね。 pic.twitter.com/oYSF3KY7qX
Naoki Urasawa's manga, '20th Century Boys,' is deeply associated with his experience of not being able to visit the EXPO when he was a kid. The photo is from Urasawa's official Twitter.
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.
