Rejection of introductions to or references from existing clients
We do not provide introductions to or references from existing clients, out of respect for their privacy and to avoid being intrusive to them.
While requesting client references may be a common practice in some countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, this practice is not universal. No such custom exists among professional service providers in Japan and many other countries, and clients in such countries would not expect to be contacted for such purposes without prior consent. Furthermore, no such practice exists among Japanese genealogy firms.
References are virtually nonexistent across industries in Japan. The only sectors where they are said to exist as an exception are the mid-career and executive recruitment market involving foreign-affiliated firms, and B2B enterprise IT and SaaS implementation.
For inquirers from the United Kingdom, the United States, and other countries where reference culture is established, the absence of such a system may seem inconceivable — yet, conversely, for someone like myself from a country where no such culture exists, I find it equally difficult to understand why it would be considered acceptable to impose that burden on a third party.
That said, the governing law of this service is Japanese law, and this is not a service designed exclusively for persons from English-speaking or other reference-culture countries. Inquirers are accordingly required to conduct themselves in accordance with Japanese business practices. So, clients and prospective inquirers have no right to request that we provide introductions to or references from existing clients.
