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The story
An article supervised by a business-manners instructor — asking whether it’s rude to snap a photo of your business partner’s face on your smartphone while exchanging business cards — drew a wave of reactions on 5ch.
The thread turned into a swap of real sales-floor tactics, debating the merits of handing out cards printed with your own photo, the trick of jotting someone’s distinguishing features on the back of their card, and even the compromise of just taking a photo together instead.
I Want to Remember Faces and Names → So I Photograph the Other Person on My Smartphone During a Business Card Exchange → Is That Rude? [A Business Manners Instructor Explains] | Yorozu News
2026.08.24 (Mon) Yumeshobo
Person A, who works in sales, frequently exchanges business cards with people they’re meeting for the first time, and for years has struggled with the fact that “faces and names just won’t stick.”
Source: yorozoonews.jp / Original article here
What people said
Same here.
Getting pretty sick of these made-up feel-good pieces.
That reminds me of Sandwichman (the comedy duo).
Nice bit of quick thinking.
As someone receiving one, that's actually really helpful.
I guess that's what makes a top-tier salesman.
Cuts out unnecessary awkwardness for both sides.
That's common at sketchy 'black companies.'
Pointless anyway since the person quits right after you get the card lol
I see those get dragged online and mocked all the time lol
That's going to turn into a real problem eventually.
Official line: 'for both our sakes.'
Real reason: 'for my sake.'
'A new sales rep is worthless unless the client remembers them!
Go hand out 100 photo business cards today!
Don't come back until every last one is gone!'
The Showa era was like the early town area in an RPG.
Even with lousy gear (= your product), you could brute-force your way through on sheer grit.
But as the era — the adventure — progresses, you need both a higher character level AND stronger gear (= product) to keep winning.
If your 'gear upgrade' is a business card with a photo on it instead of an actually stronger product, that's an unwinnable stage.
Businessmen should carry that same level of resolve.
That's called 'jingi wo kiru' (a formal yakuza-style self-introduction ritual).
Hold on, hold on, don't tell me you're just using a smartphone for this lol
At least set up a Canon DSLR with a proper backdrop sheet!
And while you're shooting, say 'good, good, that expression's great, hold it right there' lol
'Don't move now… oh wait, I hit the video button by accident (๑꒪͒∀꒪͒๑)'
True, you don't want to put the other person out, so a candid shot is the way to go! lol
Are you a sketchy-company employee who works the photo-business-card hustle?
A company like that should just be banned outright.
Anyone who can photograph other people without a shred of hesitation isn't even the same kind of human as me.
Fine, I'm a different kind of human then.
So what?
Fair enough, but that mindset doesn't sound suited for sales work, where putting your face out there is the whole job (´・ω・｀)
Arm around the shoulder, big smile.
I actually think that's a great idea.
If the sales rep is a woman, it really boosts the good impression, doesn't it.
'Fat,' 'bald,' 'short,' that kind of thing.
At first, writing stuff like that on a card was considered bad manners, but it beats forgetting who's who, so I started doing it too.
Blame job rotation — the person in charge changes way too often these days.
I do that too.
When I add someone to my contacts app,
I log where I met them and what they look like.
If you look back through these often enough,
just the first line on the back is enough to tell you who it is —
but it's unsettling when someone suddenly has way more hair than before.
Background and Key Points
In Japan, exchanging business cards (meishi koukan) is a scripted ritual, not a casual handoff: cards are presented and received with both hands, the text faces the recipient, participants bow slightly, and — crucially — writing on a card in the giver’s presence has long been taught as a breach of manners, since the card is treated as a stand-in for the person themselves. That backdrop matters here, because the article in question comes from a “business manners instructor,” a common genre of Japanese career-advice content that treats meishi etiquette as a serious professional skill worth paid instruction, distinct from how most Western workplaces treat a card swap.
The thread’s real disagreement wasn’t about etiquette in the abstract but about whether the scenario even reflects reality: several early posters said they’d worked in sales for years and never once seen anyone photograph a card partner, suggesting the premise was manufactured content rather than a live problem. From there, the debate split between people defending workarounds — pre-printed photo business cards, jotting a physical description on the back of the card after the meeting, or proposing a joint photo instead — and people mocking those same tactics as either “black company” (exploitative employer) hustle culture or a privacy risk, especially the pointed worry that photographing a young female business partner specifically could read as harassment rather than professionalism.
What outside readers likely miss is that “writing on the back of a card” is itself a small rebellion against the very etiquette this instructor claims to teach — posters openly note it was traditionally considered rude, yet normalized it as a practical fix for constant staff turnover, something the article’s manners framing never addresses.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Breaking News+) thread “I Want to Remember Faces and Names → So I Photograph the Other Person on My Smartphone During a Business Card Exchange → Is That Rude? [A Business Manners Instructor Explains]”.
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