The Disgrace of the American Business Card

Once, a man’s name was everything. His meishi was more than paper, it was a contract, a promise, a reflection of his standing. When I hand you my card in Japan, I am not giving you a way to call me. I am offering you my respect. You take it with both hands. You study it like you would a blade presented by a master. You remember it, because to forget it would shame you. That card binds us, even if only for a moment, in duty.

But in America? The business card is a joke. You hand one over and watch it disappear. No glance. No care. No meaning. Into a pocket, a bag, the trash, just another casualty in a land where connections are disposable and promises are as thin as the paper they’re printed on. They ask for your card out of habit, like they’re collecting bottle caps, not names. There’s no honor in the exchange, no weight behind it. It’s all noise, no loyalty, no memory, no consequence.

So I stopped carrying them.

A man like me doesn’t hand over his name to be forgotten. My name is not a trinket for a stranger to discard. When some suit in America asks for my card, I look him in the eye, silent for a beat longer than is comfortable, and I say:
“If my name matters to you, you’ll remember it. If it doesn’t, you don’t deserve to know it.”

And I leave it at that. I don’t offer phones, I don’t suggest a connection, I don’t beg a man to honor what he’s already chosen to treat lightly. A man who forgets my name earns nothing more from me.

In the end, what is a name worth in a place where no one keeps their word? In America, too often, the answer is: nothing. And so I give nothing.