Internet shopping mall operator Rakuten Inc. surprised the public by announcing early this year it will make English its official language by 2012.
All internal meetings will be in English whether foreigners are present or not. Board meetings and weekly all-company meetings have been in English since March, and President Hiroshi Mikitani has said board members who can't speak English in two years will be fired. Cafeteria menus are now in English.
The Rakuten group has 6,000 employees globally, of whom about 400 are non-Japanese, spokesman Naoki Mizushima said. The firm doesn't keep track of how many non-Japanese it has in Japan, while the 16 board members at its headquarters in Tokyo are all Japanese, he said.