Intimacy as Strategy: Entering Japan When Cultural Access Requires Stewardship, Not Scale

Why Some Experiences Can’t Be Scaled… and Shouldn’t Be

Experiences shape us in ways, products alone, can’t.

We remember where we were, who we were with, how we felt… long after the details fade. Travel, music, food and shared moments leave what psychologists call episodic memory: experiences stored with emotion, context and meaning.

That’s why experiences consistently rank among the most valued forms of spending. In 2025, American are spending 15% more on experiences than on goods and global travel spending has increased 9% in 2025 with gross bookings rising from $1.6 trillion to $1.7 trillion (Travlr). People aren’t just buying escape. They’re investing in perspective, connection and renewal. But not all experiences carry the same weight. Some are entertainment and others are living traditions carrying centuries of history, ritual and meaning. 

Untold Japan operates in the “living tradition” category where the “product” is a relationship between artisans, stewards, and guests, rather than a repeatable service with infinite capacity. It’s closer to a heritage ecosystem than a SaaS play. They don’t offer “sightseeing” but rather intimate cultural immersions inside one of the most tradition-bound cultures - Japan. From private geisha evenings to time spent with master potters, they design encounters with living traditions that have survived for centuries precisely because access has been careful, contextual and rare.

“It’s not about showcasing Japan to the entire world. It’s about showcasing it to the right people for the right reasons.”

- Joshua Lassman

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Most businesses won’t or shouldn’t adopt this level of selectivity. But the underlying discipline is generalizable: when your offer depends on cultural capital you do not own, you scale stewardship before you scale reach. That philosophy shapes who you invite, how you price, which channels you use and which partners you’re willing to walk away from.

This philosophy stands in sharp contrast to today’s growth-at-all-costs mindset. Global business is obsessed with fast reach - more markets, more users, more impressions. But culture doesn’t behave like software. Some of the most powerful products, brands and experiences lose trust the moment they’re scaled without care. For leaders expanding across borders, the risk isn’t just dilution, it’s misinterpretation. In market‑entry terms, misinterpretation shows up as campaigns that backfire - like Western brands re‑using European ads in Japan that unintentionally violate norms around privacy and modesty - partnerships that never renew, and regulatory or community pushback that quietly stalls expansion.

This isn’t an argument against growth.

It’s an argument for careful translation and for leaders taking responsibility for how meaning changes when something moves from one context to another. And careful doesn’t mean slow, it means considered. In my conversation with Joshua Lassman, founder of Untold Japan, one truth kept resurfacing: intimacy is what allows context to transfer. 

When experiences are small, unhurried, and relational, people don’t just observe culture, they begin to understand it. When experiences are rushed or crowded, meaning flattens and what remains is spectacle.

For CMOs, this distinction matters deeply.

Brands, products, and company cultures don’t just “enter” new markets, they are interpreted there. And interpretation is shaped less by messaging than by proximity: how closely leaders listen, how much time they invest and how willing they are to slow down before scaling.

For market entry, “proximity” translates into fewer but longer in‑market immersion visits for leadership, slower roll‑out of high‑symbolism campaigns and formal roles for cultural translators embedded in deal and creative teams. It also changes what you measure: alongside reach, you track partnership renewal rates, depth of engagement in key communities and whether stewards are willing to work with you again.

Without that proximity, even well-intentioned expansion erodes trust. With it, brands earn resonance, not just recognition.

Intimacy Is What Makes Context Legible

Joshua doesn’t describe what he offers as luxury travel. He talks about proximity being close enough to feel the cultural fabric you’re stepping into.

“I’ll take someone to see an artisan and it’s meant to be an hour and a half. And then we end up staying four hours because they’re talking, they’re curious, they’re really there.”

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That closeness is intentional. Groups are capped. Experiences are private. Time is unhurried. Not to create exclusivity but because context doesn’t travel at scale. A geisha performance viewed from a distance becomes a show. Pottery mass-produced for tourism becomes a souvenir. Craft experienced without proximity becomes content.

“If you take 30 people in with cameras, they all take photos and leave. If you take two people who really care, they’ll sit, listen and end up supporting that artisan for years.”

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Across his work whether with a master puppeteer, a potter or a geisha - the pattern is the same. Intimacy changes how people interpret what they’re witnessing. The experience stops being observational and becomes relational.

And that distinction matters, because experiences are fragile by nature. Unlike products, they can’t be preserved, warehoused or perfectly replicated. They exist only in that room, on that day, shaped by the people present and the trust between them. That ephemerality is precisely what gives them value and why mishandling them carries real consequences.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Joshua’s relationship with geisha culture, an art form widely misunderstood, often eroticized and quietly disappearing.

“Ninety-five percent of Japanese people will never experience a real geisha performance. It’s not something you buy tickets to. You’re invited by the “mama-san” (matriarchal steward of that geisha house). You’re trusted.”

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Geishas are not performers. They are artists trained across multiple disciplines - dance, music, storytelling, conversation, presence - learning over years how to read a room, when to speak, when to disappear, when to hold silence.

“They’re reading the room the entire time. That level of emotional intelligence takes years to develop.”

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This isn’t nostalgia. It’s a living practice that only survives inside a container small enough to protect it.

“If geisha culture disappears, there is nothing else like it. There’s no adjacent version. That’s the end.”

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There is no artifact that can sit in a museum to be enjoyed years later. The same logic applies to the artisans Joshua works with. One potter in Toyama showed him a mound of white clay, the last clay of its kind.

“He said, ‘When this is gone, that part of my work is finished.’”

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There was no urgency campaign. No attempt to scale before it disappeared. Just care.

“He’s passed his knowledge to his children. The material will disappear, but the understanding won’t.”

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This is stewardship in practice: knowing what must be protected, what can evolve, and what will inevitably end. For brands, the “last mound of clay” is rarely a material. It might be a subculture’s trust, a heritage process, or a community’s willingness to collaborate again. Once those are spent, there is no adjacent version to swap in. For leaders, this is the work behind any “authentic” collaboration or market entry: someone has to decide what cannot be compromised.

That’s why Joshua is deliberate about saying no to clients, to requests, to the “golden route” version of Japan.

“We’ve turned people away. Not because they were bad people but because they’re requesting access to cultural traditions for the wrong reasons.”

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This isn’t exclusion. It’s responsibility.

“These artisans open their homes, not shops. If they feel disrespected once, the door closes… for everyone.”

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For brands and CMOs, this is the difference between localization and resonance. Meaning isn’t something you extract from research alone. It’s absorbed through proximity, through time, presence, and restraint. Without that proximity, even well-intentioned expansion flattens meaning and erodes trust.

Intimacy isn’t indulgence.

It’s the mechanism that allows meaning to move intact from one context to another.

Stewardship and Discernment 

In a growth-at-all-costs economy, discernment is often misread as elitism. But Joshua reframes it as responsibility.

“If someone doesn’t want outsiders, I respect that. I’ll never force access. That’s not my role.”

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Stewardship isn’t about who gets in. It’s about what the system can withstand. In practice, that means holding two systems in view at once:

The cultural system - traditions, elders, community institutions

and

The brand system - reputation, partnerships, long‑term license to operate

It’s the quiet discipline of asking not “how big can this get?” but “what can this tradition, community, or relationship hold without breaking?”

For brands tapping into culture, there is always a steward on the other side - someone like Joshua, an elder, an organizer, a community leader - deciding when access serves the culture and when it doesn’t. Leaders who ignore that role don’t just move faster; they move past the very people who could have protected them from backlash.

Inside a company, Joshua’s “no” maps to a specific role or body: a cultural advisory council, a regional steward, or a named cultural translator who can block or reshape work that crosses certain lines. Without that veto, stewardship remains a value statement, not a governance practice.​

Cultural Translation Is a Role, Not a Skill

The most important insight Joshua offers leaders has nothing to do with Japan and everything to do with how culture moves across borders.

“Even when people speak the same language, they’re not culturally fluent. Someone has to translate context.”

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He doesn’t see himself as a spokesperson or marketer. He’s a bridge.

“I’m not here to explain Japan to the West or the West to Japan. I’m here to make sure meaning doesn’t get lost.”

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In an era of AI translation and accelerated global expansion, this matters more than ever.

“You can’t just launch in Japan next week. It takes months of meetings, trust-building and shared understanding (different to other countries). That patience is the strategy.”

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Market entry doesn’t fail because of bad decks. It fails because no one is accountable for interpretation. Inside most organizations, this “cultural translator” role is unnamed, underpowered or outsourced when it should be central to how leaders decide where, how and with whom they show up.

At minimum, that means assigning clear ownership for cultural translation on market‑entry teams, giving that person or council sign‑off rights on high‑stakes launches, and resourcing them with time in‑market and direct access to local stewards.

Stewardship as a Leadership Discipline

Zoom out and Joshua’s philosophy becomes a leadership framework.

• Not everything should be scaled the same way.
• Not every story should be amplified equally.
• Not every audience deserves the same access.

The Maze Bright way - what I’m increasingly clear about - is depth over breadth. Intimate experiences change people because they carry context. Context creates care. Care sustains systems.

In practice, that translates into three principles for cultural market entry:

• Proximity before projection: leaders invest in relational understanding before projecting the brand into local symbols or traditions.
• Stewards with veto power: both internal councils and external cultural stewards have real authority to slow, reshape or stop work that crosses certain lines.
• Context‑heavy vs context‑light bets: initiatives are classified by how much cultural interpretation they demand and thereby scale the pace and assess the scrutiny accordingly.

“Money doesn’t buy access here. Respect does.”

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That’s not anti-growth.

It’s growth with stewardship and constraints.

In Short…

Some traditions can’t be blitz scaled and…  shouldn’t be.

Some are fragile, some are context-bound.

Joshua Lassman shows what it looks like to build a business around that fact: designing for intimacy, choosing the right people over more people and standing in the middle as a cultural bridge. As leaders push faster across borders...

The question isn’t “How many people can we reach?”​

It's "how will we resource intimacy and cultural bridges in the markets that matter most—and what are we willing to keep small so the relationship can stay intact?"

Immerse Yourself Here: Untold Japan