Japanese Businesses Are Taking Price-Raising Lessons to Survive

In the 23 years that Koji Shiratsuki has worked for Hinoden Electric Industries Ltd., the company hardly ever asked customers to pay more. Now it needs to — and nobody there knows how it’s done.

So the 44-year-old at the control-panel maker in western Japan took an unusual step. He joined a class on negotiating higher prices, a given in most of the rest of the world but a forgotten skill in the Asian country, where decades of deflation had kept prices and salaries frozen in time.

Koji Shiratsuki

Shiratsuki’s entire career has coincided with a protracted period of stagnation in ...