01Household
Running the household
Managing the home, meals, receiving callers and arranging transport — keeping the household running as one organisation so the family need not think about any of it.
Related Site / THE BUTLER
Comprehensive hospitality,delivered by butlers
THE BUTLER is the butler service run by this Association, the Japan Butler Association, and its butlers are trained and certified to the Association's standard serve private households and companies. Consultations and applications are handled through the official THE BUTLER site.
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About THE BUTLER
AboutNot a substitute for housework, but an environment you can focus in
THE BUTLER is the butler service run by this Association, the Japan Butler Association, and this service combines the discipline and dignity of the English butler with the attentive courtesy unique to Japan, offering fully made-to-order hospitality shaped around each household and company.
Not housework, but the setting
Rather than simply taking over chores, it creates an environment in which you can concentrate on the work, family and rest that truly matter. Sensing what is needed before it is put into words, and quietly standing by — that service that runs ahead of the request is the essence of THE BUTLER.
A real occupation, not a role in fiction
In Japan the word butler is still often received as a role from a story. What THE BUTLER shows is that it is a real occupation, and one that can be engaged when it is needed.
Work without a manual
What a client engages is not a fixed list of tasks. Taking in the purpose of the day and the people who will be present, the butler decides what to prepare and in what order. Whether work without a manual can be entrusted is where a butler's ability shows.
Where the standard is put to work
The Association is the body that sets and certifies the standard for the butler profession. THE BUTLER is where that standard is put to work in real homes and workplaces.
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Connection with the Association
Relationship
Where the Standard Goes to Work
The body that sets the standard, and the place it is practised
The butlers who serve through THE BUTLER are trained and certified to the standard of the Association. The principles of courtesy, confidentiality and deportment the Association defines are not rules on paper; they are the forms used every day in THE BUTLER's work.
Why the register was published
In 2023 the Association published its register of butlers so that clients can choose a butler themselves rather than by introduction.
THE BUTLER as the window
THE BUTLER is the window for that register, publishing each butler's background and strengths and handling everything from the first request to the day of service.
Standard and field, back and forth
It matters that the body setting the standard and the service working to it sit under one roof. What happens in the field returns to the review of the standard, and the revised standard goes back out to the field. When that circuit stops, a standard grows old on the page.
Certification is not marks alone
The Association does not grant certification on examination marks alone. Attire and deportment, the choice of words and the handling of confidences are all weighed, to judge whether a person can be trusted inside someone's home. Only butlers who have passed that gate serve at THE BUTLER.
Learning, standard and service joined
Learning at the Japan Butler Academy, standards and certification at the Association, and service through THE BUTLER — three functions connected under one Association are what sustain the quality of the service.
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Fields of Service
Fields of ServiceTHE BUTLER's butlers support life and hospitality across four fields. From the daily running of a household to a special day, an executive's right hand and dedicated VVIP care, the same standard runs through all of them.
01
02Business
A right hand in business
Schedule management, preparing documents, accompanying negotiations and receiving guests. Without a divide between business and private life, the butler functions as the executive's right hand.
03Reception
Reception and events
Welcoming and seeing off guests, table service, preparation and staging. Hospitality for a special day, carried out with deportment that never disturbs the flow of the occasion.
04Concierge
Dedicated VVIP care
Like a hotel concierge, a butler dedicated to VVIP and affluent clients with made-to-order care, upholding the highest standard of formality and discretion.
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Ways to Engage
Ways to EngageTHE BUTLER offers several ways to engage a butler, from a first experience to a live-in arrangement. In every case the butler is one trained to the standard of the Association. The main forms presented on the official site are introduced here in order of duration.
01
Guest Footman
Guest Footman
A spot booking from three hours. At a party, an event or on the day an important guest calls, a genuine butler attends you. Dignified reception, table service and bearing seen at close hand — the doorway to butler service.
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Day Butler
Day Butler
From morning to night, a butler dedicated to you for one special day. An anniversary, a full day of events, an important day in business — one butler handles the welcome, the schedule, accompaniment, service and farewell.
03
Weekly Butler
Weekly Butler
A butler dedicated to you continuously for several days to several weeks. A long stay at a villa or a week of overseas guests — hospitality built on the trust that only a longer period allows.
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Private / Executive Butler
Private Butler / Executive Butler
Continuing month-by-month engagements. The Private Butler supports every aspect of daily life; the Executive Butler serves as an executive's right hand in both business and private matters. As trust deepens, what is wanted is ready before it is asked for.
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Butler Concierge / Guide Butler
Butler Concierge / Guide Butler
A concierge dedicated to VVIP and affluent clients, and a Guide Butler specialising in sightseeing and escorted travel in Japan and abroad, with multilingual service and driving, making the stay itself exceptional.
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House Steward / Royal Butler
House Steward / Royal Butler
The House Steward, with three butlers in rotation resident 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, overseeing the running of the whole estate; and the Royal Butler, entirely dedicated and upholding the highest formality and discretion. THE BUTLER's highest forms of service.
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Choosing Your Butler
Choosing Your ButlerA published register, so that the client chooses
Under the banner "an age in which you choose your butler", the Association publishes the background and strengths of its butlers. THE BUTLER's official site carries a butler register where you can compare careers, languages, preferred settings and interviews, and name the butler who suits you.
Serving with a name and a face
A butler works in the background, but there is no reason a client should not know who serves them. Serving with face, name and outlook disclosed — this stance is the foundation on which the Association opens butler culture into a culture of choice.
As the setting changes, so does the butler
Choosing a butler is also a way of choosing how your time is spent. A stay that calls for languages, a household with small children, a week of one social occasion after another — as the setting changes, so does the butler suited to it.
A healthy pressure on the butler
Publishing the register is a demanding arrangement for the butlers themselves. With name and career in the open, the quality of the work comes back to the person who did it. The Association regards that pressure as a healthy one, necessary to hold the standard.
If naming a butler is difficult
If naming a butler is difficult, the Association's coordinators listen to your wishes and propose a butler suited to the setting and to you.
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Etiquette Toward Butlers
Etiquette Toward ButlersDesigning the distance between master and butler
THE BUTLER's official site has a page on the etiquette of dealing with a butler. A butler is neither family nor friend, nor a servile servant.
The position of a professional
The Association calls this position that of a professional, and teaches that designing the distance from the outset and holding to it is what builds long-term trust.
Instructions: conclusion first
Give instructions conclusion first, confirm briefly, and return what cannot be done together with the reason and an alternative. These forms are less the art of service than the craft of preventing accidents and lost trust.
Knowing the form on both sides
The Association's butlers use them in the home every day, and when the client also knows them, the precision of the butler's work rises.
Too much reserve also breaks it
Not knowing how to behave toward a butler is a common hesitation. Too much reserve makes it hard to ask for anything; too little breaks the mood of the room. Between the two lies a quiet and agreeable distance.
The butler holds the distance too
That distance is not made by the client alone. It holds only when the butler keeps a position and an interval within easy speaking range, matching the height of the gaze and the pace of the walk. That is why a page on etiquette sits on the official site.
A promise shared by both
The principles of courtesy, confidentiality and deportment in the Association's Butler Standards are run at THE BUTLER in this way, as a promise shared by master and butler alike.
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Reading & Entry Points
Reading & Entry PointsTHE BUTLER's official site offers not only service information but reading that helps you understand the butler profession. There are entry points both for those considering a request and for those who aspire to become butlers.
01Column & Interview
Columns and butler interviews
Columns written to inform the judgement of those choosing a butler, setting out standards and reasons. Diaries record events; interviews record what the butler was thinking before and after them.
02First Time
For first-time clients
What a butler is, scenes and cases, comparison with other professions, and how to think about cost and effect. The steps to a request and an FAQ are laid out so that newcomers are never lost.
03Recruit
For aspiring butlers
The entry point for those who wish to work as butlers: the path of training to the Association's standard and the steps to serving through THE BUTLER. The Japan Butler Academy is the place of learning.
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How to Begin
How to BeginThe steps from first enquiry to the day of service are explained carefully on the official site. Set out here, as the Association sees them, are the essentials.
1
Consultation
Enquiry
Through the contact window on the official site, tell us the setting, dates and wishes. The Association's coordinators listen and propose a suitable way to engage.
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Selection
Proposal or nomination
Name a butler directly from the register, or choose from the coordinator's proposal. Languages, preferred settings and compatibility are taken into account.
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Preparation
Preliminary meeting
The butler learns the day's movements, expected guests and the household's rules in advance and builds the arrangements. Removing problems through arrangement before they surface is a butler's preparation.
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Service
The day of service
From the welcome onward, the butler supports the day's purpose. In continuing engagements, daily observations are shared and a relationship grows in which what is wanted is ready before it is asked for.
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For Companies
For CompaniesFrom the boardroom to the shareholders' meeting, as the face of the company
THE BUTLER serves companies as well as households.
Where the company shows its face
Receiving callers in the executive suite, welcoming dignitaries from abroad, serving at occasions that bring together shareholders and business partners, accompanying an executive on a trip.
Someone must be the face
At the moments when someone must be the face of the company, a butler trained to the standard the Association sets is the one who stands there.
Training, and the butler in person
Where the Association's corporate training transfers the butler's forms to a company's own staff, THE BUTLER sends the butler in person. Many companies combine the two, raising the everyday quality of reception through training and entrusting the most important days to a butler.
A moment of conduct becomes the verdict
In a corporate setting a moment of deportment attaches directly to the standing of the company. The bow at the entrance, the way a coat is taken, the order of seating. In places unrelated to the substance of the deal, the other party is forming its own judgement.
Preparing the material for judgement
Bringing in a butler is a way of preparing the material for that judgement yourself. The Association offers corporate training for the same reason: many companies wish to reach the same level without bringing anyone in from outside.
Ways companies engage us
For companies there is the Executive Butler, supporting an executive's business and private life by the month, as well as the Guest Footman and Day Butler for the day of an event. The rule of confidentiality is the same as for private clients: the Association's Butler Standards apply in full.
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Ranks & Forms
Ranks & FormsThe Association organises the butler's roles into ranks — footman, butler, second steward, house steward. THE BUTLER's ways of engaging are designed along these ranks, and knowing which rank of butler will come makes the choice easier.
01Footman
Footman
The rank that handles the scenes of a day: receiving guests, serving, seeing guests off. The Guest Footman is a butler of this rank attending a party or event for a few hours.
02Butler
Butler
The rank entrusted with the master's schedule and whole way of life, from a single day to a monthly engagement: Day Butler, Weekly Butler, Private Butler and Executive Butler.
03House Steward
House Steward
The highest rank, overseeing the running of the whole estate and directing the household staff. The resident House Steward and the fully dedicated Royal Butler are provided by butlers of this rank.
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Scenes of Use
Scenes of UseTHE BUTLER's official site has a page of scenes and cases. Seen from the Association, it is also a list of the situations in which the butler's standard is put to the test. Three representative scenes:
01Dinner Party
A dinner party at home
The butler takes on reception, service, laying and clearing the table, and the host can give the evening to conversation. The timing of service that never disturbs the flow is the first form examined in the Association's practical test.
02Anniversary
An anniversary with someone dear
Flowers, the table, bringing out the cake, the photograph. The typical day for a Day Butler who supports a special day from start to finish, and the day on which anticipatory service matters most.
03Business Guests
Receiving business guests
On the day a business partner or an overseas dignitary calls, the butler handles everything from the bow at the entrance to refreshments in the meeting room and the farewell. In the scene that shapes a company's impression, the Association's standard shows plainly.
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Working as a Butler
Working as a ButlerThe entrance for aspiring butlers, on the same standard
THE BUTLER's official site has a recruitment page for those who aspire to become butlers.
What the recruitment page says
What it speaks of is anticipatory service, listening, and the way career and compensation are thought about — how a butler trained to the Association's standard works and how that work is valued, set out for candidates.
Recruitment is the exit of certification
For the Association, recruitment is the exit of the certification system.
One connected path
Study at the Japan Butler Academy, certification by the Association, and being chosen by clients through THE BUTLER form one connected sequence, so an aspiring butler can see from the outset the workplace that lies beyond the study.
The two qualities required
The question most often put to the Association by those drawn to the profession is what qualities it takes. Our answer comes down to two: the capacity to keep observing, and the ability to stay out of the foreground.
Habit is harder than skill
Skills can be learned. The harder part is the habit of rebuilding the master's day as one's own. The recruitment page sets out the substance of the work precisely so that this habit is understood in advance.
The first step
If working as a butler interests you, see the recruitment page on the official site. For those who want to start at the learning stage, the Japan Butler Academy, operated by the Association, is the entrance.
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Why We Introduce It
Why We Introduce ItTo show the standard at work
The Association introduces THE BUTLER as a related site so that you can see how its standard and certification actually work in clients' homes and workplaces.
Two sites, two things to confirm
The certification system and corporate training are explained on the Association's site; the butlers trained to that standard can be seen at work through THE BUTLER.
A standard differs once it moves
Read on the page, standards all look much alike. The difference appears when a standard becomes movement in a person. The work at THE BUTLER is also a mirror, showing how finely the Association's standard has actually been written.
Showing openly is what builds trust
We introduce it as a related site not as advertising. A body that sets a standard, showing openly the work carried out to that standard, is itself what supports trust in certification.
Two entrances, one set of butlers
If you are considering engaging a butler, go to THE BUTLER's official site. If the standard, certification or corporate training is what interests you, come to the Association. Two entrances, one set of butlers.
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Official Site
Official SiteTHE BUTLER official siteThe window for enquiries and requests
Enquiries and requests for butler service go through THE BUTLER's official site, where you will find the ways to engage, the butler register and guidance for first-time clients.
Visit the THE BUTLER official siteFrequently asked questions
FAQQ.What is THE BUTLER?
THE BUTLER is the butler service operated by the Japan Butler Association. It combines the discipline and dignity of the English butler with the attentive courtesy unique to Japan, offering fully made-to-order hospitality. The butlers who serve are trained and certified to the Association's standard.
Q.What can I request?
From running the household and acting as a right hand in business to guest reception, event service and dedicated VVIP care, it supports daily life and hospitality comprehensively. Rather than simply taking over chores, it creates an environment in which you can focus on work, family and rest.
Q.What ways of engaging a butler are there?
A Guest Footman from three hours, a Day Butler for one day, a Weekly Butler for several days to weeks, a Private Butler or Executive Butler by the month, a Butler Concierge dedicated to VVIP clients, a Guide Butler for sightseeing and escort, and the resident House Steward and Royal Butler, among others. Details are on the official site.
Q.Can I choose my own butler?
Yes. Under the banner "an age in which you choose your butler", the Association publishes its register of butlers. On THE BUTLER's official site you can compare careers and strengths and name a butler. If that is difficult, the Association's coordinators will propose one.
Q.How is it related to the Association and the Academy?
THE BUTLER and the Japan Butler Academy are both based within the Japan Butler Association. THE BUTLER is one of the settings where butlers trained by the Academy and certified by the Association deliver dignified service.
Q.Can companies use THE BUTLER?
Yes. Receiving callers in the executive suite, welcoming dignitaries from abroad, serving at occasions for shareholders and business partners, accompanying an executive on a trip — at the moments when someone must be the face of the company, a butler trained to the Association's standard stands there. Besides the monthly Executive Butler, the Guest Footman and Day Butler are available for the day of an event.
Q.How are butlers ranked?
The Association organises the butler's roles into ranks such as footman, butler, second steward and house steward. THE BUTLER's ways of engaging follow this division: scenes of a few hours are handled by a footman, a day to a month of the master's whole way of life by a butler, and the resident form overseeing a whole estate by a house steward.
Q.Where do I make an enquiry or request?
Enquiries and requests go through the official site, thebutler.jp. Tell us the setting, dates and your wishes, and the Association's coordinators will propose a suitable way to engage and a suitable butler.
Other related sites
Interested in butler training or certification?
Each official site is the point of contact for its own service. For the Association's certification system and corporate training, please contact us directly.