We conduct a systematic and narrative review of the literature in the area of language studies in international business (IB). Our contributions seek to outline the research of language in IB both in Western countries and in Japan. Moreover, we aim to open up the debate of language studies in IB in Japan as the most important contribution; we offer suggestions for future research in Japan based on prior studies and discuss managerial implications for Japanese corporations. The pertinent literature we use in this paper is based on chronological and categorical turns, by dividing language studies in IB into three stages: infancy, toddler and preschool stages.