The Seventeen-Article Constitution, which the Nihon Shoki dates to 604 and credits to Prince Shōtoku, ends with this rule: Sore koto wa hitori sadamu bekarazu. Kanarazu shū to agetsurau beshi. Matters should not be decided by one person alone. They must always be discussed with others.
Its first article opens with a related idea. Harmony is to be valued, and avoiding opposition is to be the principle. Other early sources date the text to 602 or 605.
A ringi-sho is a proposal drafted at the lower levels of an organization and passed in turn to the relevant departments and sections. Each manager adds a personal seal, the hanko. Approval builds up level by level, and final approval rests with the head of the organization.
The political scientist Tsuji Kiyoaki studied the system in Japanese government. He criticized it because it spreads responsibility across many seals.
Nemawashi (根回し): going around the roots. In gardening, cutting the spreading roots of a tree one or two years before it is moved, so that fine new roots grow. At work, preparing a negotiation or meeting in advance so that it goes smoothly.
Sannin yoreba Monju no chie (三人寄れば文殊の知恵): when three people gather, they have the wisdom of Monju. Ordinary people who consult together in a group of three produce excellent ideas. Monju is the bodhisattva of wisdom.
Rentai sekinin (連帯責任): joint responsibility. A whole group answers for what one of its members did.
Under the Edo shogunate, households in towns and villages were organized into gonin-gumi, groups of five. The members of each group were jointly responsible for paying the annual tax and for keeping public order.
Article 66, paragraph 3 of the Constitution of Japan reads: Naikaku wa, gyōseiken no kōshi ni tsuite, kokkai ni taishi rentai shite sekinin o ou. In the exercise of executive power, the Cabinet bears collective responsibility to the Diet.
On August 28, 1945, Prime Minister Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko held a press conference after the surrender. He said that the military, the officials and the whole people must reflect and repent. “I believe that repentance by the entire nation is the first step in rebuilding our country and the first step toward national unity.”
The idea was later remembered as ichioku sōzange, the repentance of the hundred million. Critics said it blurred the responsibility of the country’s leaders, the Emperor and the military.
On August 10, 2025, Kōryō High School of Hiroshima withdrew from the national summer high school baseball tournament at Kōshien. The team had won its first game, 3 to 1. It gave up its second-round game.
In January of that year, several members of the school’s baseball club had committed violent acts against younger members. In March, the Japan High School Baseball Federation had given the school a formal warning.
On December 2, 2019, the grand prize of Japan’s annual New Words and Buzzwords Awards went to ONE TEAM. It was the slogan of the national rugby team at the Rugby World Cup 2019 in Japan, coached by Jamie Joseph.
Under captain Michael Leitch, the squad of 31 players included 15 players from seven other countries. The team won all four of its pool matches and reached the knockout stage for the first time.
In April 1962, the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers launched a magazine for the factory floor, Genba to QC. In its first issue, Ishikawa Kaoru introduced the QC circle, a small group in one workplace that carries out quality control on its own initiative.
The definition describes managing and improving the workplace continuously, with everyone taking part.
In Akira Kurosawa’s film Ikiru (1952), Watanabe Kanji has headed the citizens’ section of a city office for thirty years. He learns that he has stomach cancer. He then takes up a residents’ petition for a children’s park on a lot flooded with sewage water.
Residents had brought the petition to the city again and again. It had been passed from one office to the next, which Japanese calls tarai-mawashi. After his death, his colleagues go back to the old way of working.