When Japan Airlines took over Japan Air System, according to the magazine Money Post, a department head from JAL had a deputy from JAS, and the section manager below came from JAL again. The magazine calls this complete tasukigake jinji, crossed-cord appointments.
When Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank was formed by a merger in 1971, the two banks took turns at the top and kept parallel personnel structures.
In 2004, the Kintetsu Buffaloes and the Orix BlueWave agreed to merge. The players’ union, led by its chairman Furuta Atsuya, opposed the merger. It asked for a one-year freeze and for new teams to be admitted.
On September 18 and 19, 2004, the players went on strike, and no games were played. It was the first strike in the history of Japanese professional baseball. On September 23, the league and the union reached an agreement, and a second strike was avoided. The merger went ahead.
On October 18, 1999, Nissan, led by Carlos Ghosn, announced the Nissan Revival Plan. The plan called for cutting about 21,000 jobs worldwide and closing five plants in Japan, among them the Murayama plant.
Sources differ on which other plants were on the list.
A Japanese law of 1972 supports bōsai shūdan iten, group relocation for disaster prevention. The state helps finance moving homes out of areas at risk of disaster to safer ground, as a group.
The program was used widely after the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011. For the areas hit by that disaster, a table of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism for the end of March 2026 counts 12,512 relocations: 8,336 to private plots and 4,176 to disaster public housing.
Suzuki Osamu of Suzuki Motor was born Matsuda Osamu. He became the muko yōshi, the adopted son-in-law, of Suzuki Shunzō, the company’s second president.
Shunzō himself had been chosen by the founder, Suzuki Michio, as the husband of his eldest daughter. The presidency passed to sons-in-law, not to sons.
Ichiren takushō (一蓮托生): one lotus. In Buddhism, being reborn on the same lotus flower in paradise. Today, sharing actions and fate to the end, whatever the result, as in shinu mo ikiru mo zen’in ichiren takushō da, live or die, we all share one fate.
Onaji kama no meshi o kū (同じ釜の飯を食う): to eat rice from the same pot. Comrades who ate from the same pot feel close to one another. It is also used for people who worked in the same workplace.
Japanese companies have hired young people in one batch at graduation, as regular employees without fixed duties. A presentation of the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training describes how the companies then meet changes in their need for staff: through in-house training and flexible transfers between jobs.
In the regular personnel transfers, teiki jinji idō, employees’ duties and places of work change.
Article 11 of Japan’s Public Finance Act says that the national fiscal year begins on April 1 and ends on March 31 of the next year. The fiscal year has run this way since 1886.
Schools were funded by the state, so it suited them to follow the fiscal year. An instruction of the Ministry of Education made the Higher Normal School begin in April, and normal schools and elementary schools followed.
On April 1, 2019, Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide announced the name of the new era, Reiwa. It took effect on May 1, 2019, with the succession to the throne.
The Era Name Act of 1979 says: Gengō wa, kōi no keishō ga atta baai ni kagiri aratameru. “The era name is changed only when there is a succession to the throne.”
On the 9th day of the 11th month of Meiji 5, the government proclaimed a change to the solar calendar. The 3rd day of the 12th month of Meiji 5 became January 1 of Meiji 6, that is, January 1, 1873.
The change took effect only about three weeks after it was announced. The National Diet Library notes that the short time for preparation caused confusion.