The ojigi hanko, the bowing seal, is a personal seal stamped at a slant on a document, so that it leans toward the seal of the superior beside it. A business guide by Money Forward calls it one of the business manners that some companies treat as a rule.
Its origin is uncertain. A writer in the magazine President says that, by one account, a department of a major city bank made it a rule, and the rule spread as a rumor. He adds that even this is not certain.
Japanese job-hunting guides tell candidates how many times to knock on the door of the interview room. The career site Rikunabi says that three knocks are usual. According to the news site ITmedia, a manners instructor advises three or four knocks, because some people associate two knocks with checking whether a toilet is occupied. The instructor says that the origin of the rule is unclear.
Hisho kentei, the Secretary Skills Test, is run by a public interest foundation, the Practical Skills Testing Association, with the support of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. It tests business manners, etiquette and general knowledge. Its grades run from third grade up to first grade. In 2019, 11,858 people took the third grade, 25,629 the second grade, 4,515 the pre-first grade and 1,044 the first grade.
The Ogasawara school of etiquette, Ogasawara-ryū, traces its beginning to the invitation of its founder to teach archery and horsemanship to Minamoto no Yoritomo. Later heads of the school served the shoguns of the Muromachi and Edo periods. In 2022, a Japanese government publication introduced Ogasawara Kiyotada as the thirty-first head of the school.
A formal Japanese letter follows a fixed frame. When it opens with a tōgo, an opening word such as haikei, it should, as a rule, close with a ketsugo, a closing word such as keigu. A Mynavi guide calls this the principle.
In a business letter, the opening word is followed by a seasonal greeting and then the body. One sample greeting in the guide begins kunpū no kō, in the season of the fragrant breeze.
Rei ni hajimari rei ni owaru: it begins with courtesy and ends with courtesy. The phrase is used for judo and kendo. A judo article says that the etiquette of judo is fixed, and that its rules of etiquette go back to bushidō.
The All Japan Kendo Federation’s guidebook for junior high school kendo teams uses a longer form: Rei ni hajimari, rei o motte okonai, rei ni owaru. It begins with courtesy, is carried out with courtesy and ends with courtesy.
When a new Japanese cabinet is formed or reshuffled, the media use the phrase nyūkaku tekireiki, the right age for entering the cabinet.
The encyclopedia Imidas gives that age in election wins. It says that in LDP cabinets, first-time ministers were often members of the House of Representatives with five or six wins, or members of the House of Councillors with three. It notes that the Koizumi cabinet broke with this custom.
In Japan’s central ministries, the year a career official entered the ministry still matters. Normally, only one member of each entry year becomes administrative vice-minister, the top post in the ministry. The magazine Gendai Business explains that the other members of that year leave the ministry before this happens.
On December 24, 2016, Fujii Sōta played his first game as a professional shogi player, against Katō Hifumi. He was fourteen years and two months old, a second-year junior high school student. He broke the record for the youngest professional, which had stood for 62 years.
On October 11, 2023, at twenty-one, he completed the set of all eight major titles, the first player in history to hold them all. It had taken him seven years as a professional.
On the evening of October 5, 2015, Ōmura Satoshi spoke to the press after being named for the Nobel Prize. He said: Watashi no shigoto wa biseibutsu no chikara o karite iru dake. “My work only borrows the power of microorganisms.”