The Hakone Ekiden, a relay race, was first held over two days in 1920, starting in front of the Hōchi Shimbun newspaper building in Yūrakuchō, Tokyo. Since 1987, Nippon Television has broadcast both days live. Each team’s runners pass a sash, the tasuki, from one to the next.
Effort Is Always Rewarded
Doryoku wa kanarazu mukuwareru. Moshi mukuwarenai doryoku ga aru no naraba, sore wa mada doryoku to wa yobenai. “Effort is always rewarded. If there is effort that is not rewarded, it cannot yet be called effort.”
Japanese websites often print these words as a saying of the baseball player Ō Sadaharu. The site All About calls it his best-known saying. Neither of the two sites checked here names the occasion or gives an original source, so the attribution is not confirmed.
A Cap on Overtime
Under a cap explained by a regional labor bureau of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, overtime in Japan is limited, as a rule, at 45 hours a month and 360 hours a year. Under special circumstances, the limits are 720 hours a year, and less than 100 hours a month including holiday work, with an average of no more than 80 hours over two to six months.
The cap applied to large companies from April 2019 and to small and medium-sized companies from April 2020. A violation can bring up to six months in prison or a fine of up to 300,000 yen.
Introducing the Successor
A business etiquette guide advises an employee who is being transferred to visit clients together with the successor. This makes the handover smoother and reassures the clients. Some also give a thank-you gift, such as individually wrapped sweets worth 2,000 to 3,000 yen. Only when a visit is impossible is an email acceptable.
A Nobel Prize Without a Doctorate
In 2002, Tanaka Kōichi, an engineer at the instrument maker Shimadzu, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He held neither a master’s degree nor a doctorate. He was the first chemistry laureate with only a bachelor’s degree.
At the time, his company rank was shunin, chief. He has said: “I myself did not think that I had been doing work worthy of a Nobel Prize.”
Kendo Grades
In kendo, the higher grades require years of training after the grade before. Under the rules of the All Japan Kendo Federation, a candidate for seventh dan must have trained for at least six years after receiving sixth dan. A candidate for eighth dan must have trained for at least ten years after seventh dan and be at least 46 years old.
A Japanese university lecture page puts the pass rate of the eighth-dan examination at one percent or less.
Rakugo Ranks
A rakugo storyteller’s career passes through the ranks of zenza, futatsume and shin’uchi. One guide to rakugo says that the zenza stage usually lasts four or five years. Another says that the step from futatsume to shin’uchi takes about ten years.
The first guide puts the whole path from entering the profession to becoming shin’uchi at ten to fifteen years, depending on talent and effort.
Pay by Years of Service
Japan’s official wage survey for 2025 shows pay rising with age. For men, monthly wages peak at ages 55 to 59, at 445,600 yen. That is 181.4 percent of the wage at ages 20 to 24.
By length of service, wages for all workers are highest among those with 30 years or more at the same employer, at 444,200 yen.
Twenty-Four Seconds
In fiscal 2016, about 130,000 trains ran on the Tōkaidō Shinkansen. Their average delay was 24 seconds per train. The figure includes delays caused by natural disasters such as earthquakes, heavy rain and heavy snow.
Starting the Résumé Again
For a handwritten rirekisho, the standard Japanese résumé form, the job site doda gives clear advice about mistakes: “Correction tape and correction fluid are absolutely not allowed. Rewrite it from the beginning.”
The career site of Mynavi agrees: “Basically, correcting a résumé is not acceptable. As a rule, rewrite it whenever possible.”