Akashingō minna de watareba kowakunai: if everyone crosses on a red light together, it is not scary. The line began as a dark gag by the comedy duo Two Beat, Beat Takeshi and Beat Kiyoshi. It was printed in a book of their jokes in 1980.
Japanese Wikipedia explains the phrase this way. Even something that is forbidden can be done without psychological resistance when it is done as a group. The phrase entered the eighth edition of the dictionary Sanseidō Kokugo Jiten in 2021.
On the morning of August 9, 1945, Japan’s Supreme War Council met to decide whether to accept the Potsdam Declaration. Prime Minister Suzuki Kantarō could not bring the members to a conclusion, and the meeting broke up at 1 p.m.
At an Imperial Conference in the early hours of August 10, the members stood three against three. The Emperor then gave his decision, the seidan. A second seidan followed at the Imperial Conference of August 14.
A decision by the Emperor himself was the exception. It happened twice in four days.
On July 17, 2015, Prime Minister Abe Shinzō announced that the plan for the New National Stadium in Tokyo would be scrapped and started again from a blank sheet.
A verification committee submitted its report on September 24, 2015. An evaluation by the Ministry of Education that cites the report names among the causes the harm of a “collective decision-making system that led to the cost increase.” It also finds that authority and responsibility had become unclear, and that those involved lacked a sense of ownership.
In 1946, the political scientist Maruyama Masao published the essay Chōkokka shugi no ronri to shinri (The Logic and Psychology of Ultranationalism). A Japanese biographical dictionary sums up one of its points. Maruyama identified the musekinin taikei, the system of irresponsibility, of Japanese-style fascism and the emperor-system state.
An encyclopedia lists this essay and Gunkoku shihaisha no seishin keitai (The Mentality of the Militarist Rulers) among the analyses he published right after the war. It notes that they had a large influence on Japanese thought.
Japanese ministries have shingikai, advisory councils. A Japanese encyclopedia notes that the councils have no research bodies or secretariats of their own and depend on the ministry. Some critics therefore say that the ministry sets the direction of its councils.
Another encyclopedia warns that the council system can become a kakuremino, a cloak of invisibility, for the administration, and can leave its responsibility unclear.
Decisions of the Japanese cabinet are not made by majority vote. They require unanimity.
When a matter is settled, each minister signs the cabinet document with a kaō, a stylized signature written with a brush, to confirm that all are agreed. This has been the custom since the cabinet system began.
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.
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.
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.