In July 2015, a third-party committee published its report on Toshiba’s accounting. According to press reports of its findings, the president had shown the heads of the company’s divisions profit targets called charenji, challenge, and had pressed them hard to meet them.
The committee found that at Toshiba “there was a corporate culture in which one could not go against the wishes of one’s superiors.”
Tsuru no hitokoe (鶴の一声): the single cry of the crane. One word from an important person settles a matter at once.
Nagai mono ni wa makarero (長いものには巻かれろ): let oneself be wrapped by the long thing. It is better to follow the powerful than to resist them.
On May 6, 2018, a Nihon University American football player made a vicious foul tackle in the annual game against Kwansei Gakuin University. At a press conference on May 22, the player said a coach had told him he would be allowed to play if he crushed the quarterback on the first play. After a week of pressure, he said, not doing it was not an option.
On May 23, the head coach said the foul had not been his instruction. The coach who passed on the words admitted saying tsubuse, crush, but said he had not meant injury. On May 29, the Kanto collegiate association judged it reasonable to conclude that the instruction had been a condition for playing.
Many Japanese listed companies have sōdanyaku, counselors, or komon, advisors, posts often held by former executives. In a 2016 survey of listed companies by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, 77.6 percent of the responding companies had such posts.
In 2017, the Tokyo Stock Exchange revised the form of its corporate governance reports. From January 2018, companies could use the new form to report these counselors and advisors. The disclosure is voluntary.
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.
Sontaku (忖度) means to infer what is in another person’s mind. In 2017, it shared the grand prize of the annual buzzword award, the Shingo Ryūkōgo Taishō, with insuta-bae, looking good on Instagram.
For the award, the word stood for the Moritomo and Kake Gakuen issues, in which officials were said to have anticipated the wishes of the prime minister’s office. Testifying in the Diet, the chairman of the Moritomo Gakuen school operator said: Sontaku shita no deshō. They probably showed sontaku. The prize was accepted by the president of a company that sold sontaku manjū, sweet buns.
Senpai (先輩): a person who entered the same school or workplace earlier. Also a person above oneself in age, position or experience.
Kōhai (後輩): the opposite of senpai.
Tameguchi (ため口): a younger person speaking to an older person as an equal.
The most senior person is shown to the kamiza, the seat of honor. In a meeting room with chairs on both sides of a central table, it is the seat farthest from the door.
The order applies in a taxi too. The seat of honor is directly behind the driver, followed by the seat behind the front passenger and then the middle of the back seat.
A bureikō is a banquet held without regard to rank or etiquette. The most famous one in Japanese history was held by Emperor Go-Daigo in the Kamakura period. He used it to gather people of different ranks and plot in secret. One guest told his wife, and the plot leaked.
The same source notes that, in practice, rank does not disappear at a bureikō. Communication at company drinking parties has its own coined word, nominication, from nomu (to drink). It first appeared in the media in the 1980s.