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The Vocabulary of Correction

Dame-dashi (駄目出し): putting out the no-good. Pointing out faults and weak points. The word comes from the theater, where dame o dasu means giving an actor notes on what is wrong in the performance.

Mada mada da ne (まだまだだね): not there yet. The catchphrase of Echizen Ryōma, the hero of the tennis manga Tennis no Ōjisama (The Prince of Tennis).

Chūgen mimi ni sakarau (忠言耳に逆らう): loyal advice offends the ear. The Daijisen dictionary traces the saying to Chinese sources such as the Records of the Grand Historian and explains that advice tends to hurt the listener’s feelings and is seldom accepted with an open mind.

Ignored, Praised, Criticized

Sanryū wa mushi, niryū wa shōsan, ichiryū wa hinan. A third-rate player is ignored, a second-rate player is praised, and a first-rate player is criticized. The sports magazine Number quotes the line to describe how Nomura Katsuya, the baseball catcher and manager, treated his players.

Red-Pen Teachers

Children who take Shinken Zemi, the correspondence course of the education company Benesse, send their work to an akapen sensei, a red-pen teacher. The teacher corrects the work by hand and sends it back with comments.

In 2020, Benesse said that about 10,000 such teachers were following children’s learning from their homes across Japan.

Masters of Praise

In 2011, the Japan Praise Masters Association, Nihon Homeru Tatsujin Kyōkai, was founded by Nishimura Takayoshi, who became its chair. It runs a certification test in praising, the Hometatsu! Kentei.

An article in the business magazine President reported that more than 5,000 people had passed the test and that companies and local governments were adopting it quickly.

Haiku Under the Red Pen

In the TV program Purebato!! (Prebat!!), celebrities write haiku. The haiku teacher Natsui Itsuki rates each poem as sainō ari (talented), bonjin (ordinary) or sainō nashi (untalented). She also corrects each poem, cutting and changing words without mercy.

Stops and Flicks

On February 29, 2016, the Japanese Language Subcommittee of the Council for Cultural Affairs compiled a guideline on the shapes of the standard kanji, the Jōyō kanji. It says that if the framework of a handwritten character can be recognized, differences in detail should not be judged as errors.

A question-and-answer explanation of the guideline gives an example. The radical tehen, on the left side of many characters, is usually written with a flick at the end of its vertical stroke. Ending the stroke with a stop instead cannot be called an error.

Breaking the Form

Kata ga aru kara katayaburi, kata ga nakereba katanashi. Because there is a form, there can be form-breaking. Without a form, there is only formlessness. The saying plays on two words. Katayaburi, form-breaking, means unconventional. Katanashi, formless, means spoiled or ruined.

The saying is attributed to the kabuki actor Nakamura Kanzaburō XVIII. Its wording varies. A school newsletter in Sapporo quotes the ending as tada no katanashi, mere formlessness. An original source for either version has not been found.

Starting from One Hundred

A Japanese driving school ends with a final driving test, the sotsugyō kentei. The examiner starts from 100 points and deducts points for each fault in the prescribed way of driving. The candidate needs 70 points to pass.

Scored Against the Melody

Seimitsu saiten, precise scoring, is the scoring system of the karaoke maker DAM. It rates the accuracy of pitch, expression, vibrato, long tones, stability and rhythm. The singer’s pitch is compared with the guide melody, which is made to follow the original song closely.

An explainer in ITmedia passes on the advice that where the guide melody differs from the original recording, following the guide melody raises the score.

Reviewing the Game Together

In professional shogi, the two players usually examine the game together after it ends. This review is called kansōsen, the battle of impressions. Winner and loser both take part.