Inside and Outside Archives - understand-culture

Fine Among Colleagues

On October 1, 2021, Mitsubishi Electric published the report of an investigation committee of outside lawyers on years of improper inspections at its plants. At a briefing, the committee chair repeated what he had heard at the sites: Kyoten no nakamauchi de wa yoi ga, soto ni wa mono ga iinikui. Among colleagues at the site it is fine, but it is hard to speak to those outside. Some also found it hard to speak to their bosses.

He said that employees at the Kani plant and the Nagasaki Works got along well. In his view, this closeness fed a mindset of kyoten atte kaisha nashi: the site exists, the company does not.

Dutch News Reports

In the Edo period, the shogunate ordered the Dutch in Nagasaki to hand over a summary of news from abroad. From then on, one was submitted each time a Dutch ship arrived. Dutch interpreters translated it into Japanese for the shogunate. These were the Oranda fūsetsugaki, the Dutch reports.

In principle, the shogunate kept this information to itself. In practice, copies were quietly passed on, and the news leaked, above all to the domains of Kyushu.

The Nuclear Village

Genshiryoku mura, the nuclear village, is the mocking name for the industry, government, academics and media bound together by the interests of nuclear power. A paper in a Japanese sociology journal says the term was jargon used inside Tokyo Electric Power, an insiders’ name in the power industry. Another paper uses the same word for the towns that host nuclear plants.

The Diet’s independent commission on the Fukushima accident found that regulator and regulated had traded places. The regulators had become captives of the power companies.

Hidden Christians

During the Edo-period ban on Christianity, the senpuku Kirishitan, hidden Christians, kept their faith within their own communities. They passed on their prayers, the orasho, by word of mouth.

Sources differ on how faithfully this worked. One account says the words were handed down without any change. The Heibonsha World Encyclopedia says that because the prayers went from mouth to ear, many were corrupted.

On June 30, 2018, UNESCO decided to inscribe the Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region on the World Heritage List.

Acting Like a Stranger

Mizukusai (水臭い): watery-smelling. Distant and formal, like a stranger, toward someone close. Tanin gyōgi (他人行儀): behaving like an outsider. A usage example: Onaji chīmu no menbā nan dakara, tanin gyōgi wa yose yo. We are on the same team, so drop the formality.

Press Clubs

Japanese ministries and other public offices house kisha kurabu, press clubs. The encyclopedia Imidas calls them a system specific to Japan: voluntary organizations of reporters based in government offices. It notes criticism of their exclusiveness, their closed nature and their sense of privilege, and reports that the European Union called for their abolition.

In 2002, the Japan Newspaper Association revised its view of the clubs. It dropped their old description as social bodies and called them open organizations.

The Vocabulary of Belonging

Soto (外): outside. The Daijisen dictionary also defines it as people or places other than those concerned, an outsider, another person. One of its examples is kimitsu ga soto ni moreru, a secret leaks outside.

Miuchi (身内): followers of the same boss. Also, members of the same organization. A dictionary example: miuchi no fushōji o inpei suru, to cover up a scandal among one’s own.

Haenuki (生え抜き): born and bred. An HR glossary explains a haenuki employee as one hired as a new graduate, not a mid-career hire or an employee on loan from elsewhere.