Japan, Information - understand-culture

Telling the Family First

Gan kokuchi means telling patients that they have cancer. An article in Gendai Business says that it used to be normal in Japan to tell the family the name of the disease and to hide the facts from the patient. Cancer notification in Japan, it says, began in the 1990s.

A study at Kanazawa University Hospital found that in 1988, most doctors in gastroenterology did not tell patients even about early-stage cancer. By 1996, about 70 percent disclosed early-stage cancer, and by 2005 disclosure was almost complete.

Unable to Speak Up

In a report dated August 1, 2022, a special investigation committee described how Hino Motors had falsified engine certification data. Its summary says that developers could not speak up to say that fuel economy needed further improvement. They could not tell developers in other departments that the earlier figures had been inflated. At one development meeting, the fact that fuel economy fell far short of its target was not reported.

The news site Kuruma News summed up the problem in one phrase: ue ni mono ga ienai, unable to speak to those above.

No Spinach Here

Yamada Akio, founder of the company Mirai Kōgyō, said: Uchi ni wa hōrensō wa nai. We have no hōrensō. He did not mean the vegetable, he added, but the abbreviation for reporting, informing and consulting with a boss.

At his company, he said, even in product development the person in charge decides alone and finishes the product alone. He criticized today’s control-minded management, in which bosses do not trust employees, meddle in every detail and treat them like children.

Ohitashi

Ohitashi, boiled greens, is a joke reply to hōrensō, spinach, written for the boss. Its syllables stand for okoru na, hitei suru na, tasukero, shiji o dase: do not get angry, do not reject, help, give instructions. In 2021, the news site Abema Times credited it to a Twitter user.

The Report That Did Not Arrive

The Diet’s commission on the Fukushima accident found that Tokyo Electric Power had told the nuclear regulator, its usual point of contact, that venting work was under way. It found no evidence that this had reached the top of the trade ministry or the prime minister’s office.

The commission concluded that the regulator’s failure to function and the lack of information at TEPCO headquarters built distrust between the prime minister’s office and TEPCO. It led the prime minister to go to the plant himself and give instructions there.

Early on March 15, 2011, Prime Minister Kan Naoto went to TEPCO headquarters, where a joint response headquarters of the government and TEPCO was set up.

Left to the Chair

On March 7, 2019, a joint meeting of the Liberal Democratic Party’s health and labor division and its subcommittee on pharmaceutical affairs reviewed a bill to amend the pharmaceutical law. It agreed to leave the content to the division chair, Koizumi Shinjirō, and others. The headline in a trade newspaper noted that objections had also been raised.

A political science paper describes the party’s principle: approval in each division of its Policy Research Council, then unanimity in its General Council. These decisions, the paper says, have worked as de facto party discipline.

Digital Agency

On September 1, 2021, Japan’s Digital Agency began work. Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide had named gyōsei no tatewari, the vertical division of administration, as the cause of the problem. He announced: “We will create the Digital Agency as a system that brings together related policies divided among several ministries and pushes them forward strongly.”

An article in Gendai Business noted that the greeting at the launch did not use the words tatewari daha, breaking the vertical division.

Bad News Fast

In December 2023, Toyota chairman Toyoda Akio spoke about the certification scandal at Daihatsu. He said it came down to how employees are treated every day, and used an English phrase: “There is the phrase Bad News Fast.”

He then described what often happens to it in practice: “People are told, bring me the bad news. I was told that too, long ago. When I actually brought it, I was scolded.”

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.