On January 15, 2024, an outside doctor told Kobayashi Pharmaceutical that people who had taken its supplements containing red yeast rice, beni kōji, were suspected of suffering health damage. The company began a voluntary recall about two months later and made the damage public on March 22.
The governing party Komeito called the two-month delay deeply regrettable. Clear deadlines for reporting such cases, set by severity, were then planned.
Hōrensō means spinach. It is also made of the first syllables of three workplace words: hōkoku (report), renraku (inform) and sōdan (consult).
Around 1982, Yamazaki Tomiji, president of Yamatane Securities, started a “spinach campaign” in his company. His book on it, Hōrensō ga kaisha o tsuyoku suru (Spinach Makes a Company Strong), appeared in 1986. One account says the idea came from his father.
Ishin denshin (以心伝心): from mind to mind. In Zen Buddhism, passing on the deepest teaching from the heart of the master to the heart of the disciple, without words or writing. In everyday use, understanding each other without words.
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.