Japan, Information, Reporting Ideal

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.

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.”

Red Yeast Rice

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.

Report, Inform, Consult

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.