One winter day, according to a famous story, the warlord Oda Nobunaga went outside and found that his sandals were missing. He asked Saru, Monkey, as he called his young servant, where they were. The servant took them out of his robe and said that he had warmed them. The servant later became Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the ruler of Japan.
The story first appears in Ehon Taikōki, a popular illustrated biography. The magazine Waraku notes that no other source has it, so it cannot be called true.
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.
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.
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.
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.
On January 23, 2026, Prudential Life Insurance held an apology press conference after more than 100 current and former employees had improperly received money. Its management apologized and explained the company’s saihatsu bōshi-saku, measures to prevent recurrence.
A public relations column in the business report of a Japanese regional bank gives the order for a written press release on such trouble. It opens with an apology, then sets out the course of events, the facts, the response to customers and the measures to come. For press conferences, the column warns against wording that sounds like an excuse.
Iiwake (言い訳): an excuse. Explaining after a failure that there was no other choice, in order to justify oneself. Iiwake suru na: no excuses. A common rebuke to someone who has failed.
Kuchigotae (口答え): talking back. Answering a parent, teacher or boss argumentatively. Herikutsu (屁理屈): fart logic. Forced reasoning made to fit.
Chikara busoku (力不足): lack of ability. Used of oneself in apologies, as in watakushi no chikara busoku de, through my lack of ability.
In rakugo, a master often teaches a story by sanben geiko, three-time lessons. The master performs the same story three times in front of the apprentice, and then the apprentice performs it.
The storyteller Gokaidō Kumosuke, named a Living National Treasure in 2023, received such a lesson from Kokontei Shinshō V. Shinshō performed the story differently all three times.
The temple carpenter Ogawa Mitsuo trained under the master carpenter Nishioka Tsunekazu. The one order he received was: Kore to onaji kannakuzu ga dekiru yō ni ha o toge. Sharpen the blade until it makes a shaving like this one. Outside working hours, Ogawa stuck the single shaving he had been handed on a window and kept sharpening.
Looking back, he found that he had been taught almost nothing concrete. “Master Nishioka never once taught me step by step. But we were always together.”
At Sukiyabashi Jirō, the Tokyo sushi restaurant of Ono Jirō, an apprentice trains for about ten years before being allowed to make the tamagoyaki, the sweet rolled omelet.
The apprentice Nakazawa Daisuke, who appears in the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, has said in interviews that he made it about 200 times before Jirō accepted one. In the film, he says he cried when Jirō finally said it was good.