Process Quality Archives - understand-culture

The Order of Multiplication

In some Japanese elementary schools, a correct answer to a word problem can be marked wrong because the multiplication was written in the wrong order. In 2021, Tōyō Keizai Online described a case in Osaka in 1972. A child wrote 6 × 4 where the teacher expected 4 × 6. The answer was marked right and the expression wrong.

The national curriculum commentary says that the order of the two numbers should be respected when a problem about a number of equal groups is expressed as a formula. Asked by the magazine, the curriculum division of the Ministry of Education said that understanding what multiplication means is more important than the order. How to teach it, it added, also depends on each school.

Off-Hours Trading

On February 8, 2005, the internet company Livedoor announced that it had acquired about 35 percent of the radio broadcaster Nippon Broadcasting. It had bought the shares outside trading hours through ToSTNeT-1, not through a public tender offer.

The method became a public issue, and the rules were changed. On June 22, 2005, the Diet passed an amendment to the Securities and Exchange Law. From July 9, 2005, a purchase of this kind that takes the buyer above one third of the shares falls under the tender offer rules.

Not Beautiful

On December 20, 2017, the Yokozuna Deliberation Council discussed the techniques of the yokozuna Hakuhō. Its chairman, Kitamura Masatō, criticized his slaps, the harite, and his forearm blows, the kachiage. He said: “Harite, kachiage, on ten days or more out of fifteen. This style can hardly be called the sumo of a yokozuna. It is not beautiful. I do not want to see it.”

Stroke Order

Japanese children learn hitsujun, the order in which the strokes of a character are written. The Ministry of Education’s commentary on the curriculum for writing in the first two grades of elementary school asks pupils to write carefully, “following stroke order.” The standard taught in schools still goes back to a guide published by the Ministry of Education in 1958, the Hitsujun shidō no tebiki.

Writers on the subject point out that stroke order has no single, absolute norm, and that society has no one correct order. Schools still teach the order of the 1958 guide as the standard.

Nemawashi in the Right Order

A Japanese HR dictionary explains nemawashi with an example. An employee who takes a matter first to the company president, not to the direct superior, is sent back to discuss it with the superior. The superior may feel that his position was ignored, and approval can become harder.

For a meeting with many participants, the dictionary advises informing those concerned beforehand. The decision then goes smoothly.

A Correct Shot Hits

Seisha hitchū (正射必中): a correct shot always hits. A maxim of kyūdō, Japanese archery. A publication of Chuo University explains it: an arrow released with the correct shooting form will surely hit.

The Vocabulary of the Proper Route

Suji o tōsu (筋を通す): to run the line through. To give a matter its correct line, as in hanashi no suji o tōsu, to keep a discussion on its proper line.

Sujichigai (筋違い): off the line. Against reason, or aimed at the wrong place, as in watashi ni kujō o iu no wa sujichigai da, complaining to me is the wrong address.

Atamagoshi (頭越し): over the head. An example from a bilingual dictionary: kare wa kachō no atamagoshi ni chokusetsu shachō ni sono teian o motte itta, he took the proposal straight to the president, over the section chief’s head.