Unwritten Standard Archives - understand-culture

Diet Precedents

The House of Councillors explains on its website that the laws and rules for the Diet cannot cover every situation. Where they say nothing, the house follows senrei, precedent. Precedents fill the gaps in the written rules so that proceedings can run smoothly.

The House of Councillors collects them in the Sangiin senreiroku, a record of precedents in 32 chapters. The House of Representatives keeps its own collection, the Shūgiin senreishū. The National Diet Library advises that the written rules must be read together with these collections.

The Vocabulary of Precedent

Shikitari (仕来り): custom handed down from the past. The Daijisen dictionary defines it as an old habit, a usage, a convention. Its examples are shikitari o mamoru, to keep to custom, and shikitari ni shibarareru, to be bound by custom.

Tōshū (踏襲): following in the steps. The business magazine DIME explains it as taking over precedents or policies and doing things the same way. It appears in the phrase zenrei tōshū, following precedent.

To Learn and to Imitate

Manabu (学ぶ): to learn. The Digital Daijisen dictionary notes that it has the same origin as manebu (まねぶ), to imitate. The Nihon Kokugo Daijiten adds that which of the two came first is not known.

Momo kuri sannen kaki hachinen (桃栗三年柿八年): peaches and chestnuts take three years, persimmons eight. Everything takes its due time before it bears fruit.

Maiko Stages

A young woman who wants to become a maiko in Kyoto first spends about a year as a shikomi, living in and training. Then comes minarai, learning by watching. At a designated teahouse, she is allowed to see what happens at the banquets. The day she becomes a maiko is called misedashi.

Around the fourth or fifth year as a maiko, after the age of twenty, she becomes a geiko. This step is called erikae, the changing of the collar.

Breaking the Form

Kata ga aru kara katayaburi, kata ga nakereba katanashi. Because there is a form, there can be form-breaking. Without a form, there is only formlessness. The saying plays on two words. Katayaburi, form-breaking, means unconventional. Katanashi, formless, means spoiled or ruined.

The saying is attributed to the kabuki actor Nakamura Kanzaburō XVIII. Its wording varies. A school newsletter in Sapporo quotes the ending as tada no katanashi, mere formlessness. An original source for either version has not been found.

Three Times the Same Story

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 Plane Shaving

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.”

Practice in Parts

In the tea ceremony, the first stage of training is warigeiko, practice in parts. It covers the basic procedures for thin and thick tea, almost everything that people picture when they think of the tea ceremony.

A paper in the repository of Aichi University says that warigeiko is basically taught not by the master but by the master’s senior pupils. It calls this stage of learning a stage of watching.

Brush and Model

Under Japan’s national curriculum, pupils learn shosha, writing practice, with a brush in every grade from the third year of elementary school, with about 30 class hours a year.

In calligraphy, the student copies an otehon, a model. The teacher writes corrections and advice on each sheet in vermilion, shuhitsu. A calligraphy correspondence course of the company U-CAN returns every submission this way and sends the student models of his or her own name.

Stealing the Skill

In Japanese kitchens and workshops, newcomers are told waza o nusume, steal the skill. The expert does not walk the newcomer through the know-how step by step. He keeps working where the newcomer can watch, and expects the newcomer to master the skill over a long time. Cooks, craftsmen and technicians are among the trades that train this way. Sushi chefs say meshitaki sannen, nigiri hachinen: three years cooking rice, eight years shaping sushi.

In 2023, a debate on social media asked whether the method is outdated. A worker in the shipping industry wrote that those who say it do not teach because they have no theory of teaching.