Japan, Risk - understand-culture

Mock Exams

Japanese students preparing for university entrance exams often take mogi shiken, mock exams. The cram school Kawaijuku says that its national Zentō mock exams were taken about 2.735 million times in fiscal 2025, counting every sitting. According to the site Bestjuku, the first sitting of Kawaijuku’s written-answer mock exam in fiscal 2025 had 168,561 takers.

A guide published by a cram school calls the mock exam a place for practice that assumes the real exam. Students work in conditions close to the real exam, get used to the tension and gain practical experience. The result, the guide adds, is only a point along the way.

Surveying the School Trip

Before a Japanese school trip, teachers often make a shitami, a preliminary visit to the destination. A notice from the Ministry of Education of October 2, 1968, asked schools to survey the lodgings, especially emergency exits and dangerous spots, and to plan evacuation and rescue in case of disaster.

A notice of March 31, 1988, followed the Shanghai train accident of that year, which struck students from Kōchi Prefecture. It asked schools to carry out an on-site survey of the route and the means of transport in advance, and to prepare with great care to ensure safety. An audit report of Osaka Prefecture from 2015 notes that the number of people and days for the preliminary visit is left to the principal.

Joint Ventures in Construction

Large construction projects in Japan can be undertaken by a kyōdō kigyōtai, a joint venture of several builders. A document prepared for a working group of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism names risuku bunsan, spreading risk, as a purpose of joint ventures for large projects.

The same document traces the history of the system. In an entry for 1951, it lists the merits of a joint venture: greater lending power, kiken bunsan, the spreading of danger, stronger technical capacity and more experience.

Try It First

The Act on Special Measures for Productivity Improvement took effect on June 6, 2018. Under it, Japan runs the shin gijutsu-tō jisshō seido, a system for testing new technologies in practice. The Cabinet Secretariat describes its purpose as allowing mazu yatte miru, trying it first.

A trial runs with a limited period and a limited number of participants, and the existing regulations do not apply to it. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry explains that the data from the trial is meant to lead to a review of the regulations.

Buckets at Tōkaimura

On September 30, 1999, three workers at the JCO plant in Tōkai, Ibaraki Prefecture, were preparing a small batch of nuclear fuel. They had dissolved uranium in stainless steel buckets and tipped the solution into a precipitation tank, with no proper control of the amount. It became Japan’s first criticality accident. Two of the three workers died.

The approved procedure dissolved the uranium in a dissolution tank. Three years earlier, the company had changed its work procedure without permission from the regulators, so that buckets could be used instead. According to a report from Kyoto University, the plant’s own manual allowed the buckets.

Monju

On December 8, 1995, metallic sodium leaked from the secondary cooling system of Monju, the fast breeder reactor in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, and caught fire. According to the magazine Gendai, its operator at the time, Dōnen, made false reports and repeatedly tried to conceal what had happened. Monju restarted in May 2010. In August of the same year, a device used in fuel handling fell inside the reactor, and Monju stopped again.

In December 2016, a meeting of the ministers responsible for nuclear energy decided that Monju would not restart and would be decommissioned. More than one trillion yen had been spent on it. According to nippon.com, it had operated on only 250 days in 22 years.

A Thousand Times Too Much Catalyst

Shirakawa Hideki won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000. In his own account, he found the method for making a thin film of polyacetylene by chance, because a catalyst a thousand times as concentrated as usual had been used. A newspaper dates the film to 1967, when he was an assistant at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Shirakawa recalled that he had thought it was a failure.

Failure Is the Root of Success

Shippai wa seikō no moto (失敗は成功のもと): failure is the root of success. The Daijisen dictionary, as quoted by the magazine Serai, explains the proverb this way. After a failure, a person reflects on its cause and corrects the method and the weak points, so the failure leads to later success.

A related form, shippai wa seikō no haha, failure is the mother of success, has long been familiar. Serai notes that the simpler form with moto has become the common one.

A Second Chance

In 2006, sai-charenji, the chance to try again, appeared in Japanese government policy. The cabinet’s basic policy on economic and fiscal management and structural reform of July 7, 2006, included a section on support for second chances. On December 25, 2006, the Council for a Society of Diverse Opportunities adopted a comprehensive plan to support second chances, the Sai-charenji shien sōgō puran.

A written government answer to the Diet described the idea behind it. Each citizen should be able to use his or her abilities fully, effort should be rewarded, and society should be fair.

Personal Guarantees

On December 5, 2013, a study group published guidelines on keieisha hoshō, personal guarantees given by business owners for their companies’ loans. The Japanese Bankers Association and the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry were behind them. The guidelines have applied since February 1, 2014.

The Small and Medium Enterprise Agency describes the background. Personal guarantees can help to discipline management and to ease financing. They have also been pointed out as a factor that keeps owners from bold expansion, from restructuring early and from handing the business on smoothly.