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.
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.
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.
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.
In May 1984, the publisher Diamond brought out Shippai no honshitsu: Nihongun no soshikironteki kenkyū (The Essence of Failure: An Organizational Study of the Japanese Military). Its six authors include Nonaka Ikujirō.
The description of the 2024 Chūkō Bunko edition says the book brought social science analysis into the study of war history for the first time. It examines six operations as cases of failure: Nomonhan, Midway, Guadalcanal, Imphal, Leyte and Okinawa.
A report commissioned by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry gives the results of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor for Japan. In 2023, 6.1 percent of adults in Japan were starting or running a new business. Of the 44 economies surveyed, only two had a lower rate. The report adds that attitudes toward starting a business remain weak.
On March 27, 2003, the Japan Science and Technology Agency released a trial version of its Failure Knowledge Database. It held about 560 cases of accidents and failures in four fields of science and technology.
The project collected and analyzed such cases and organized their lessons as knowledge to be shared. It was supervised by the engineering professor Hatamura Yōtarō.
On April 24, 2006, Japan Airlines opened its Safety Promotion Center for the safety education of JAL Group employees. It displays remains of the aircraft of Flight 123, which crashed in 1985: the rear pressure bulkhead, the front part of the vertical tail, part of the rear fuselage, and seats.
A saying widely attributed to Honda Sōichirō, the founder of Honda, runs: Seikō wa kyūjūkyū pāsento no shippai ni sasaerareta ippāsento de aru. Success is one percent, supported by ninety-nine percent failure.
The magazine Bungei Shunjū listed it in 2013 among his sayings. No original source for this exact wording has been found.
In October 2014, TV Asahi began broadcasting Shikujiri Sensei: Ore mitai ni naru na!! (Teacher of Blunders: Don’t Become Like Me!!). In each episode, a celebrity who once failed badly teaches a class in a mock school.
The guest teacher explains the lessons drawn from that failure, so that the students can avoid making the same mistake.