Five Intentional Walks

On August 16, 1992, at Kōshien, Meitoku Gijuku beat Seiryō 3 to 2. Meitoku walked Seiryō’s batter Matsui Hideki intentionally in all five of his plate appearances. Megaphones and other objects were thrown from the stands, and the game was stopped for a time. When Meitoku’s school song was played after the game, the crowd chanted kaere, go home.

Meitoku’s manager, Mabuchi Shirō, faced fierce public criticism. After the game, Seiryō’s manager, Yamashita Tomoshige, praised Matsui for taking the twenty pitches without lunging at them or glaring at the pitcher.

Paid Leave and Colleagues

From October to November 2010, the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training surveyed regular employees aged 20 to 59 about taking paid leave. It received 2,071 valid answers and published the results in April 2011.

Among the reasons for holding back from taking leave, 60.2 percent agreed with Yasumu to shokuba no hoka no hito ni meiwaku ni naru kara. Taking time off would cause trouble for others at work.

The Yamato’s Last Sortie

After American forces landed on Okinawa on April 1, 1945, the Japanese navy sent the battleship Yamato on a special attack operation to Okinawa. Rear Admiral Kami Shigetoku proposed it. The commander of the Combined Fleet, Toyoda Soemu, approved it. The vice chief of the Naval General Staff agreed, and the Chief of the Naval General Staff, Oikawa Koshirō, gave tacit consent. Itō Seiichi, who commanded the Second Fleet, strongly opposed it. In the end, he accepted it.

In “Kūki” no kenkyū (A Study of “Air”), the critic Yamamoto Shichihei used the sortie as his example. Everyone who called it reckless, he wrote, had detailed data and clear grounds. The force that made the final decision, and left no other choice, was the kūki, the air, and nothing else.

The Stake That Sticks Out

Deru kui wa utareru (出る杭は打たれる): the stake that sticks out gets hammered. An article on the dictionary site JapanKnowledge explains it: a person with talent who stands out, or a person who acts presumptuously, tends to be resented or criticized by others.

The proverb appears in the Hōjō godaiki of 1641, in older spelling. A later form, deru kugi wa utareru, uses kugi, nail, in place of kui, stake.

Inferring the Wishes of Others

Sontaku (忖度) means to infer what is in another person’s mind. In 2017, it shared the grand prize of the annual buzzword award, the Shingo Ryūkōgo Taishō, with insuta-bae, looking good on Instagram.

For the award, the word stood for the Moritomo and Kake Gakuen issues, in which officials were said to have anticipated the wishes of the prime minister’s office. Testifying in the Diet, the chairman of the Moritomo Gakuen school operator said: Sontaku shita no deshō. They probably showed sontaku. The prize was accepted by the president of a company that sold sontaku manjū, sweet buns.

Not Causing Trouble for Others

The education company Benesse asked mothers what kind of person they hoped their child would become. In Japan, 71 percent answered hito ni meiwaku o kakenai hito, a person who does not cause trouble for others. Newsweek Japan reported the figure in 2019 but did not give the year of the survey.

A Benesse report of 2018 on the lives of young children describes the wish that a child should not cause trouble for others as a traditional value that parents still hold.

Resignation Agencies

A taishoku daikō, a resignation agency, handles an employee’s resignation on the employee’s behalf. The largest in the industry is Momuri. Its operator, Albatross, was founded in February 2022.

In a survey by Tokyo Shoko Research in June 2025, 7.2 percent of companies said that a resignation agency had contacted them. Among large companies, the share was 15.7 percent.

Self-Restraint

In April 2020, the government declared a state of emergency over COVID-19 for seven prefectures, among them Tokyo, Osaka and Hyogo. Residents were asked to refrain from going out. For these requests there were basically no penalties. Facilities asked to close could be named publicly.

On December 1, 2020, the grand prize of the New Words and Buzzwords Awards went to san-mitsu, the three Cs: closed spaces, crowded places and close contact.

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