Standard Form Archives - understand-culture

Group Action

Students of Nippon Sport Science University perform shūdan kōdō, group action, at the university’s physical education demonstration. Long lines of students march, turn and pass through one another’s lines. TV Tokyo explains that a diagonal crossing needs exact spacing, stride and timing, or the performers collide. In one show in Abashiri, reported by the Hokkaido Shimbun, 103 students took part.

Japanese Wikipedia credits Kiyohara Nobuhiko, a professor emeritus of the university, with researching and developing it. The students are volunteers and train three days a week for five months. According to TV Tokyo, the practice reportedly began in the university’s dormitories as a way to learn omoiyari, consideration for others.

Forms in Judo

In judo, kata are set forms practiced in two roles, tori and uke, and the Kōdōkan asks that both roles be performed. The Kōdōkan writes that kata are something every holder of a dan grade should master, and that they are an important condition in the standards for promotion. A Nippon Budokan guide to judo lists the nage no kata, the forms of throwing, for the second dan.

Predicting Danger

In kiken yochi kunren, hazard prediction training, a small group talks through the dangers hidden in a workplace or a task, using illustrated sheets or the work itself. The Japan Industrial Safety and Health Association describes how it ends. The group confirms the danger points and key actions by pointing and calling them out, and solves the problem before work begins.

The association presents the training together with its zero-accident campaign, which began in 1973 with the support of the Ministry of Labour. The campaign’s final goal is zero accidents and zero illness.

Radio Calisthenics

In November 1928, rajio taisō, radio calisthenics, went on the air for the first time. The postal life insurance bureau set it up with the national broadcaster and the Ministry of Education after it was proposed as a project to mark the enthronement of Emperor Shōwa. Its first form was named Radio Calisthenics No. 1.

The Vocabulary of Improvement

Kaizen (改善): improvement. The Daijisen dictionary defines it as correcting what is bad and making it better. It adds that the word is known around the world as a symbol of Toyota’s production system.

Yokoten (横展開): horizontal deployment. A business glossary defines it as taking a case that succeeded in one department or business, with the know-how and technology gained from it, and applying it to other departments or fields.

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.

Jishuken

Jishuken, the voluntary study group on the Toyota Production System, began inside Toyota. Managers from manufacturing, production control and production engineering found problems on the shop floor in a single day, pointed them out to the supervisors, and then worked with the floor every week on improvements.

Because the results were large, the activity spread to suppliers. Today it is mainly joint study among suppliers.

Seven Minutes

At Tokyo Station, a Shinkansen train is cleaned in just seven minutes. As a rule, a team of 23 workers takes charge of one train. In that time they line up the seats, collect the trash, wipe the windows and tables, and clean the cabins, the decks, the toilets and the washbasins.

The work became known as the sebun minittsu mirakuru, the seven-minute miracle.

Quality Circles

In April 1962, the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers launched a magazine for the factory floor, Genba to QC. In its first issue, Ishikawa Kaoru introduced the QC circle, a small group in one workplace that carries out quality control on its own initiative.

The definition describes managing and improving the workplace continuously, with everyone taking part.

Pointing and Calling

Japanese railway workers point at a signal and call out what they see. The practice, shisa koshō, began with steam locomotive drivers of Japanese National Railways who checked signals this way.

In 1994, the Railway Technical Research Institute tested it. Without pointing or calling, the error rate was 2.38 percent. With both, it was 0.38 percent, about one sixth.