A Japanese HR dictionary explains nemawashi with an example. An employee who takes a matter first to the company president, not to the direct superior, is sent back to discuss it with the superior. The superior may feel that his position was ignored, and approval can become harder.
For a meeting with many participants, the dictionary advises informing those concerned beforehand. The decision then goes smoothly.
Yamasaki Toyoko’s novel Shiroi kyotō (The Great White Tower) appeared in the weekly magazine Sunday Mainichi from 1963 to 1965. At its center is the election of a new professor of surgery at a university hospital. The surgeon Zaizen Gorō works behind the scenes, with money and the backing of his father-in-law, to win the votes of the faculty before the ballot. Both camps try everything to win the votes of a third candidate’s supporters.
A film version starring Tamiya Jirō was released in 1966. The novel was also adapted for television in 1967, 1978, 1990, 2003 and 2019.
In early 1868, the army of the new government was advancing on Edo. Katsu Kaishū, who negotiated for the shogunate, sent the retainer Yamaoka Tesshū ahead to Sunpu, today’s Shizuoka. On the ninth day of the third month, Yamaoka met Saigō Takamori, a staff officer of the imperial army.
Katsu and Saigō then met on the 13th and 14th of the month at the Satsuma residence in Mita, Edo. Edo Castle was handed over without a battle.
Before a Diet committee session, members send their questions to the ministries. This is called shitsumon tsūkoku, question notice. Officials then write the minister’s answers. In a 2025 survey by the Cabinet Personnel Bureau, half of the questions arrived two days or more before the session. Nearly all the rest arrived by 6 p.m. the day before.
On average, officials could start writing at 6:32 p.m. and finished the answers at 1:48 a.m.
A shanshan sōkai is a shareholders’ meeting that ends in a short time, with no real discussion and no questions.
A Japanese legal journal writes that shareholders’ meetings were once called shanshan meetings, and that obtaining a valid resolution, free of defects, in a short time was considered desirable. A money magazine adds that at the time, a shanshan meeting was considered a good shareholders’ meeting.
Suriawase (すり合わせ): rubbing together. Comparing several proposals or opinions and adjusting them to one another. A dictionary of everyday expressions adds: adjusting the differences in people’s opinions and perceptions until they share an understanding and a direction.
Jinarashi (地均し): leveling the ground. Preparing in advance so that something goes smoothly, as in iken chōsei no jinarashi o suru, leveling the ground for coordinating opinions.
Before the Japanese cabinet approves a government bill, the bill is first approved inside the governing Liberal Democratic Party. This is the jizen shinsa-sei, the prior review system.
The usual view dates it to a letter of 1962 from Akagi Munenori, chairman of the party’s General Council, to Chief Cabinet Secretary Ōhira Masayoshi. One study argues that it began in 1955, when the party was founded and approval by its Policy Research Council became a condition for a cabinet decision on a bill.
Until 2009, the top civil servants of the ministries, the administrative vice-ministers, met on the day before each cabinet meeting, normally twice a week. They met to settle the items for the cabinet, such as bills, cabinet orders and appointments.
On September 17, 2009, the day after the Democratic Party of Japan government took office, the meeting held its last session, to confirm its own abolition. In 2012, the Abe cabinet renamed an existing liaison meeting of the ministries the Vice-Ministers’ Liaison Meeting.
Decisions of the Japanese cabinet are not made by majority vote. They require unanimity.
When a matter is settled, each minister signs the cabinet document with a kaō, a stylized signature written with a brush, to confirm that all are agreed. This has been the custom since the cabinet system began.
Many large Japanese companies have a jōmukai, a meeting of the managing directors. Unlike the board of directors and the shareholders’ meeting, it is not required by law.
Japanese encyclopedias describe it as the place where matters that the board will formally decide are discussed in substance. There, nearly all important management decisions are made.