Before trading with a new partner, a Japanese company can order a kigyō shin’yō chōsa, a corporate credit investigation. Tokyo Shoko Research, one of the country’s credit agencies, says the investigation is made for new transactions, for raising or lowering a partner’s credit limit, and for deciding whether to keep trading.
In the agency’s words, it gathers material for judging “how far to proceed with the transaction.” Tokyo Shoko Research dates its founding to 1892.
An applicant to the Kasumigaseki Country Club is recommended by two members. According to a report in Gendai Business, these two sponsors carry a heavy responsibility. The club takes its time to judge the applicant’s character.
Without passing the screening, the report says, no one can join, even with 100 million yen. After admission is decided, the new member plays a round of golf with a director of the club.
In Kurosawa Akira’s film Shichinin no samurai (Seven Samurai), released by Toho on April 26, 1954, farmers hire samurai to defend their village against bandits. At first, the frightened villagers stay in their houses and do not come out.
Then Kikuchiyo, who has joined the seven, beats the village’s wooden alarm board. Thinking the bandits have come, the villagers rush out of their houses and beg the samurai for help. Kikuchiyo also brings out armor and swords that the villagers had taken by hunting down fleeing samurai.
Narenareshii (馴れ馴れしい): very familiar. The Daijisen dictionary also gives a second sense: rude, too unrestrained.
Shitashiki naka ni mo reigi ari (親しき仲にも礼儀あり): even between close friends, there is courtesy. However close the relationship, some courtesy must still be kept.
In Natsume Sōseki’s novel Kokoro, the narrator tells Sensei that he wants to learn from Sensei’s past. Sensei presses him: Anata wa hontō ni majime nan desu ka. “Are you really serious?” His past, he says, has taught him to doubt people, and he doubts the narrator too. But before he dies, he wants to trust another person, even just one.
He then agrees to tell the narrator his whole past. In his testament, he gives the reason: the narrator was serious and wanted a living lesson from life itself. Sensei writes that he is now breaking open his own heart to pour its blood on the narrator’s face.
Kuchi ga katai (口が堅い): the mouth is hard. Not telling others what should not be told. The Daijisen dictionary gives the example kuchi ga katai otoko da kara shin’yō dekiru, he keeps things to himself, so he can be trusted.
Kuchi ga karui (口が軽い): the mouth is light. Talkative, and saying even what should not be said.
Ofureko (オフレコ): off the record. In a press conference or interview, an agreement not to record or publish certain remarks.
In July 2017, the Financial Services Agency published a report on rotating audit firms. It looked at 96 of the TOPIX 100 companies that had also been in the index in 2007. Over the ten years to 2016, 91 of them, 95 percent, had kept the same audit firm. Five had changed.
Agency materials of 2022 described the same pattern: audit contracts had become fixed, and companies were not changing audit firms of their own accord.
In the first half of 2026, Tokyo Shoko Research counted 91 changes of auditor. The most common reason given, in 42 cases, was the length of the audit tenure itself.
On November 1, 2024, a law on fair dealings with freelancers came into force in Japan. A client must now state the fee and the payment date in writing or by email.
In a survey before the law took effect, reported by the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training, 44.6 percent of freelancers said that terms had at some point not been stated to them. In construction, the share was 72.7 percent. Among clients, 17.4 percent said that they had not stated terms, and 41.7 percent in construction.
The business site Gentosha Gold Online summarizes the view that the legal scholar Kawashima Takeyoshi set out in Nihonjin no hō-ishiki (The Legal Consciousness of the Japanese). The Japanese, in this view, tend to treat laws and contracts as tatemae, a mere front, and do not always give them much weight. When trouble actually arises, they expect to solve it through talks and personal relationships.
On October 1, 2020, a system failure stopped trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange for the whole day. At 4:30 in the afternoon, its president, Miyahara Kōichirō, held a press conference with the group’s chief information officer, who answered the technical questions.
Asked whether responsibility would be discussed with Fujitsu, which had supplied the equipment, Miyahara said that the responsibility as market operator lay entirely with the exchange. He resigned at his own wish at the end of November.
The later investigation report found that errors in a product manual were the responsibility of Fujitsu, which had written it.