In Japan, shampoo bottles carry small notches. They were added so that shampoo and conditioner bottles, which look alike, can be told apart by touch, for example by visually impaired people or by anyone washing their hair with eyes closed.
The notches were put into practical use in 1991. Other companies in the industry were then asked to adopt them.
Under Article 16 of Japan’s Maternal and Child Health Act, a municipality must give a boshi kenkō techō, a maternal and child health handbook, to every woman who notifies it of a pregnancy. Each time she has a health check or receives guidance from a doctor, dentist, midwife or public health nurse, the necessary entries must be made in the handbook.
The handbook began in 1942 as a handbook for expectant and nursing mothers. It became the mother and child handbook in 1948 and took its present name in 1966.
Article 66 of Japan’s Industrial Safety and Health Act requires employers to have a doctor examine their workers. The ordinance under the act sets the rhythm. Workers employed on a continuing basis must receive a periodic health examination once within every year.
In 1954, the National Tokyo First Hospital opened ningen dokku, the human dry dock. It was a new system of health examination for the early detection of adult diseases.
Japan laid its first tactile paving blocks, tenji burokku, in 1967. Over about twenty years, they spread to railways, roads and public buildings. Blocks laid in those years came in many shapes and sizes.
In 2001, the standard JIS T 9251 unified the shape and size of their raised dots and bars.
Toyama’s medicine sellers leave a box of household medicines with a family. A salesperson visits every six months to a year and collects payment only for the medicines that were used. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes this as the traditional Toyama method, sen’yō kōri , use first and profit after.
The seller keeps a kakebachō , a customer ledger. A magazine of JR West calls it detailed data for managing customers. The magazine Waraku writes that the sellers won the trust and confidence of their customers.
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.
Since October 2015, Japanese hospitals have investigated medical accidents under the iryō jiko chōsa seido, the medical accident investigation system. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare says the system aims to prevent recurrence and secure the safety of medical care. A national support center collects and analyzes the hospitals’ investigations.
Fukushima Prefecture’s guide to the system adds that it is “not intended to pursue the responsibility of individuals.”
In July 2005, a painless injection needle went on sale to hospitals in Japan. In 2000, the medical equipment maker Terumo had brought the drawing of a needle that is thick at the base and thinner toward the tip to Okano Kōgyō, a company known for its metal-pressing technology. The tip of the needle, the Nanopass 33, is 0.20 millimeters wide.
The company’s president, Okano Masayuki, was born in Sumida in 1933. The business weekly Tōyō Keizai writes that it takes at least 20 years to become a craftsman of fukashibori, deep drawing, which shapes a flat sheet of metal into a box or a tube through many steps.
In the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, clinics reported new cases to public health centers by fax. On May 15, 2020, the government began trial operation of HER-SYS, a system for reporting them electronically. By September 10, 2020, all 155 local governments with public health centers were using it.
The government’s 2021 white paper on information and communications also noted that each ministry had built its own vertically divided office network.
Gan kokuchi means telling patients that they have cancer. An article in Gendai Business says that it used to be normal in Japan to tell the family the name of the disease and to hide the facts from the patient. Cancer notification in Japan, it says, began in the 1990s.
A study at Kanazawa University Hospital found that in 1988, most doctors in gastroenterology did not tell patients even about early-stage cancer. By 1996, about 70 percent disclosed early-stage cancer, and by 2005 disclosure was almost complete.