A pokayoke is a device or method on the factory floor that prevents mistakes. The word is said to come from poka, a careless error, and yokeru, to avoid. It is used abroad as well.
A factory management magazine credits these methods to Shingo Shigeo, a consultant who improved many factories after the war and who is said to have shaped the origins of the Toyota Production System. It notes that a pokayoke is built cheaply, with ingenuity instead of money.
Majikku katto, Magic Cut, is a patented packaging technology whose trademark is registered by Asahi Kasei Pax. A bag with Magic Cut can be torn open from any point along its edge. The edge carries countless tiny holes, about 0.2 to 0.3 millimeters each.
On September 1, 1989, Mazda launched the Eunos Roadster, an open two-seat sports car. Its developers set the keyword jinba ittai, rider and horse as one, and aimed for a car that responds honestly to the driver.
The engine and transmission came from Mazda’s mass-produced units. They were greatly improved to give a pleasant shift feel.
Honda paid attention to the sound of the closing door on its kei car, the N-ONE. In a statement quoted by the news site Norimono News, Honda recalls the saying ii kuruma wa doa no shimaru oto ga chigau, a good car has a different door-closing sound. It adds that the sound may also be a barometer of quality.
Another Honda statement in the same article says that even in a kei car, the sound of the door is one of the points that affect customer satisfaction, although it cannot be expressed in numbers.
Article 8 of Japan’s Basic Act on the Promotion of Core Manufacturing Technology, passed in 1999, requires the government to report to the Diet every year on what it has done to promote monozukuri kiban gijutsu, core manufacturing technology. Monozukuri means the making of things. Three ministries write the report together: economy, trade and industry, health, labor and welfare, and education. The cabinet approved the latest edition on May 29, 2026.
Japan’s national standards for products are JIS, the Japanese Industrial Standards. The law behind them provides both for setting the standards and for running the JIS mark system.
On July 1, 2019, a revision of that law took full effect. It changed the Japanese name of JIS from Nihon Kōgyō Kikaku to Nihon Sangyō Kikaku, from industrial standards to standards for industry as a whole.
Japanese paper comes in A and B sizes. The standard JIS P 0138 defines a B series of its own, separate from the ISO B series. JIS B0 measures 1,030 by 1,456 millimeters, ISO B0 1,000 by 1,414. In Japan, paper in the B series follows the JIS sizes more commonly than the ISO sizes.
In 1992, voluntary design guidelines for PET bottles were set in Japan, so that bottles could be recycled. They call for transparent bottles. A design certification standard for soft drink PET bottles, cited in a 2026 committee document of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Ministry of the Environment, puts it in a few words: chakushoku wa shinai koto, do not color.
In 2016, a special investigation committee reported on improper fuel economy testing at Mitsubishi Motors. It considered that many points were in common with the causes and background of the company’s earlier recall cover-ups. After those cover-ups, the company had taken measures to prevent a repeat. They neither corrected nor prevented the new problem.
The committee wrote that the earlier prevention measures had been of no use at all in preventing the problem or finding it early. Because the case of 2004 had concerned the improper handling of quality information, the company’s awareness of the problem had stayed limited to quality information.
On October 8, 2017, Kobe Steel announced at a press conference that inspection data for aluminum and copper products had been falsified. Commentators wrote that trust in Japanese manufacturing had been shaken.
On March 4, 2022, Hino Motors disclosed improper engine certification for trucks and buses. A special investigation committee concluded that the cause lay in a company culture in which people could not speak up to those above them.