Glossary of Japanese Words
- Amakudari
- post-retirement employment of bureaucrats in big business.
- Burakumin
- former outcasts.
- Dango
- rigging tenders for construction projects.
- Fujinkai
- women’s circles.
- Gaiatsu
- pressure from outside.
- Gekokujo
- ‘those below overcoming those above’; used for lower-ranking officials taking charge, for insubordination or mass uprisings.
- Gikan
- technical career officials.
- Gundan
- lit., army corps; used to describe Tanaka Kakuei’s group of politicians.
- Habatsu
- political clique.
- Honne
- real intentions or motives, true meaning.
- Ie
- household, House.
- Ijime
- bullying in schools.
- Ikki
- peasant uprisings.
- Jiageya
- land sharks.
- Jimukan
- administrative career officials.
- Jinmyaku
- network of special informal relations.
- Juku
- cramming school.
- Kami
- shinto divinity.
- Keibatsu
- family groupings through marriage.
- Keiretsu
- a group of corporations tied together by interlocking directorates and mutual shareholding.
- Kidotai
- riot police.
- Kisha kurabu
- reporters’ club.
- Koban
- police box.
- Koenkai
- support group for a politician, vote-collectors’ organisation.
- Kogai
- environmental pollution.
- Kokutai
- ‘national essence’.
- Kone
- connections.
- Kyoiku mama
- education mother.
- Minzoku
- people, race.
- Mondai
- problem.
- Naimusho
- the disbanded, once very powerful Home Ministry.
- Nihonjinron
- theory of Japaneseness.
- Nokyo
- agricultural co-operative organisation.
- Omiai
- formal first meeting of the parties to an arranged marriage.
- Paipu
- lit., ‘pipe’; the access politicians have to bureaucrats in connection with pork-barrel projects.
- Sangyo Hokokukai
- pre-war and wartime ‘patriotic industrial associations’ organising workers for the sake of increased production.
- Sarakin
- loan sharks.
- Sarariiman
- salaried worker.
- Sempai
- the senior party, helper, adviser in a hierarchical relationship.
- Shafu
- ‘culture’ that gives a company its identity.
- Shingikai
- deliberation council.
- Shinko shukyo
- newly formed religion.
- Shunto
- spring labour offensive.
- Sokaiya
- stockholders’ meeting fixer, extortionist.
- Tatemae
- pretence, formal explanation, official motives.
- Tenko
- apostasy.
- Wa
- harmony, peace.
- Yakuza
- gangster.
- Zaibatsu
- pre-war corporate groupings around a holding company.
- Zaikai
- the world of big business and finance.
- Zoku
- ‘tribe’, group of politicians specially concerned with a particular policy area.