Kaizen, or ooh, those inscrutable Japanese

There was an article in the New York Times the other day about improving yourself. I'm always looking to improve myself so I read it. Hmm, hmm, hmm, ok not bad. Then I hit upon this part:

She recommends practicing a Japanese technique called kaizen, which calls for tiny, continuous improvements. “Whenever we initiate change, even a positive one, we activate fear in our emotional brain,” Ms. Ryan notes in her book. “If the fear is big enough, the fight-or-flight response will go off and we’ll run from what we’re trying to do. The small steps in kaizen don’t set off fight or flight, but rather keep us in the thinking brain, where we have access to our creativity and playfulness.”

Ooh, yet another magical Japanese philosophy for a higher form of Being. Right.

So, let's look at that work kaizen. In kanji it's 改善: the 改　part means to change, improve, to renew; the 善 means good. So put together it means to improve for the better. That part is accurate. But that's really all there is. It is not some mysterious and sage sounding Big Philosophy, and the word itself does not imply that you improve yourself little by little. If you look at the English Wikipedia entry for kaizen you will see there are few, if any, sources cited at all.

Just ask a Japanese person if they are practicing the Kaizen Method, and they are likely to look at you totally puzzled.

There is, however, some sort of business consulting group that calls itself the Kaizen Institute, which is based in Zug, Switzerland of all places. What hey! I live less than 30 minutes from there. Their web site cites several examples of companies using KAIZEN Philosophies. Of course companies like Toyota are interested in implementing improvements to their products and methods. Isn't every decent company? Aren't we all interested in some way or another in improving ourselves, unless we've given up or are dead?

Anyway, the point of this is: next time someone tells you there is some mysterious Japanese Method or Philosophy, take it with a big grain of salt. (I'll talk about that Zen thing some time too.)

Some other words using 改める

• 改める　(aratameru) - to improve, renew, redo.
• 改良　(kairyou) - to improve and make good
• 改築　(kaichiku) - to renovate a building, apartment etc.

Comments

[yoko]

I'm looking forward to hearing your rant about the usage of the word Zen- it'll be more coherent than I what I can put together. Misuse of that word is one of my pet peeves-- grr.

[Thomas J. Webb]

Before learning Japanese, I was exposed to the word kaizen in a business context (I often hear it pronounced kizan, ick), but once I looked the word up in a Japanese dictionary, I found it to be a useful word. Example (excuse my drunk caveman Japanese...):

自分を改善するのは趣味です！例えば、日本語を毎日練習しています。

Incidentally, the corporate technique of kaizen originated among American businessmen. Since it caught on in Japan, it took on a Japanese name.

The most succinct way to put the Zen thing I could think - people are too lazy to remember and use words correctly, so a wide variety of Japanese words are all expressed as only one English word, Zen. So the English Zen is an amorphous mass of a word that could mean anything from zazen to nehan to ... whatever (I admit to having a poor Japanese Zen Buddhism vocabulary, but I am a fan of koans)

[Athena]

Kaizen has the same meaning in chinese as the japanese Kanji characters. The nuance with that is that you wouldn't say it unless you're basically already implying that the person wasn't "shan" (mandarin) to begin with. It would link back to Chinese Confucian philosophy (stemming from Mencius) that people are generally good.

It doesn't really mark a way of changing, as it does a moment of change, as it's usually used in the past tense or the future: "S/he wants to change [to become good]"/"S/he has changed [to become good]."

Interesting to see those words travel from Chinese contexts, to Japanese ones, and then to the NYT. It's also interesting that the Japanese use of the words follow the meanings closely, but have completely recontextualized them.