The title of this article is a search term that recently hit The Lean Thinker site. It’s an interesting question—and interesting that it gets asked.

“Kaizen” is now an English word—it’s in the OED—and defined as such: “Noun. A Japanese business philosophy of continuous improvement of working practices, personal efficiency, etc. Origin. Japanese, literally ‘improvement.’”

Let’s talk a bit about that “Japanese, literally ‘improvement’” bit.

Jon Miller of the Kaizen Institute was raised in Japan and offers up this nice breakdown of the meaning behind the meaning. As he explains:

• Kai = Change. The word is made from two characters, “self” and the picture “to whip.” You can see the stripes across the poor fellow’s back. So change is something you do to yourself.
• Zen = Good. In this case a sacrificial lamb, which means “righteous,” is offered between two characters for “word.” In this case “word” means clear and precise speech. So good sacrifice with precise speech all around it is “good.” The Zen character we are using is a simplified version. Also, Zen in this case is not the same character as Zen Buddhism.
• Kaizen = Change for the better. Or in our case, whip yourself so that you can make a nice sacrifice and always have clear speech and thoughts surrounding you.

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