I explained in the previous column that Kaizen was not necessary to be translated into other languages than Japanese. And I showed anther example of Tsunami which is not necessary to be translated, either.

Japan has suffered from devastating disasters of very big sea-water waves caused by big earth quakes. The waves have been called Tsunami in Japanese. ‘Tsu’ literally means a harbor and ‘Nami’ literally means sea waves. Then, combining the two words, we have Tsunami, which means ‘harbor sea waves’.

And many Tsunami researchers had published reports on Tsunami in English. This fact caused Tsunami to be an international word.