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根回し nemawashi
Winning the meeting before the meeting.
What does nemawashi mean?
A gardening term for loosening a tree's roots before you move it. At work it means talking to each stakeholder quietly in advance, so the official meeting is a formality. Not scheming — expected.
Example
会議の前に根回ししておいたから大丈夫。
I squared it with everyone before the meeting, so we're fine.
Vibe
Who you can say this to, and how it lands.
Safe to use Fine in ordinary conversation.
The story behind nemawashi
The word belongs to gardening. Before moving a mature tree, you dig around it well in advance and cut back the long outer roots, so that fine new roots grow close to the trunk. Months later the tree can be lifted and replanted without dying. The survival was arranged in advance.
Offices took the image whole. You speak to each person quietly before the meeting, so that by the time everyone is in the room there is nothing left to fight about. Western management books of the 1980s often mistook this for backroom dealing. In practice the rudeness runs the other way: springing a proposal on someone in public forces them to react without thinking.
Get nemawashi in your pocket
根回し is one of 308 words in YABAI, a Japanese culture snack for Android. Every word comes with its meaning, an example sentence, a vibe check and a story like the one above — in 13 languages, read aloud by your device. Paid app: no ads, no sign-up, no subscription.
