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Paper short abstract

This paper examines Japanese jimu—mundane administrative work—as a cultural practice shaping trust and correctness. Focusing on future-dated bank transfers and insider observation, it uses Europe as a comparative device to contrast ex ante control with ex post explainability.

Paper long abstract

Administrative practices are often understood as neutral technical instruments designed to ensure efficiency and accuracy. In this paper, however, the term “administration” does not refer to public administration or state bureaucracy. Rather, it is used to translate the Japanese concept of jimu, which denotes mundane, repetitive, and often undervalued organizational work through which payments, records, and responsibilities are routinely processed in both public and private institutions.

Importantly, jimu has no direct equivalent in English. While it is commonly translated as “administration,” this translation obscures the fact that jimu refers not to governance or managerial decision-making, but to everyday practices that quietly sustain institutional order. This paper treats this difficulty of translation as an analytical entry point for examining how different societies conceptualize and value administrative work.

Challenging conventional assumptions, this study examines administration as a cultural practice through which societies actively design and sustain trust, correctness, and ethical order. Rather than asking which administrative system is more efficient, it asks what societies expect administration to do for them.

The analysis focuses on payment administration as an everyday yet highly institutionalized practice, with particular emphasis on future-dated bank transfers in Japan. By separating the acceptance of a transfer instruction from its execution in time, this practice makes visible layered checks, formal authorization, responsibility attribution, and risk management when funds cannot ultimately be recovered. Drawing on long-term participant observation and direct involvement in designing and operating payment workflows, the Japanese case is treated as an analytically concentrated site where the logic of administration appears in intensified form.

To theorize this case, the paper employs Europe as a comparative device. Drawing on institutional arrangements and documented administrative norms—particularly in Germany and France—it shows that administrative correctness in many European settings is defined less by advance confirmation than by ex post explainability, documentation, and justification.

By foregrounding mundane administrative work, this paper offers a new perspective within Japanese studies and contributes to anthropological and sociological debates on administration, trust, and institutional life.