If you were curious about the term
kaizen and how it might be misconstrued, deconstrued and reconstrued, check out
http://www.homejapan.com/2009/03/debunked-kaizen. An impressive portrait of language in use and mislabeling an idea so that it matches our preconceived notions. In this case, we
want the Japanese to have these powerful and simple philosophical concepts that can be reduced to a single phrase (other examples: zen and wa), but sometimes it's just a word that means "improvement" and nothing more.