The Japanese term for "do it yourself" is nichiyo daiku, which literally means "Sunday carpentry," though the usage of the term suggests an activity more related to recreation and leisure than making improvements or doing repairs.
Despite the Japanese affinity for newfangled gadgetry, the practice of tinkering around the house does not appear to be deeply ingrained. Indeed, the term nichiyo daiku itself only goes back 42 years, according to staff at the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Words. They dated it to "Nichiyo Daiku," the title of a series of seminars on DIY sponsored by the Yomiuri Shimbun in 1961.
Of course, do-it-yourselfers were around before then, even without a newfangled term to describe their activity. Today, according to Free Time Design Association's 2002 "White Paper on Leisure," around 14.5 million people engage in this pastime, or 13 percent of the total population.