We love Japan. Vol. 6 19 December 2014 Original article on Results Japan official blog: resultsjp.sblo.jp/article/107294654.html There are only a couple of weeks left this year. Everybody seems spend a good and happy time around New Year and I think I will have a good one. Anyways, ‘The power to end poverty’ is the theme of Results Japan and I think I am a lucky one as I had no big financial problems until now but younger generations (people in their 20’s) are going through hard times and some of them cannot get out from being working poor. Let’s think about ‘happiness’ today. Happiness is a subjective feeling and there is no ‘absolute’ happiness, rather ‘relative’ happiness. Besides, the feeling is pretty much depends on the environment we are in. I would like to talk about people in Edo period who are living in feudalism. Lots of foreigners visited Japan around the end of Edo period and they left their impressions towards Japan and Japanese people in their diaries. Many of them travelled to the other Asian countries at first and then came into Japan. First of all, most of them were amazed the big differences between Japanese people and the other Asians and then, they asked some questions about Japan by themselves. Certainly there are different opinions from one person to the other but one common perception towards Japanese people was ‘They seemed happy though they were poor, and they were proud of themselves’. A famout Amecian zoologist and orientalist Edward S. Morse who discovered the Ōmori shell mound said ‘There were poor people but no poverty was existing in Japan’. The western people found that an formula ‘Poor = unhappy’ didn’t apply to Japanese and the Japanese society at that time was relatively equal, the rich was not that arrogant and the poor had least sense of self-depreciation. In Europe, ‘credit’ was the basic tool of commercial transactions and fraud, robbery and plunder happen very common. Meanwhile, commercial transactions were established based on the trust, most of the people could read, write and mathematics in Japan – these facts made the foreigners amazed. Many people in China use debit card not credit card and mobiles are all pre-paid. Rationalism comes from Europe and America but I personally think Japanese way is more rational. I mean, I think we should have no problems in the commercial transactions is there is trust in a society. There were the classes of warriors, farmers, artisans and tradesmen in Japan at that time but there was no trust class system and anybody who was willing to go to a school for learning. The literacy rate in Europe was about 10% but it was 60 – 70% in Japan at that time and therefore, many European and American thought that it was impossible to colonize Japan. In fact, there was no single dispute for more than 200 years in Edo period which cannot be seen in anywhere in the world. Japanese sword was not a weapon but an art work. There was a trade with China but no diplomatic relations, and the Europeans and Americans tried to getting into Japan by trades after Japan’s opening the country to the world. An interpreter at Treaty of Commerce between the United States and Japan was very impressed by the honesty, diligence and modesty of Japanese and wrote in his diary ‘Those honest and good-natured people would be in a danger of colonization by this unequal Amity. Those facts might give us tips for modern diplomacy and international trade problems such as TPP. (Yousuke Furuyama, Accounting Director)
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 18:11:32 +0000
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