創業者ブログ

The death of a friend
(Dec. 4, 2006)

One of my friends died at 70. When he was a college student, he said he wanted to be a novelist. We used to spend the whole night talking about literature. We boarded at the second floor of a large farm house close to the Ginkaku-ji Temple. Sometimes, we used to take a stroll along a walking trail, which is known as the "philosopher's pathway." We both failed the entrance exam to Kyoto University. He was a student of Ryukoku University, and I was a student of Doshisha University. Our courses of life were quite different. He was destined to be a Buddhist monk. I later became a business person. However, we were both seriously interested in the meaning of life. We talked a lot about the purpose of life. We were still young. We had no money, no social statuses, and no girl friends. That is to say, we had almost nothing. It was around 1955. The poverty and chaos of postwar still remained in Japan.

Since then, our 50 years of life have flashed by. He completed his life as a Buddhist monk. I am still managing a small company.

As a CEO, I make a speech to the members of my company every morning. Most of the speeches are concerned about how to live - how to survive and enjoy ourselves in this ocean of agony. This topic is almost the same as that I talked with that friend 50 years ago.

2600 years ago, Buddha said that the life is an agony. TOKUGAWA Ieyasu said that living the life is like going along a long winding way with a heavy load on shoulders. HAYASHI Fumiko said that the life of beautiful flowers cannot last so long, the life is full with pains. ISHIKAWA Takuboku wrote a Tanka, "work after work / life never be well / I stare at my hands." Honen, Shin-ran, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, every one talked about the agony of the life. They　all tried to find the way to overcome this agony.

I believe that the life of agonies can be changed to the life of happiness and joy. What matters here is how to take the life. Once you take the life as an opportunity to be humble and grateful for the others' visible and invisible help, you can change your life. We should not be troubled with superficial and trivial things. Rather, we should be concerned only with the essential things of the life.

The ultimate purpose of the life is to survive and obtain the eternal happiness. We were born here in this world. This is, in itself, a miracle. Thus, we should keep it in mind how our given lives are precious. This way of thinking led me to JSB's basic business principle: good for us, customers, and the community. We should always render thanks for everything. If you start this thank-you life, you will gain the confidence to be able to survive in this life of agonies.

The death of him reminds me of the molten passion I had in my younger days.

↓Please support this blog at BlogRanking! Please click here!↓