The Way of the Warrior and Corporate Management

Hiroshi Okuda Chairman, Nippon Keidanren

Good fortune recently presented me with the opportunity write a book, Living the Way of the Warrior, with judo legend Yasuhiro Yamashita. What occasioned the project was a request from Yamashita for ideas for promoting judo internationally. Yamashita was especially interested in sharing distinctive elements of the Japanese spirit through judo. He mentioned by way of example the famous essay that Inazo Nitobe published in 1905 in English as Bushido: The Soul of Japan.

I suggested that we would also find valuable material in the 1942 novel Sanshiro Sugata. That Japanese bestseller was a fictionalized account of the origins of modern judo, and it was the basis for the first movie by Akira Kurosawa. Yamashita liked the idea, and we were off and running. We would draw on material from Sanshiro Sugata to affirm anew the best elements of the Japanese spirit, as evoked in Nitobe's Bushido. The main title of the Nitobe book, by the way, means the way of the warrior.

Jigoro Kano synthesized judo from different schools of jujitsu in the 1880s, and the sport was still in its formative years when Bushido appeared. The way of the warrior still remained an ideal for Japanese. It had a formal ethical code of seven virtues, the first of which was integrity. The warrior should be utterly upright and should eschew any kind of cowardly act. Second among the bushido virtues was courage, and third was compassion. The other virtues were respect, honesty, honor, and loyalty.

Bushido's seven virtues furnished a marvelous spiritual framework that visibly shaped people's outlook and behavior in Japan. Everything changed, however, after the devastating defeat in World War II and through the decades of economic growth that followed. The spiritual climate that permeates Japanese society today is a far cry from the way of the warrior: Money makes anything possible, and all's fair in the pursuit of profit, as long as it's not exactly illegal.

Companies that succumb to Japan's new morality will not earn people's respect or empathy. They will not even survive in the long term. We executives need to examine ourselves closely and honestly. We need to ask ourselves if our comments are not discomforting customers, if we are not embarrassing our employees. That spirit of reflection is the fountainhead of corporate ethics and of corporate social responsibility. It is absolutely essential to lasting growth and vitality for any company.