A Compass To Fulfillment – Kazuo Inamori

Despite the fact that I spoke very little English, I decided to fly to the United States and meet with executives at companies I hoped would purchase Kyocera’s products. The day before I leftJapan for my first visit I remember going to a friend’s house to learn how to use Western-style toilets, which were very rare in Japan.

This was during the era when the exchange rate was 360 yen to the U.S. dollar and few Japanese traveled overseas. I stayed in the United States for about a month and tried to sell Kyocera5s products to one company after another without much success. More often than not I was turned away at the door before I had a chance to negotiate. In this strange land with its bewildering culture and customs, it looked like all I would get for my e任orts was rejection and frustration. My desperation and the hardship of that visit remain a vivid memory.

But I stuck with it, and as a result of perseverance and repeated negotiations, I began to see results and the number of deals Kyocera secured with foreign firms increased. During my business trip to the United States, I noticed that in foreign countries and particularly in the United States people often used the word reasonable when considering a decision. Moreover, unlike Japan, the standard by which Americans judged reasonableness was not predicated on social custom or common practice but their own personal principles and value systems.

They had a solid philosophy and criteria for judgment that were based on their beliefs. I found this extremely refreshing and stimulating. The difference between the American understanding of rea¬ sonableness and Japan’s, of course, arose from a fundamental Tbinkbig 讥Truths and Principles difference in our cultures that is exemplified by the dissimilar¬ ity between the American and Japanese legal systems. Japanese law is based on the German model, which is basically statutory law.

Legal decisions are made on the basis of legal text, and consequently the law can become quite dogmatic. The American system, in contrast, is based on precedent, which means that decisions are not as restricted by written statutes and can be adjusted to suit each individual case. There is a strong tendency in the American legal system for those involved to judge a case on the basis of personal good sense and decide if something is just or fair.

In countries that culturally value the concept of living one’s life according to a personal philosophy, my approach of clearly identifying guiding principles is highly effective.

I am delighted that A Compass to Fulfillment is being published in English. This book is an exploration of the way people should think and live as human beings. I sincerely hope that the philosophy expressed here will transcend the barriers of ethnicity, language, culture, and religion and communicate on a universal level. Since its publication in 2004, the Japanese edition of A Com¬ pass to Fulfillment has become a bestseller in Japan, with over 600,000 copies sold.

It also has been published in China, nd Korea, as well as in Russia and Lithuania, and the book is being translated into Spanish and Portuguese. The let¬ ters sent to me by people from other countries expressing their support for my philosophy are a clear indication that the per¬ spective presented in this book is relevant to other cultures, not just to Japan. I am very fortunate to have been able to establish two com¬ panies, Kyocera and KDDI, both of which are listed in the vn Introduction Fortune 500.

During the seven decades of my life, I have become strongly convinced that the human mind cannot only change the life of the individual, but it also can have a broad and significant impact on society. I believe that the issues currently confronting the human race, includingenvironmentaldestruction,terrorism,andinternational disputes, are caused by evil thoughts that each individual harbors in his or her mind. When I say “evil thoughts,” I am referring to the selfish, unbounded greed that has been the driving force behind the worrisome trajectory of our current civilization.

Modern civilization developed rapidly after the onset of the Industrial Revolution about 250 years ago. Although it arose partially from human curiosity and the search for truth, it also was propelled by insatiable greed and egotism: the human desire to be richer. Driven by the engine of greed, humankind mas¬ tered wisdom, advanced scientific technology, and developed the economy. Now, however, we are facing the consequences of our desire for excess: environmental destruction, depleted energy re¬ sources, terrorism, and conflict. Despite the fallout of our actions, people continue to seek even greater wealth and spend their lives desperately trying to fulfill their every desire.

Can we go on like this? I believe that we can’t. If the human race is to survive, we must change the human mind, the driving force of civilization, and adopt a different attitude as the standard for our way of living. The financial crisis sparked by the collapse of subprime loans in the United States in 2008 is sweeping across the world. Fi¬ nancial markets are in a state of chaos, and that is beginning to have a serious impact on economies worldwide.

Although the immediate cause was excessive mismanagement of financial derivative products, the root cause was the headlong push of capitalism to maximize profit and satisfy people’s greed.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 144c1916662a4c9b
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 102,102,994 bytes (97.373 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 156
• Language: English (en)

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• Total Words: 45,597
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