The way of the warrior
I was in Japan few days back for my MIT bootcamp. You can say that as a society they’ve evolved better than any other in the world. People respect each other. Hello and thank you are the most common words. Even more common are smiling faces and people acknowledging people passing by. I’d say Japanese are probably the fittest in the world. The traditional food is bland but healthy, soon to be destroyed by the likes of McDonald and KFCs of the world. People wear nice clothes and if you don’t, you automatically feel out of place. Just being in the country can teach you a lot.
I was staying in a hotel In Tokyo, which is one of the biggest cities in Japan. In India, I would just check out, leaving my room as it is. But not here. When I left the hotel, I made sure I cleaned up the room, made the bed and left a thank you note for the hotel staff. I would never do that in India. I didn’t do that when I was in the US or when I was in Saudi or Indonesia. What was so different here in Japan? Read on.
The economic slowdown and the enormous foreign debt ( Japan has the highest debt in the world) comes as a surprise when you see how advanced this country is. The ageing population ins’t making things any better. Japan remained a closed country for a very long time, which allowed it to grow fast but also created problems which they face now. Almost like the Galapagos island. Be it loosened immigration rules to accept foreign guest workers to offset worker shortage or be it further pushing the retirement age to well over 70, the crisis are far from over in Japan.
This the best of Japan, we’ll ever witness. The Japan of the future will change, it makes me sad. The culture, the people, the humility and the society, it’s all going to change if Japan has to survive. The Japan we see today was built by resilient warriors, but the warriors have grown old and weary now. The fierceness in the glory days has left an unsurmountable debt which the young cubs don’t know how to get rid of. Japan also faces issues of global warming which will take only a few 100 years to remove the country from the map of the world.
In the coming years, Japan will continue to crumble as countries like china and India and Russia rise to the occasion, perhaps one day to rise again!
In Japan, they have a code of honour called “Bushido”, which means “the way of the warrior”. People live and die with honour! I don’t know what dying with honour feels like but I sure know what living with honour feels like, all because of this amazing country!
ありがとう日本
Presales Cloud Solution Specialist- Microsoft Azure !!! Microsoft Azure and AWS Certified, Cyber Security
5 年Nicely explained.
MS Logistics and Supply Chain Management
5 年Very nice explanation Sir. Its all the fact about Japan what u wrote. It is beautiful and honoured culture of Japan.
Contributor to bottom-line thru SCM efficiencies with creative approach in strategy, planning or execution of your supply chain. Delivering P&L & Business Excellence.
5 年A lot to learn from them. The holocaust gave them a bitter shock and how brilliantly they rose to development. Just keep praising and keep learning from them. Japan is awesome.
Though Japan has won in many areas, due to their extreme workaholic nature, it is suffering in few like younger population as you cited. It seems marriages are on a decline there and so are offsprings. If this is really true and continues, soon, like some Nordic countries, Japan may depend on imported human capital too to sustain the pace with which where it has reached today.
IR, Fundraise, Int BD & Partnership, Investor
5 年Great observation, very well written, just to add i think they are extremely disciplined, healthy & fit, hardworking but also a bit dogmatic, adhering to hierarchy etc...