Each morning, I watch the news on television. Occasionally I am confronted with a case such as “Death by child abuse; mother’s common-law husband arrested.” At such times, I pray for the soul of the child, saying, “You poor baby, I’m so sorry.” This sorrow is invariably accompanied by an overwhelming sense of resentment toward the perpetrator, whom I have never met. Later, after having arrived at work, I find myself in a morning meeting emphatically saying, “Let’s use our business activities to contribute something meaningful to society.” In a seemingly sudden change in character, however, when a securities company approaches me, saying, “We’ve got this company whose stock is about to go skyward, are you interested?” I totally lean into it, asking, “Yeah, tell me about it.” Am I a good man, or just a run-of-the-mill person?

I serve on the board of a social welfare corporation that operates a children’s home and an infant care facility. In the board meetings, we discuss the challenges and issues that arise from innocent infants and juveniles being forced to cohabitate without the affection of a loving parental presence and wonder if there isn’t a way to improve this situation. However, on the same day, as I leave work, I find myself selfishly speeding or cutting off other drivers because I’m in a hurry to get to an appointment or something. Even though I haven’t committed any crimes, I frequently think back and feel that I have wronged other people. Am I a saint? Am I evil? I’m really conflicted.

If I am not a particularly unusual person, then we human beings are both good and evil. We are both sacred and vulgar.

There are instances when a person who was in the spotlight in some area and regarded by the public as respectable is exposed by the media for some misdeed in the past. This results in a complete change in the public perception of this person. It’s as if, beneath the “good person” mask they were wearing, they were actually an evil person. But that’s not reality; it’s just that people are the product of an amalgamation of various elements, both good and evil, sacred and vulgar. It is common for us to view an individual from only one perspective. If we change the angle from which we look at that person, different aspects become evident to us.

Once we become aware of this, we realize that being overly critical in our evaluations of others is somewhat naïve. It would be different if we were able to see people in a more comprehensive way…

This may seem a bit of a departure, but last year the Tokyo Olympics corruption case made headlines. Guilt or innocence has yet to be determined, but many arrests have been made. Following the extensive media coverage, many people probably have the impression that everyone involved is evil. But something else occurred to me. I wondered how I would have conducted myself had I been an employee of a large company involved in the bribery. I am not at all confident that I would have acted appropriately. Many of those arrested in the alleged bribery are from the same generation as me. It is sobering to consider that if I had been working for a major advertising agency, I might have found myself directly involved under someone’s orders. Can a businessperson, who is not involved in legal matters on a daily basis, make the right choice, refuse to be influenced by the company’s logic, and stand up and say, “I am not interested in being involved in a crime, so I will quit even though I will no longer have an income?”

(I’m veering slightly off topic here, but this case is also about corporate governance. Many of the cases involve publicly traded companies, and if governance had been functioning properly within these organizations, the party offering the bribery would have ended up saying, “I’m sorry, I’m the head of sales, and while I want to pay, our legal department won’t permit it.” However, the press has focused exclusively on individuals in the form of a human-interest story, and no one has alluded to these more controversial issues.)

In the end, people are the integration of good and evil, sacred and vulgar—each of these elements affected not only by thoughts and will, but also by environment and circumstance, as well as by good and bad fortune. Then, a very small part of the individual is brought into stark relief and reflected in the eyes of others. Unfortunately, we live in a world where that small portion of the individual becomes the basis for our entire evaluation of them.

I believe God’s message to us is to gradually nurture the good and holy aspects within ourselves, recognizing that it is futile to cling to things beyond our control.

Hirotaka Shimizu
Chairman and CEO
Kamakura Shinsho, Ltd.