英語難民と英語貴族
2020.1.20
商人道と詐欺：利他をすると騙される？英語で！
昨日の商人道と詐欺：利他をすると騙される？ですが、私は次のような英文にしてみました。いかがでしょうか？
The most important value to be maintained as a merchant
Last time, I spoke something about the Hero and Villain, the infamous merchant image like “The Merchant of Venice” has been found everywhere in the world. In Japan, historically, far down from the Edo period, 17-19th Century, merchants have been considered as despised social class. Mr. Inamori* demonstrated his speech on the Merchant philosophy to Seiwajuku students, all of whom are CEOs of small to middle size companies in Japan.
In this article, I would like to demonstrate what Mr. Inamori emphasis on the merchant philosophy, and how we can interpret this in our practice today.
Q: What the keys of merchant philosophy, according to Mr. Inamori?
A: Be honest, first think and seek your counterparts’ benefit, otherwise you would not benefit yourself.
Q: What do you mean by this? If you put much higher priority on your counterparts’ interest, you would get lost, wouldn’t you?
A: Superficially, some people think like that. However, Mr. Inamori referred this example. He said, most business leaders, when they have to make decision, first clarify the fact, then consider the fact in light of his own value, dignity, and pride, then finally they make decisions, by only thinking the benefit of their own companies. However, Mr. Inamori added one more criteria: be fair enough or not. Even though the decision brings your company profits, unless the approach you would like to take is considered to be fair, you should not take such decision. Furthermore, he continues, he always thinks that that decision would definitely bring benefit to his counterparts or not. In the merge of KDDI group, which was three companies’ coalition actually, he concluded that Mr. Inamori’s attitudes towards other two companies, namely the idea of fist benefitting those two companies or not, consequently brought that success merge
Q: But our counterparts are not always either good or honest people, should we protect our interests against them?
A: Mr. Inamori also referred that point. He said, on the communication stages, he can figure out his counterparts’ intentions. If he feels something negative in terms of a business manner, he would not get into the business relation with such person. In other words, he just tries to keep those people away from him.
Q: But is it not easy to tell that your counterpart is fundamentally good or bad for your business network. Are there any tips to figure out those people’s nature?
A: I think you can tell as long as you understand yourself. I recently analyzed a fraud case in Japan. I found that a lot of people got cheated by one guy, we can identify that guy as a villain. However, by investigating the documents and records, I found out that the swindler believes himself as the victim, not villain. Assuming himself as the victim, people who have strong sense of justice, or moral, approach him to help that swindler to satisfy their wish: becoming a hero to help the victim. However, as time passes, while spending money but those potential heros’ wish never satisfied, they finally realized that they got cheated and started believing themselves as the victims.
This kind of scheme fundamentally occurs in the situation where person who believes himself to be a victim meets the person who wishes to be a hero. Therefore as long as we have no such intentions like being a victim or having ambition to be a hero, we would not get in such a trap. In other words, in a fraud conditions, people are always thirsty for something, aware of lack of something and looking for something to fill in his emptiness.
On the other hand, referring Mr. Inamoir’s theory, even though he listens to the victim’s petition, he could easily find out that guy is no more victim, this guy just accepts the fact that he envisaged in his mind. Thus ,Mr. Inamori has no need to be a saver. The context of Mr. Inamori’s speech was more or less like that.
Q: So what is the massage that Mr. Inamori wants to pass to us?
A: Do always the right things as a human being, think about others’ first so that you would be benefitted. This is the principle of merchants’ philosophy.
