Gwilym Jenkins was in Japan to attend a two-week 'heart to heart exchange beyond boundaries' organized by Moral Re-Armament.
The exchange took place in the wake of Japan's Recruit corruption scandal and as events in China built up towards the massacre in Tiananmen Square. So issues of ethics and democracy, as well as those of economic development, were uppermost in the minds of the participants.
'The larger Japan's economic strength, the more the influence, but also the greater the responsibility we have,' stated Minoru Yamada, Vice Chairman of the Kansai Economic Federation at a dialogue hosted by the Federation in Osaka. 'This economic power needs to be accompanied by care and consideration for others.'
'Some Japanese have felt we should not allow Korea to catch up to us too quickly in economic terms. We need to reconsider this position in order to create long term stability in the region.'
Masamitsu Tadenuma, Executive Assistant to the Chairman of Canon, took up a similar theme during sessions in Odawara City. 'It is not good when one country wins the game all the time,' he said. Canon now has 40,740 employees, a third of them foreign workers overseas. 'We are now reinvesting income from overseas plants in the countries from which this income is derived.'
From Odawara the visitors went to the resort area of Hakone, where they took part in a dialogue organized by Toshiba. Kiyoshi Maruyama, President of the Toshiba Workers Union, described his visit to the Moral Re-Armament centre in Caux, Switzerland, in 1982, as one of a series of delegations from the union. 'I learnt that what is most important is to create mutual trust. At Caux we in the unions and management can confirm this spirit and carry it forward in the day to day activities of the company.'
His words struck a chord with Kang Suk-Kyu, President of Hoseo University, Korea, who spoke of his country's 'turmoil, confusion and demonstrations'. Maruyama and his colleagues could help Korean firms by sharing their experience in labour relations. 'Where individual change is the starting point, we have hope,' said Kang Suk-Kyu.
