Japanese attending 'Everybody Counts' conference in CauxSixty years ago this month a delegation of 60 Japanese arrived in Caux, the IofC centre in Switzerland, just five years after the devastation of World War II.

This summer 44 Japanese are taking part in conferences in Caux, including the seven who will attend a conference on ‘Trust and integrity in the global economy’ later this month. They come in very different circumstances from their compatriots in 1950.

At that time, Japan was still occupied by the Allied Forces, to whom they had surrendered. With a feeble post-war economy and foreign exchange under tight controls, they struggled to find $2000 that each needed for the trip. And they needed clearance from no less than General MacArthur. Among those selected from the many aspirants were leading figures in politics, business and finance, labour unions, governors of prefectures and the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

At Caux they saw how former enemies in Europe were working to reconstruct their war-torn continent. 'The Japanese representatives who heard these witnesses had many doubts and conflicts,' wrote one of the group, Yasuhiro Nakasone. A young ambitious politician, Nakasoke boldly told those at Caux that one day he would be Prime Minister. He was, 35 years later. In May this year, when IofC President Rajmohan Gandhi was in Japan, the 92 year-old former PM Nakasone told him: ‘My visit to Caux in 1950 had a very deep impact on my life. Having lived through the war experiences, I will never forget being surrounded by people from all over the world confirming with their experience that the way of life envisaged by “moral re-armament” actually does exist in practice.’

Describing this historic visit at Caux this year, Keisuke Nakayama said that ‘they gained a new awareness. For the first time they were exposed to the idea of living by principles of honesty, purity, unselfishness and love, both in one’s personal and family life and at the same time in public life. It was a revolutionary message, especially at a time when left wing ideas were provoking conflict and division in Japan. A new concept – not who is right, but what is right – captured them.’ The Mayor of Hiroshima, for instance, formed the vision at Caux that in order that the tragedy of the A-bomb should never be repeated, Hiroshima should become a city for building peace for all humanity.

Despite changes over 60 years that have transformed Japan into the world’s second largest economy, the conferences in Caux still hold some of that same appeal and challenge for Japanese. Professor Atsushi Funakawa, a prolific writer and thinker, came to Caux with a group of Japanese business professionals. The impact of globalisation and the digital revolution are breaking Japan out of ‘the old paradigm’ of a homogenous nation concerned mainly with itself and making business transactions with the world, said Funakawa. ‘I am critical of Japan because I love my country.’ His conviction is to bring Japanese to Caux because ‘we need to develop more world leaders’. The essence of what he finds at Caux was summed up in a Japanese saying, ‘I am here to wash my heart’; to which Funakawa added, ‘and to wash our minds and eventually our souls as well’.

Besides the business group, 22 Japanese came for the intergenerational conference titled: ‘Everyone counts’. To demonstrate the point, the group from Japan included business people, community workers and housewives. They left with ‘emotion turned into motion’, as a senior bank executive put it. As Nakayama summed up: ‘We are making efforts to build networks of people with strong spiritual and moral character, who are sensitive to the world’s needs.’ Inspired by that vision, a senior aid worker, who is administering an agricultural project in Afghanistan, resolved to return there ‘to build relationships of mutual respect and responsibility’.

As former PM Nakasone told Rajmohan Gandhi: ‘These ideas will have further impact in the coming years than even before. It means for us acknowledging the mistakes of the past, and conveying that to coming generations. As time passes, some people forget. We should admit our mistakes, otherwise we shall repeat them.’

See also Examples from IofC's History - 1950s Japan

To read a report of the Everybody Counts conference, click here.

To read about the visit of IofC President, Rajmohan Gandhi, to Japan earlier this year, click here.