New Philosophy of Life
Written by Okada Jikan Mokichi, 1950
Today, culture is developing in Japan. In spite of that, things are deadlocked in some ways. Why don’t things go as expected? From my point of view, it is because there is a great fundamental mistake. However, people in society seem not to be very aware of it.
Let me take up politics as an example. The government has designed many policies. When they are put through, however, most of them turn end in failure even though they were approved by parliament. They are always in all the headlines of newspapers. It would be no exaggeration to say that articles in the political section of newspapers are almost about policy failure. Then why do such failures continuously occur? From my perspective, they are the result that nature is ignored. That is not only the case in the political field. Modern people think that it is better to do things artificially in any field. They firmly believe that the culture progresses by doing so. That is a problem.
The same things happen to politics. Not needed policies, nay, those that even cause harmful effects are designed and carried out. Rules are made for anything and society becomes full of them. Today, everybody discusses liberalism. In my experience, the people of the Meiji and Taisho eras may have had much more freedom for anything than the present people. People of today feel difficulty very much because they live a life all bound by rules and regulations. They cannot move because they are tied up with ropes, which are called rules and regulations. Interestingly, not only the public but also government officials themselves are tied with the same ropes. They can be in trouble when they have to deal with a problem according to rules. They have to do it even though the problem is not something to blame in terms of common sense and humanity. “Even we are annoyed by rules,” they leave a sigh. That’s a story we often hear. Someone says that Japan has the largest number of regulations in the world. I agree with them. ‘The more laws, the more sins.” I think that this saying just refers to present Japan.
Why did things turn out that way in Japan? There would be various causes but I think the most influential one is the war that we experienced. During the war, authorities tackled to make people work like a machine. A machine can be installed in a specific place and operated in a certain way. The operator sometimes applies oil and turns the gears of machines. That is enough. Freedom is not available for machines and people were treated like them. They couldn’t say, do, nor eat what they wanted. In that way, human-machine had been created. A mould is needed to mechanize humans. That is a so-called rule. A controlled economy still remains today. That is one of such moulds.
To mechanize people, many government officials are needed. Therefore, many government offices were established one after another during the war. The number of officers rapidly increased and still remain today. Surprisingly, the government has to pay them 30 billion yen a month. That’s still better. There is another big problem that people don’t notice. There are more officials than needed. So, they have to find their job somehow as they cannot dodge work. In that case, they pay attention to the work of rule revisions. That is terrible because they have to make a fresh start once a new regulation is enforced. They have to forget about the works they were accustomed to. They find a way to deal with the new regulation and get accustomed to it. Then, everything goes well. As a result, they finish the work in three days, which they used to do in a week. Therefore, they have free time at work. As a result, they have an idea of rule revisions. The government has to awaken this problem and reduce the number of officials. For that reason, the government should make a big decision and carry out administrative reorganization. That is the only way to solve this problem. Otherwise, that would cause a great loss directly and indirectly to the nation.
I often hear that many citizens continue the same work for decades in the U.K. and the U.S.A. However, I don’t heat the same thing in Japan so often. Anything changes rapidly there. No country like Japan would exist. That is the result that the present Japanese disregard nature very much. This is a fundamental reason. They think that they can develop culture by doing anything artificially.
Other than politics, I would like to tell you about many things in other fields. For example, I advocate agriculture without fertilizer, which brings a good result. I have reported how effective it is in our magazine since its first issue. Vegetables grow well with only soil components and compost. We just follow the fundamental theory of natural adaptation. However, farmers don’t realise it. They think that artificial fertilizer brings a good harvest. They use their energy and money a lot for fertilizer, which kills the earth and generates pests. While working hard for that, they are wondering why it doesn’t bring a good result. What a foolish thing they do! It happens because they ignore nature. Compost is valuable in our agricultural method because dry leaves and grass are natural materials.
I give you one more example that ignores nature. That is medical treatment. Human beings suffer from diseases to eradicate toxins accumulated in their body for some reason. That is called purification action. Therefore, the disease is natural physiological action, which is very important for humans. When this action occurs, a person has a fever, cough, sputum, runny nose, night sweats and so on. Due to such discharges, the human body is purified and humans improve their health. It means the disease is the law of nature that improves human health. It is a great blessing given by God, indeed. Nevertheless, people in the medical field interpreted such symptoms the opposite. They think that they should stop the action of excreting toxins with medical treatment. You would see how wrong it is. The simplest purification action is to catch a cold. People can be free from pneumonia and pulmonary tuberculosis by catching a cold. Therefore, if catching a cold is recommended, the number of patients who suffer from them are sure to reduce. However, people in the medical field don’t realize this fact. They contrarily try to stop toxins from excreting when a person catches a cold. As a result, the number of patients who suffer from pneumonia and pulmonary tuberculosis rather increases. Needless to say, it happens because they ignore nature.
Translated by N.H.