On Growth Two

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38. Yojiro Hayashi

Professor Hayashi was born July 27, 1916, in Japan. He was graduated in electrotechnics at the Technological Institute in Tokyo. In 1947 he was adviser for technical problems to the Prime Minister. In 1962 he was adviser for economic planning to the General Planning Agency. In 1964 he became president of the Institute for Economic Research of Japan. Professor Hayashi also lectured at the Technological Institute. At present, he is president of the Japanese Institute for Future Technology. Among his books are: Visible and Invisible Innovation - The Change of Human Consciousness Toward a Multi-channel Society, The Heterogenication of a Homogeneous Society and the Homogenization of a Hetrogeneous Society, and Human Welfare and Technological Innovation.

Are you optimistic about the future of Japanese society?

This question is a very difficult one. We would have to establish many conditions. But basically, I am an optimist.

Do you believe that scientists should be responsible to the people as a whole these days?

Of course, but before I fully respond to this question, I would like to define the means, the needs of technocrats and scientists. Up till now, so-called experts made many mistakes. But in the future we must develop a new kind of technology, the so-called soft science and soft technology.

Albert Szent-Györgyi explained to me that whereas in the past scientists or mankind could afford mistakes, with the present A arms the slightest mistake would be fatal. But what do you mean by soft sciences - sociology? psychology? behaviorism?

A closer connection between the sciences and human beings. The common people, the masses, the consciousness of human beings, that is what we are concerned with here. Needless to say, in a society of human beings we

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are faced with countless individuals. Therefore, to speak of a consciousness of human beings is not that simple.

And we still know practically nothing about it.

Until today, technology and science have been far too rigid in relation to the consciousness of human beings. We must develop much more in this direction. We have developed the computer and then, for the utilization of the computer, we have developed software sciences. For the other areas we have produced many hardware sciences, which led to the invention of the airplane, the automobile, oil tankers, and so forth. For the use of this hardware we also developed many different softwares. But compared to the development of the hardware, the development of software is most unequal. What we must develop urgently are the so-called societal software sciences.

This means the social sciences, knowledge about the human psyche or the brain.

Yes. I call this social software.

Margaret Mead calls our era ‘the decade of the brain,’ as she told me in the first volume of interviews in On Growth. In our part of the world, psychiatrists such as José M. Delgado are doing revolutionary research on the working of the brain. Is there a similar interest in Japan?

You are right, but I don't mean psychiatry in the medical sense. We must set up new studies to scientifically pursue the relationship between the consciousness of the human being and the overall system of society.

You will agree, no doubt, that it is the youths of the world who will have to really develop these software sciences. My initial impression is that the young in Japan mistrust elder people.

Our youths are not so eccentric as they might seem at first glance. They have a lot of commonsense. It is, of course, always the young people who create a new society. The behavior and the consciousness of youngsters is the symbol of a future society. Therefore, we should first of all observe the behavior of youth. They are the indicators of a future society.

How would they differ from bygone generations? They are undoubtedly much more open and frank and far less traditionally inclined. Could a future Japanese society be, to use Chie Nakane's expression, less vertical and more horizontal?

In our future Japanese society, the human boundaries will be changed.

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The present boundary is only a partial one. There are, for example, many differences between Japan and the United States, between America and France, or between Holland and India. In my opinion, in a future planetary society the differences between the younger generations and their elders will be much wider than the differences between the new generations of youths everywhere.

There will be more equality among men?

Yes. For example, take at random fifteen young people in the United States, fifteen people in Japan, fifteen people in India. They are not so different anymore. But take fifteen parents and their children within our own society in Japan. The gap between teen-agers and parents is enormous.

You chose fifteen children from the United States, Japan, and India. What about fifteen youths from the Soviet Union, Nigeria, or Chile?

I spoke on the trend of changes in our day. At the present stage, in the case of choosing fifteen children from the Soviet Union, Nigeria, or Chile, the difference among them may be enormous. However, what I want to say is that in the future, the gap between generations within the Soviet Union, Nigeria, or in Chile will increase much more than the differences in nationality between the Soviet Union, Nigeria, and Chile.

What you are saying sounds rather hopeful, since it would mean a future world with fewer cultural and psychological differences among people.

I believe that in the future to organize the world on a planetary scale will be much easier than nowadays because there will be fewer obstacles and differences between people.

Then, each year it will become easier, and some day the world will be one big family.

One of the main obstacles in our time is narrow nationalism. In a future society globalization will develop much more than nowadays. Today, for the young in Japan, foreign nations already seem much less strange and alien than to their own parents.

Even if the young person is unable to speak a foreign language, or even if he or she has not yet traveled abroad, the rest of the world does not seem that enigmatic anymore.

Perhaps a future planetary society would make world government a possibility.

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Undoubtedly, it will become much easier to reach this ideal. For example, look at the empty discussions at the United Nations in New York every day. Listen when they discuss, for example, the improvements of their mutual relations, or better between the northern and the southern nations. Even we, here in Japan, have many disagreements among ourselves we don't seem to be able to solve.

Why?

Narrow nationalism and regionalism have always been the barrier. But in a future human society, this barrier will undoubtedly disappear.

This would bring us to a global society, the way the Club of Rome tries to see it now.

Yes. In our society, in Japan, the younger generation is not possessed by the kind of patriotism believed by their parents anymore. Actually, they still harbor patriotism, but its pattern is changed.

It is more in harmony with the rest of mankind.

Indeed. Many years ago, for instance, during the Meiji Era, when intense patriotism prevailed in Japan, we often killed other people in other lands. Nowadays, the young refuse to fight or to wage war. Our young men in Japan don't consider invading other lands patriotism anymore. They would rather contribute their energies to mankind or to society. After all, this could also very well be an aim of patriotism! I believe that patriotism always changes with the changing conditions within society.

Like Kamikaze.

Yes.

But when the promising young writer, Yukio Mishima, killed himself, it seemed, as if he still harbored old ideas.

But the majority of the younger generation of Japan did not agree with Mishima.

They felt his actions were too radical? Like founding his own fascist private ‘army?’

I don't think that it is suitable to relate Mishima's case to patriotism. It was a question of Mishima's esthetics, not his patriotism. I don't think we should discuss it here.

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How do you see the development of future relations between the younger generations of your neighbor, China, brainwashed through an authoritarian dictatorship, and those youngsters of Japan, growing up in a freewheeling democratic society?

I think that patterns in Chinese society will become more moderate. Let us look at the Soviet Union. Conditions within the USSR have changed considerably compared to forty or fifty years ago. The history of the People's Republic of China is relatively short compared to that of the Soviet Union. In ten or twenty years from now, these conditions will become moderate.

Futurologist Herman Kahn believes that Japan will one day be a beautiful garden.

As you know, I am also basically an optimist. But I still feel that Kahn's views lack the spirit of the Japanese.

He did not comprehend the true roots of the Japanese tree?

I think he is guided far too much by Western logic. For example, when he speaks of the evaluation of the GNP he is not clear. Does he mean the GNP as symbol of prosperity? After all, prosperity is only one indicator. We in Japan have discovered different indicators for prosperity.

Can you name one?

In order to do that it is necessary to know concretely what is a desirable life and a desirable environment for each individual. Each person might harbor different wishes, but we could find some common ground nevertheless. Or we might detect some common relation in the function between consciousness and living conditions. We may find a way to describe the quality of life quantitatively.

In other words, the question would be how to achieve a mathematical calculation on the quality of life acceptable to most. Are you using computers in these studies?

Yes. But, of course, this is extremely difficult. Let me ask the question, What is happiness for the Japanese?

I thought the Japanese never used the word happiness. Life is never perfect to you Japanese, is it?

Happiness in any case is not the Gross National Product. It would be hardly sufficient.

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But not for Herman Kahn or for America!

Maybe. But we Japanese need more.

When will your studies in these fields be ready for us to read?

I don't know yet. I conduct the work in cooperation with New York State University and the East-West Center in Hawaii.

But you will acknowledge, perhaps, that for foreigners it is extremely difficult to come close to understanding Japan.

Herman Kahn understands one half of the Japanese. The other half is terra incognita for him. I grant it is difficult to understand the Japanese, perhaps more difficult than any other people. Our society differs so much from other nations.

That is what your history did to you.

It is extremely difficult for foreigners who visit us to discover what is most typically Japanese. For instance, you met with our Prime Minister, Kakuei Tanaka, a bank president, and the head of our space industry, but they did not express, in their conversation, typical Japanese views. It probably eluded you altogether, but the decision-making process in Japanese society is performed by the people themselves, as a whole. It might seem that the Prime Minister makes decisions, but this is not so.

Mr. Tanaka just returned from Moscow, where he initiated a new form of Japanese diplomacy. He was rather blunt in his conversations with Mr. Leonid Brezhnev, and the latter, according to press reports, banged the table, which seems a new departure in diplomatic conduct for a Japanese Prime Minister. Would you say this is the result of the popular decision-making of the Japanese people or are we faced here with the particular temperament of one man?

In the case of Prime Minister Tanaka, we are faced with a very strong personality who succeeds in running affairs in his own way. On the other hand, the responses from the public to his actions were extremely strong. Mr. Sato, our former Prime Minister, might have given the appearance of the incarnation of incompetence, but he was a politician who used skillfully the advantages of public decision-making. As a result, he succeeded in administering the affairs of state for eight long years.

Would you say Mr. Tanaka represents more a reflection of a new generation

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in Japan? Perhaps he is a Prime Minister in the line of Willy Brandt or Lee Kuan Yew.

I do not think so. Prime Minister Tanaka is not so popular among the young generation in Japan. He is too patriotic for them and not sufficiently internationally minded.

I would like to ask you a last question about your young people. I spoke to students at Hitotsubashi University who organized a teach-in on future economic growth. I was deeply impressed by the questions raised by your students, as well as by the length of the time they set aside to ask them. Later, a deputation of seven students came to the Imperial Hotel to have further discussions until the middle of the night. My impression was that your students absorb information like sponges.

Fundamentally, you are quite right. However, based on my own experiences, I would like to indicate that our youths who are called bright students often lack curiosity and those who do poorly in school are full of curiosity.