Always on the side of the egg

Always on the side of the egg

By Haruki Murakami


I have come to Jerusalem today as a novelist, which is to say as a professional spinner of lies.

Of course, novelists are not the only ones who tell lies. Politicians do it, too, as we all know. Diplomats and military men tell their own kinds of lies on occasion, as do used car salesmen, butchers and builders. The lies of novelists differ from others, however, in that no one criticizes the novelist as immoral for telling them. Indeed, the bigger and better his lies and the more ingeniously he creates them, the more he is likely to be praised by the public and the critics. Why should that be?

My answer would be this: Namely, that by telling skillful lies - which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true - the novelist can bring a truth out to a new location and shine a new light on it. In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth lies within us. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.
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Today, however, I have no intention of lying. I will try to be as honest as I can. There are a few days in the year when I do not engage in telling lies, and today happens to be one of them.

So let me tell you the truth. A fair number of people advised me not to come here to accept the Jerusalem Prize. Some even warned me they would instigate a boycott of my books if I came.

The reason for this, of course, was the fierce battle that was raging in Gaza. The UN reported that more than a thousand people had lost their lives in the blockaded Gaza City, many of them unarmed citizens - children and old people.

Any number of times after receiving notice of the award, I asked myself whether traveling to Israel at a time like this and accepting a literary prize was the proper thing to do, whether this would create the impression that I supported one side in the conflict, that I endorsed the policies of a nation that chose to unleash its overwhelming military power. This is an impression, of course, that I would not wish to give. I do not approve of any war, and I do not support any nation. Neither, of course, do I wish to see my books subjected to a boycott.

Finally, however, after careful consideration, I made up my mind to come here. One reason for my decision was that all too many people advised me not to do it. Perhaps, like many other novelists, I tend to do the exact opposite of what I am told. If people are telling me - and especially if they are warning me - "don't go there," "don't do that," I tend to want to "go there" and "do that." It's in my nature, you might say, as a novelist. Novelists are a special breed. They cannot genuinely trust anything they have not seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands.

And that is why I am here. I chose to come here rather than stay away. I chose to see for myself rather than not to see. I chose to speak to you rather than to say nothing.

This is not to say that I am here to deliver a political message. To make judgments about right and wrong is one of the novelist's most important duties, of course.

It is left to each writer, however, to decide upon the form in which he or she will convey those judgments to others. I myself prefer to transform them into stories - stories that tend toward the surreal. Which is why I do not intend to stand before you today delivering a direct political message.

Please do, however, allow me to deliver one very personal message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: Rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:

"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."

Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?

What is the meaning of this metaphor? In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them. This is one meaning of the metaphor.

This is not all, though. It carries a deeper meaning. Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: It is The System. The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others - coldly, efficiently, systematically.

I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on The System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelist's job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories - stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.

My father died last year at the age of 90. He was a retired teacher and a part-time Buddhist priest. When he was in graduate school, he was drafted into the army and sent to fight in China. As a child born after the war, I used to see him every morning before breakfast offering up long, deeply-felt prayers at the Buddhist altar in our house. One time I asked him why he did this, and he told me he was praying for the people who had died in the war.

He was praying for all the people who died, he said, both ally and enemy alike. Staring at his back as he knelt at the altar, I seemed to feel the shadow of death hovering around him.

My father died, and with him he took his memories, memories that I can never know. But the presence of death that lurked about him remains in my own memory. It is one of the few things I carry on from him, and one of the most important.

I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong - and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others' souls and from the warmth we gain by joining souls together.

Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow The System to exploit us. We must not allow The System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: We made The System.

That is all I have to say to you.

I am grateful to have been awarded the Jerusalem Prize. I am grateful that my books are being read by people in many parts of the world. And I am glad to have had the opportunity to speak to you here today.

Top Corporate Citizens 2009 -- Responsibility Generates Vitality

Top Corporate Citizens 2009

Responsibility Generates Vitality

By Isabella Wu
From CommonWealth Magazine
Published: March 19, 2009 (No.417)

CommonWealth Magazine's survey of Taiwan's top corporate citizens found that in these trying times, being socially responsible is more than a way to build an image or give back to society; it is now critical to reviving sagging bottom lines.

World trade is expected to decline by 2 percentage points in 2009, leaving nearly every business and industry facing a severely contracting global market. One consequence of the world's economic slump has been a reversal of the trend toward greater corporate social responsibility, which had been a major private sector battleground over the past two years.

There are no official statistics indicating that the global economic downturn has compelled companies to invest less in fulfilling their corporate social responsibility (encompassing corporate governance, training and R&D, charitable donations, and energy conservation). But considering the general economic environment, in which businesses have been obsessed with the bottom line and are cutting employee benefits or financial assistance to underprivileged groups, such a conclusion would seem reasonable.

It may be premature, however, to depict the rush to be a good corporate citizen in recent years as simply a temporary craze triggered by prosperity.

CSR on the Skids?

Ignoring for a moment the bleak financial statements and negative news dominating recent headlines and re-examining the trends that drove the rapid growth in emphasis on corporate social responsibility, one finds that not only do those trends still exist, they are pushing forward unabated.

Take corporate governance. Following the global financial tsunami, the American and British governments – both staunch free market advocates – began to intervene in the operations of troubled corporations. As a consequence, governments around the world are now imposing stricter regulations on corporate entities, requiring more transparent information disclosures.

Likewise, human rights and environmental activists have not relaxed in the least their monitoring of corporate activities. The Climate Conference in Copenhagen, scheduled for December 2009, will discuss the post-Kyoto Protocol era and is expected to raise each country's environmental standards and impose stricter controls on greenhouse gas emissions.

The pressures faced by corporations have not changed, while a series of new problems, including mounting poverty, drought, health-care issues and growing environmental crises, have emerged that can only be solved with private sector participation.

"We must break the tyranny of short-term thinking in favor of long-term solutions. This will demand a renewed commitment to core principles," United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon declared at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland at the end of January. He insisted that private-sector initiatives to solve society's needs were the key to revitalizing economic activity and would reflect which companies truly had values.

It cannot be denied that some enterprises have cut their contributions to charities and education amid the economic slump, but there are many others whose commitment to their social responsibility has remained firm. They remain dedicated to engendering social change and creating commercial opportunities.

The Big Responsibilities of Big Companies

For Starbucks, the world's biggest coffee chain, 2008 was a rough year. The company's share price tumbled by more than 50 percent, and CEO Howard Schultz introduced a US$400 million cost-cutting program in December. But Starbucks' spending on social responsibility remained unscathed. Not only did the company propose a new plan to provide assistance to fight AIDS in Africa, it continued to expand its purchases of Fair Trade Certified coffee and became the biggest single buyer of this socially responsible coffee in the world. Its purchases have helped improve the lives of coffee farmers in Colombia and Ethiopia.

"When we come out of this fog," said General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt last November, "this notion that companies need to stand for something – they need to be accountable for more than just the money they earn – is going to be profound."

Immelt's view explains why so many corporate leaders remain steadfast in having their companies meet their social responsibilities.

GE's share price also fell by more than half in 2008, but its charitable contributions to satisfy basic needs such as food and clothing actually rose. Through its response to future environmental challenges – the multi-billion U.S. dollar Ecomagination plan – GE has invested heavily in developing clean coal-fired power plants and electronic health records, among other green products. Revenues for these products rose 21 percent in 2008, bucking the generally downward trend.

Many companies in Taiwan have the same commitment to corporate social responsibility, which has also become for them an engine of progress.

Taiwan's Golden Supply Chain

When ASUStek Computer drew widespread attention in early 2009, the focus was on its 2008 fourth-quarter net loss of NT$2.8 billion due to inventory problems, the company's first quarterly loss in its history. But while it was losing money, ASUS became the first of the world's 10 leading computer vendors to receive EuP (Energy-using Product) certification, and it also earned nine U.S. EPEAT (Electronic Products Environment Assessment Tool) gold ratings.

"Look. 'Taiwan' is written there," said Hsiao Hui-chuan, the director-general of the Environmental Protection Administration's Department of Supervision, Evaluation and Dispute Resolution, as she looked at a copy of the EuP certificate. Hsiao, who helped ASUS with the EuP certification application process, proudly noted that Taiwan had come out in front in an extremely difficult competition.

But Frank Lin, the company's chief quality officer, says, "For ASUS to be good on its own is not enough." An even bigger project, says Lin, is for the computer maker to teach its more than 1,000 Taiwanese suppliers the new standards. Lin and his colleagues hold classes on the standards at each of their suppliers' offices and are on constant call to resolve design and production problems, all in the name of elevating the company's entire supply chain to a world-class level.

Companies in conventional industries are no less committed to corporate social responsibility. When Formosa Plastics Group founder Wang Yung-ching passed away last year, his own philanthropic activities and those of his company were thrust into the spotlight.

Formosa Plastics, which built its reputation on its management system and ability to improve existing processes, applied its standard operating procedures and acumen for getting results to solving a problem few were willing to touch – teaching professional skills to AIDS victims in Taiwan's prisons. The recidivism rate among prisoners who participated in the program fell to 34 percent, from 80 percent previously. Every AIDS patient who remained out of jail saved the prison system NT$1.5 million in medical expenses.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates, in his first annual letter after beginning to work full-time at the Bill & Melissa Gates Foundation, wrote, "The wealthy have a responsibility to invest in addressing inequity. This is especially true when the constraints on others are so great. Otherwise, we will come out of the economic downturn in a world that is even more unequal, with... fewer opportunities for people to improve their lives."

Undaunted by the floundering economy, a growing number of companies in different corners of Taiwan are still investing money, contributing manpower, or unleashing their professional expertise to fulfill their roles as creators of those opportunities.