[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index ][Thread Index ]

Letter from Burma, #22, "Businessme (r)



Subject: Letter from Burma, #22, "Businessmen can only reap what they sow"

--=====================_830396952==_
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"



--=====================_830396952==_
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

April 22, 1996
MAINICHI DAILY NEWS


Letter from Burma
(No. 22)
By Aung San Suu Kyi
Businessmen can only reap what they sow

The beautiful and the ugly

Years ago, during a lesson on the Japanese tea ceremony at
Oxford, our teacher showed us colored slides of ceramic
bowls fashioned by a master craftsman. The bowls had been
photographed in the home of the master himself and the
exquisite restraint of their beauty contrasted incongruously
with the loud vulgarity of the modern carpet on which the
master planted his feet and, consciously or unconsciously,
feasted his eyes each day. Our teacher, an American who
had lived and studied in Japan many years to qualify as a
master of the tea ceremony, laughed at our baffled expres-
sions and remarked that some people only knew what was
beautiful, they did not know what was ugly.

Our teacher spoke chiefly of aesthetic matters. He
contrasted the clashing colors and rampant designs of
elaborate brocades with the elegance of plain, dark fabrics
printed with simple geometric patterns or discreet emblems;
he compared garish neon - lit city areas with cool gardens of
moss covered rocks and old pines. The tea ceremony with
its spirit of wakei seijaku illustrated the necessity of
removing all that is ugly or disharmonious before reaching
out to a beauty that is both visual and spiritual.

The fundamental principle of aesthetics which we learnt
from our teacher, that to acquire truly good taste one has to
be able to recognize both ugliness and beauty, is applicable
to the whole range of human experience. It is important to
understand both what should be rejected and what should be
accepted. I personally know many Japanese who are as
ready to reject what is ugly as to accept what is beautiful.
But I cannot help thinking that such a sense of dis-
crimination is lacking in those who seek to promote
business with Burma these days.

What do these advocates of precipitate economic
engagement see when they look at our country? Perhaps
they merely see the picturesque scenery, the instinctive
smiles with which Burmese generally greet visitors, the new
hotels, the cheap labor and what appear to them as golden
opportunities for making money. Perhaps they do not know
of the poverty in the countryside, the hapless people whose
homes have been razed to make way for big vulgar
buildings, the bribery and corruption that is spreading like a
cancerous growth, the lack of equity that makes the so -
called open market economy very, very open to some and
hardly ajar to others, the harsh and increasingly lawless
actions taken by the authorities against those who seek
democracy and human rights, the forced labor projects
where men, women and children toil away without financial
compensation under hard taskmasters in scenes reminiscent
of the infamous railway of death of the Second World War.
It is surprising that those who pride themselves on their
shrewdness and keen eye for opportunity cannot discern the
ugly symptoms of a system that is undermining the moral
and intellectual fiber and, consequently, the economic
potential of our nation. If businessmen do not care about the
numbers of political prisoners in our country they should at
least be concerned that the lack of an effective legal
framework means there is no guarantee of fair business
practice or, in cases of injustice, of reparation. If
businessmen do not care that our standards of health and
education are deteriorating, they should at least be
concerned that the lack of a healthy, educated labor force
will inevitably thwart sound economic development. If
businessmen do not care that we have to struggle with the
difficulties of a system that gives scant attention to the well
- being of the people, they should at least be concerned that
the lack of necessary infrastructure and an underpaid and
thereby corrupt bureaucracy hampers quick, efficient
transactions. If businessmen do not care that our workers are
exposed to exploitation, they should at least be concerned
that a dissatisfied labor force will eventually mean social
unrest and economic instability.

To observe businessmen who come to Burma with the
intention of enriching themselves is somewhat like watching
passers - by in an orchard roughly stripping off blossoms for
their fragile beauty, blind to the ugliness of despoiled
branches, oblivious of the fact that by their action they are
imperilling future fruitfulness and committing an injustice
against the rightful owners of the trees. Among these
despoilers are big Japanese companies. But they do not
represent the best of Japan. I have met groups of Japanese,
both young and old, anxious to find out for themselves the
true state of affairs in our country, prepared to look straight
at both the beautiful and the ugly. At the weekend public
meetings that take place outside my gate, there are usually a
number of Japanese sitting in the broiling sun and, although
they cannot understand Burmese, paying close and
courteous attention to all that is going on. And when, at the
end of the meeting, many of them come up to me to say:
ganbatte kudasai, I am strengthened by the knowledge that
our struggle has the support of Japanese people in whom the
sense of moral aesthetics is very much alive.

(This article is one of a year - long series of letters, the
Japanese translation of which appears in the Mainichi
Shimbun the same day, or the previous day in some areas.)


--=====================_830396952==_--