Some Meiji Era Wisdom That I learned Today (Patreon)

Hey hey! So the other day I was talking to my friend and she said a phrase that I'd never heard before, but after she explained it to me I thought was just lovely, so I thought I'd share. 

Have you ever heard of sanpo-yoshi? 三方よし！Three directions GOOD! Or Satisfied Three Ways. 

Yeah, it sounds a little NSFW, but it's not! Ironically, it's VSFW, Very Safe for Work! Because it's all about work. Hear me out. From the Sengoku Era (16th century) there were traveling merchants called Omi shonin. They were from Shiga Prefecture and before the Meiji Restoration Shiga was called Omi. They were extremely popular, successful, and the envy of all the Edo merchants. They even made quite a few revolutionary changes on how to do business that are still followed today. 

One of those changes was something called sanpo yoshi or benefit all three sides. Meaning a merchant or salesperson should always benefit the customer, theirselves, and society all at the same time. 

In Japanese that would be: 

They did this by being honest and giving back to the community by doing things like "building schools, supporting local shrines, and even paying the taxes for poor families." Imagine that! 

It baffles me that people like Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Murdoch, Koch brother, etc. have more money than they could ever spend and could help so many people, the world! and yet they don't. 

Stupid ippō yoshi people.

Here's a really good Medium article about it by Robin Lewis (the quotes above are from this article).