Judge Ōoka Tadasuke was born in 1677 in Japan and died in 1752. Judge Ōoka Tadasuke was legendary for the wisdom of his judgments and stories about his cases are an integral part of Japanese culture.
In one of more celebrated cases, he solved a case that had been festering for more than 100 years. Two very powerful families contested an ambiguous will. Each family interpreted the will as bequeathing several fields to THEIR family and not to the other. Since the families were both powerful, whichever family lost the judgement would become powerful enemies of the judge who rendered the judgement.
Ōoka Tadasuke agreed to hear the case. His rivals were sure he was going to create enemies. He called senior representatives from each family into his courtroom and he told them that they both had strong claims on the fields and so he was going to solicit divine guidance. He told them that each family was to raise a crop of red beans (presumably what we know today as adzuki beans) and whichever family produced the highest yield (on a per-area basis) was the family chosen by the gods to have the fields.
At that time, as a nation based on a rice-and-seafood economy, protein (and fats) were always in short supply.
Both families were very good farmers and were proud of that fact. They were both sure that they would win.
The family that won had been growing the red beans on a trial basis and had learned how this kind of bean was different than rice. Additionally, adzuki beans will cross with wild-beans which makes finding good seeds problematic if you don't produce them yourself and isolate them from wild-types. They won the trial by a very wide margin.
Everybody agreed that letting the gods decide was wise.
At a deeper level...
Granting the land to the farmers who were most proficient at growing this emerging, high-quality protein source was the right thing to do for Japan as a nation. It increased the resource base for the nation. Using red beans as the test and linking it to divine intervention legitimized the growing and eating of that particular food.
Many, many years later, Dr Taguchi postulated that "quality" and "specifications" had to be comprehended in the context of maximizing value (and minimizing waste) at the societal level and not just the level of the factory-floor or the accountant's ledger-book.
The Japanese industrialists were quick to absorb the message.
I am willing to bet that Dr Taguchi and the Japanese industrialists were all intimately familiar with the stories of Ōoka Tadasuke.
A wise man indeed.
ReplyDeleteThanks for an interesting read with morning coffee. Following the links (it's turtles all the way down) makes for a wide range of topics.
ReplyDeleteI'm told post WW-II Japanese auto companies started kicking US butt after adopting Dr. Deming's Total Quality Management system which was rejected in the States. Gotta admire a culture that prizes quality.
Spent a brief time in Yokosuka where I was introduced to little pastry animals filled with red bean paste. Delicious!
It is of note that the Quality Culture of Deming actually caught fire (as it were) in Japan of the 1950's and 1960's. The US was not interested at that time.
ReplyDeleteOne wonders if Judge Ooka secretly knew more than he was letting on.
Unfortunately, this reasoning is what allows eminent domain to be weaponized by the rich, well-connected, and powerful. See New London v. Kelo and then look at the end result as an object lesson.
ReplyDeleteIf you believe in private property rights, this utilitarian theory of property rights is poisonous. But it becomes ever more prevalent as we slowly become more communistic.