About 40 business leaders, scholars, bureaucrats and leaders of nongovernmental organizations on Friday inaugurated an institute to enrich their understanding of contemporary issues and to find important values for the 21st century through discussions of great philosophical and classic literary works.
The formal inauguration of the Aspen Institute of Japan is part of a worldwide effort that began in the United States nearly a half-century ago to develop great leaders who are not oriented to business and economic values.
The Aspen Institute in the U.S. organizes seminars and symposiums for leaders of different sectors and helps to educate them through dialogues on various social values and traditions, such as democracy, liberty, equality and efficiency. The institute's affiliated organizations are located in France, Germany and Italy.
Yotaro Kobayashi, chairman of Fuji Xerox Co., and chairman of the new institute in Japan, said that unlike the prewar education system in Japan, the country's postwar education has placed little emphasis on important values such as philosophy, religion and ethics. "These values have been rather secondary within the education system, and we, as businesspeople, who only placed importance on economic growth and technological development, are also responsible for that," Kobayashi told reporters.
The institute already held a seminar in February and plans to hold two or three every year. It will use writings of philosophers such as Plato and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in its seminars.