The Chinese, the Japanese and other Asians have long believed that there is a special energy that flows through the human body from the outside, or from the cosmos, and that this energy is the provider of life and health. In fact, it seems that many if not most ancient cultures in the West as well had exactly the same belief: it may have been expressed in different terms, but it referred to the same thing. It was not until the advent of the scientific age, along with Christianity, that Westerners relegated this belief to the status of utter nonsense at the best and a dangerous pagan superstition at worst.
When Christianity and Western science reached Asia, Asians accepted the science but rejected Christianity (they already had their own much older and more profound religions), but they did not renounce their belief in cosmic energy as the animator of all life. As far as they were concerned, the existence of cosmic energy was obvious. They also had proven more than 2.000 years earlier, in such practices as acupuncture and in a variety of health and martial arts, that some kind of special energy ran through the body. And the interest in this area has not waned in Asia; in the 1980s the Chinese government began a major research effort in an attempt to isolate and understand this power using scientific methods.
The Japanese call this special energy "ki", which is translated variously as "energy", "spirit", "mind" and "cosmic breath". Ki is one of the syllables in aikido, a popular form of martial arts, and in that word ki refers to using this special energy to stop or overcome an opponent. Ki also occurs in kiai (kee-aye) which means "shout", "yell" or "cry" and which is what Japanese kendo practitioners do when they attact an opponent with they bamboo swords, and what Japanese athletes and businessmen do when they want to boost their energy, spirit and drive.
A kiai can be a slogan, a word, or a nonsensical sound. The point is that people can arouse themselves to achieve extraordinary feats of strength, speed and courage by shouting.
In the 1960s and 1970s, many Japanese corporations adopted the practice of kiai into their recruit training programs. Newly hired recruits sent to military-type training camps were required to spend time every day shouting as loud as they could -in some cases while standing in front of train stations where commuters were constantly coming and going. In later years, other companies began sponsoring programs that included a combination of meditation, kiai and dousing with cold water during frigid weather -for older managers who wanted to revitalize themselves.
Regardless of how such practices might sound to the rational and scientifically inclined Westerner, they do seem to work -anyone who has served in the marines has witnessed the effects of shouting. The reason these tactics have not been adopted wholesale by Western companies, as so many other Japanese management techniques have been, is apparently because Westerners look upon such behavior as beneath their dignity.
I will not make any predictions about Western companies integrating kiai into their training programs anytime soon, but the concept of ki and of its more astounding uses are on their way to being accepted universally. Since the mid-1980s, a growing number of Japan's best-known and most influential business tycoons have been flocking to a ki master to learn how to make "the force" work for them. Also, Japan's prestigious Ministry of International Trade and Industry is working with the Tokyo University of Electro-Communications to try to find out what ki is and how to harness it, and the Sony Corporation also has a scientific team studying the phenomenon of ki.
According to the testimony of several top-level executives in internationally famous companies, including Sony and Sega Enterprises, ki has cured ailments, and it has made people more youthful and given them extraordinary energy and insight into managing their companies. With that kind of endorsement, and with the potential that ki offers mankind, no one will be able to afford to ignore it if it should prove to be real.
by Boye Lafayette De Mente
"Japan's Cultural Code Words"
