THE ANTS were employing a fine winter's day in drying grain collected in the summer time. A Grasshopper, perishing with famine, passed by and earnestly begged for a little food. The Ants inquired of him, "Why did you not treasure up food during the summer?" He replied, "I had not leisure enough. I passed the days in singing." They then said in derision: "If you were foolish enough to sing all the summer, you must dance supperless to bed in the winter."

That’s it? The entire story? What happened to that picture book with pages of busy ants, conscientiously gathering grains and seeds and hauling them to storage? What happened to the relay lines, formed as an efficient means of food transport? More importantly, what happened to the fiddling and singing grasshopper, taunting the diligent ants on their labors while the sun shone and even as the trees dropped their leaves, signaling that winter was not far off? What happened to those ants, ignoring the singing grasshopper in their single-minded pursuit of putting up food for the coming cold. I think those ants even warned the grasshopper that if he didn’t settle down to work, he would face some pretty hard times.

I carried away several messages from this fable. First was the necessity of saving up for hard times ahead. The second message was that if you don’t work hard, you don’t deserve to prosper. Third, and I have to admit I just thought of this, is that work cannot be fun.

In her book Different Games, Different Rules: Why Americans and Japanese Misunderstand Each Other, author Haru Yamada, recounts distress at hearing the American version of the Ants and the Grasshopper, and re-tells the story as she heard it from her grandmother. In this version, grasshoppers have become cicadas and when the hungry cicada shows up at the ant house looking for food, the story ends: “All summer long, the ants worked as hard as they could and the cicadas sang with all their might. Now it was time for the ants and the cicadas to join together in a winter feast.” Both parties in this version had worked hard, the ants storing food against the coming cold and the cicadas singing merrily to encourage them on.

As an American, my first thought on this fable is along the lines of “Ahh, I should have been an entertainer.” In a more serious vein, this story might lead you to think that your work and your fun don’t have to be mutually exclusive, and that all activity, if it helps reach a common goal, has value.

This Japanese fable also illustrates the Japanese idea of mochitsu motaretsu, which means mutualism, or “We cannot live alone.”

In his book, The Sun Also Rises Over Toledo, WIN President Sada Honda tells the following story:

While working on a project in Texas, I needed my workers to complete part of it by a certain time. One engineering assistant was a single mother who needed help finding an apartment for her daughter who was attending a junior college in another town. It was apparent this mother wanted to sign a lease for her daughter as soon as possible.

However, she could not sign a lease because she didn’t have enough money to put down. Hearing about this misfortune, and in negotiation of a raise in her hourly pay, and certainly from a sense of mochitsu motaretsu, I gave her some of my personal money to help her pay the first month’s rent.

My Japanese sentiment of mochitsu motaretsu was destroyed when she resigned in the next few days for another job, leaving much work that needed to be done urgently. It was a good reminder for me that some cultural characteristics cannot be imposed on persons of a different culture.

So, you ask, what’s the point? Don’t lend personal money to employees? The American version of the Ants and the Grasshopper I learned would certainly lead me to that conclusion and would allow no sympathy for Sada. Sada’s conclusion was that some cultural characteristics cannot be imposed on people from other cultures.

When I first read the Haru Yamada telling of the Japanese story of the Ants and the Cicada, I was impressed by the differences from the American version. For days, I told anyone who would listen this story about how the same events had led to such different interpretations and results. For me, comparing the two versions provided valuable information in understanding the differences in Japanese and American cultures. When you have understanding, you have the tools required to bridge the differences.

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