While perusing the Boston Globe yesterday, I came across this article in the Business Section, about the latest doings at Fidelity Investments, in which, truth to tell, I have zero interest. Nonetheless, I was struck by this paragraph:
Ned Johnson, the visionary who built Fidelity Investments into the nation’s largest mutual fund company, has long been a believer in the Japanese workplace philosophy of “kaizen,” which emphasizes constant change as a way to improve efficiency. He is certainly familiar with this old Japanese proverb: The fish rots from the head down (Emphasis added)
Certainly the proverb is quite true, as Bush is proving about the American fish. However, the attribution of the proverb to the Japanese drew me up short, for I immediately and accurately recalled that Michael Dukakis has accurately observed that the Reagan-Bush Adminstration was demonstrating the proverb’s truth in 1988, yet he, as I again accurately recalled, attributed it to his Greek ancestors. A quick Google search revealed no attributions to the Japanese, but two attributions to the Russians, one by a self proclaimed Russian, and one by a presumed non-Russian. A seach for “fish rots from head down source” reveals this enticiing link, which appears to support Dukakis and appears to rely on an authoritative source (MacMillan Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Famous Phrases), but alas, when one clicks one finds that one must pay to read the entire article. Lastly, here we find a claim that it is an old Chinese proverb.
Where does the truth lie? My money’s on the Greeks, but that’s a mere guess. The Japanese do not appear to be in the running, so one must wonder what source the Globe reporter relied upon to make the assertion that he did. A minor matter, perhaps, but a bit troubling if, as one suspects, he shaped the facts to fit the storyline.
Of course, in this internet age, truth can sometimes be a rather slippery thing. Will the next person googling the phrase rely on the Globe article to conclude that the phrase indeed originated with the Japanese?
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