This study illuminates Ishida Baigan's honesty that has popularly been respected as one of the typical features in his lessons. While the Japanese have respected honesty described as
makoto in having absorbed Confucianism, their notion of honesty has been criticized by some researchers that it holds truthfulness as one behaves unselfishly and focuses sincerely on the subject he/she just faces, in practice, and it would tend to lack ‘reason’ to justify his/her behavior in taking social good into account.
However, in this paper, I present his idea that the transparency in the spirit of his notion of honesty leads to the modern understanding of a virtue of integrity, which is a central topic of business ethics, by examining Baigan's thoughts seeking harmony (or
wago) among people from all walks of life in pursuing their honest behavior, particularly based on the way he considered the honest figure of merchants.
The background that the concept of his honesty included transparency is related to the fact that he never forgot to be conscious of societal harmony. Then I argue that Baigan's honesty reflects ‘reason’ to meet public interests, and, it holds the essence to consider in what ways a corporation should establish business ethics especially in considering stakeholders. Baigan's lessons indicate that, attaining transparency may become a moral principle relevant to integrity, which requires one to demonstrate his/her action.
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