Kome Hyappyo refers to a famous event in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, the literal meaning of which is "One Hundred Bags of Rice" or "One Hundred Sacks of Rice". This historical anecdote symbolizes the idea that patience and perseverance in the present will lead to profit in the future.

The Nagaoka Domain

Nagaoka Domain

The ' was a Japanese domain of the Edo period, located in Echigo Province . It was ruled by the Makino clan for most of its history. It was also the center of some of the fiercest fighting of the Boshin War, during the summer of 1868. Nagaoka joined the Ōuetsu Reppan Dōmei during the war, and...

 (now the city of Nagaoka

Nagaoka, Niigata

is a city located in the central part of Niigata Prefecture, Japan. It is the second largest city in the prefecture, behind the capital city of Niigata...

 in Niigata Prefecture

Niigata Prefecture

is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Honshū on the coast of the Sea of Japan. The capital is the city of Niigata. The name "Niigata" literally means "new lagoon".- History :...

) suffered great destruction during the Boshin War

Boshin War

The was a civil war in Japan, fought from 1868 to 1869 between forces of the ruling Tokugawa shogunate and those seeking to return political power to the imperial court....

 of the Meiji Restoration

Meiji Restoration

The , also known as the Meiji Ishin, Revolution, Reform or Renewal, was a chain of events that restored imperial rule to Japan in 1868...

 in the late 1860s and much of their food-production capability was lost. The neighboring Mineyama Domain

Mineyama Domain

The ' was a Japanese domain of the Edo period, located in Tango Province . It was ruled for the entirety of its history by the Kyōgoku clan, until the Meiji Restoration.-Lords of Mineyama:*Kyōgoku clan...

 (now the town of Maki

Maki, Niigata (Kambara)

Maki was a town located in the Nishikanbara District, Niigata, Japan.Maki literally means "meadow", although the name of this town is written as "scroll" by a homonym to distinguish from another Maki in the same prefecture...

 in Nishikanbara District, Niigata

Nishikanbara District, Niigata

is a district located in Niigata, Japan.As of March 20, 2006, the district has an estimated population of 8,537. The total area is 25.22 km².- Towns and villages :On March 20, 2006, the towns of Bunsui and Yoshida merged with the former city of Tsubame...

) provided assistance in the form of one hundred sacks of rice

Rice

Rice is the seed of the monocot plants Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima . As a cereal grain, it is the most important staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the West Indies...

. The rice was intended for hunger relief but Kobayashi Torasaburō

Kobayashi Torasaburo

was a Japanese samurai of the late Edo period, who served the Makino clan of Nagaoka.Kobayashi was a senior leader of Nagaoka after the Boshin War of 1868-69, and was the instrumental figure in the Kome Hyappyo incident....

, one of the chief executives of Nagaoka, proposed a plan to sell the rice and use the money for education

Education

Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...

 instead. Samurai

Samurai

is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...

 clan leaders and the famished public initially protested the idea, but Kobayashi appealed, saying "If hundred bags of rice are eaten, they are lost instantly, but if they are put towards education, they will become the ten-thousand or one million bags of tomorrow." Kobayashi prevailed and the rice was sold to finance the construction of the Kokkan Gakko school.

Contemporary use of the term

This ideal of enduring pain today for the sake of a better tomorrow, long the guiding spirit for the people of Nagaoka, gained national attention in 2001 when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi

Junichiro Koizumi

is a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 2001 to 2006. He retired from politics when his term in parliament ended.Widely seen as a maverick leader of the Liberal Democratic Party , he became known as an economic reformer, focusing on Japan's government debt and the...

quoted the story in one of his inaugural speeches.