What's In Your Office, A Samurai, Or Great Software?

I love Japanese movies, and was recently watching one

, titled in English, Twilight Samurai. Most of the samurai movies that Americans are familiar with are the hack and slash kind made popular by directors like Akira Kurosawa. This movie was different. Yes, there was a fight scene, but it wasn't hack and slash by any means.

Unbeknown to many westerners, the samurai were also a government and bureaucratic class, and the vast majority of them never even experienced actual combat. This movie was about a young samurai, working as a clerk in his lord's storage offices. He was one of the men responsible for tallying supplies for the local government. A conflict arises where it is discovered that he was once a master swordsman at a dojo, and he is sent to kill a man who has run afoul of the clan.

As a government accountant, he pays careful attention to detail, keeping meticulous records in an otherwise monotonous occupation. While modern Japan has done wonders with modern computers, the government accounting software in the samurai period was comprised of a man, an abacus, a brush, and a piece of parchment. Everything had to be tabulated by hand, filed, indexed, and then rechecked at regular intervals.

With modern government accounting software, the Twilight Samurai could have replaced the whole storage department, barcoded all of the government storage in a couple of days, and kept accurate records of intake and payout without ever touching an abacus. Instead of spending hours, handwriting inventories, he could have been practicing with his sword or playing games with his daughters. There is no way his lord would have sent him to kill anyone because his efficiency in keeping track of the government would have made him vital.

Unfortunately for the Twilight Samurai, government accounting software wouldn't come into its own for over 100 years, but his bureaucratic descendants can take advantage of this wonderful modern technology to handle payroll, accounts payable, inventory, and human resources. The software can literally do the work of hundreds, thereby enabling local government to cut back on spending, and hopefully passing that savings on to the taxpayer, or allowing those funds to go towards works that would benefit the public at large.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of the abacus, brush, and parchment, but for my city's important public records and bookkeeping, I would rather have great government accounting software in place of a thousand sword-bearing samurai.

by: Art Gib

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