米百俵 (One Hundred Sacks of Rice)
The Kome Hyappyo is a historical anecdote that symbolizes the idea that patience and perseverance in the present will lead to profit in the future. It refers to a famous event in Japan, when the Nagaoka Domain (now Nagaoka-shi, Niigata) suffered great destruction during the Boshin War and much of their food-production capability was lost. The neighboring Mineyama Domain provided assistance in the form of one hundred sacks of rice. The rice was intended for hunger relief but one of the domain’s chief executives proposed the plan to sell the rice instead for education.