Founder's Message

At the heart of my entrepreneurial journey there is a simple belief: to bring Japan to the world.

I was born and grown up in Japan. But now I love to live outside Japan because I feel it important for Japanese to realize that Japan is no longer Japan as conceived for the last centuries and I feel it necessary to learn for Japanese how to survive in the global context for the next generations. Here I mean 30-50years later.

Very luckly, thanks to ancestors, Japanese brand is still trustworthy, and many of them are evaluated too much. But I have two observations. First, it does not last to aspire people to think Japan equals high value product or service. Symbolically in auto industries, the players have been changed and Japanese brand are not such brands that had been perceived as the best. We know we are already far behind in technology and the expectation for Japan from the global market in next tens of years is what... maybe just a great place, unique culture to visit. Secondly, those who leverage Japanese brands in global market are mostly non-Japanese except those who play the games in Japan to attract tourists and those who approache to high price luxury.

Here I feel a strong concern in Japanese mentality. There are super good brands, products, services with very reasonable price, which you can easily find in local places in Japan, however, the similar products with less quality are traded in some coutries with more than double or trippled price (which is partly due to the deflation of Japanese Yen).

There are many respectful Japanese people who show strong initiatives globally, but I am mentioning here about more ordinary, vast majority of people in the middle class.

We do not have atomosphare to challenge globally from day 1. We do not have a sense of urgency, thanks to quite a big domestic market, which only happened to have in the last 50years.

Meeting with many people from the world and having talked to them, I recognize how privileged environment that we Japanese have, however, I hardly believe my son's generation could have the similar feelings (though he was not born in Japan....)

This is something to drive me to go outside without knowing what to do in this age. Maybe I cold say I just wanted to enjoy my life and to follwo to my intuition. But I am a person that has been grown up thanks to so many people around me, including people that I do not know, so I would like to contribute to the next generations as the hope by doing what I can do.