Leadership
Management philosophy, team building, and the responsibilities of leading a listed group across several countries.
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CEO Essays·
On My IPO Day, I Ate Dinner at Home as Usual
"How did you celebrate your IPO day?" My honest answer: I didn't. On July 24, 2026, our company began trading on Nasdaq. That evening, I had an ordinary dinner at home.
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To Bring Joy to Friends — How My Name Became My Life
My parents chose characters that mean "to bring joy to friends." As a boy in Shimonoseki, a port town in western Japan, I simply could not study. Reading without understanding, failing at arithmetic — all I had was sports. When my junior high school had no soccer club, I switched to basketball, practiced relentlessly, and made the prefectural select team.
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I Cried for a Month in Saskatoon — The Uses of Homesickness
My Canadian destination was Saskatoon — freezing winters, only a few dozen Japanese residents in town. An eighteen-year-old who knew only sports, with zero English, I spent my first month homesick and in tears. People only get serious when there is nowhere to run.
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"Why Not?" — The Single Remark That Changed My Life
Every turning point in my life began with someone else's casual remark. "Why not study English abroad?" sent me to Canada. "There's someone I'd like you to meet" introduced me to my lifelong business partner.
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No Soccer Team? Then Reach the Top in Basketball
In elementary school I lived for soccer — but my junior high school had no soccer club. A moment where sulking would be understandable. Instead, I started basketball and practiced relentlessly: mornings, evenings, holidays.
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Why We Won Small Tournaments and Lost the Big Ones
My boyhood soccer team won almost every local tournament — yet at the big tournaments, we always lost. Winning small but losing big: I've carried that frustration for forty years. Small stages can be won on individual talent; big stages are decided by total preparation and team design.
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From a Perfume-Loving Teenager to a Cosmetics Chairman
I loved perfume as a high schooler — just a simple "like," with no career calculation. Yet when I job-hunted after Canada, I chose a perfume maker from six offers, because I wanted to work near what I loved. The product development I learned there opened the door to a TSE-listed company, then to my own cosmetics business, and now forms the foundation of BIOT.
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What I Learned at a Tokyo Stock Exchange Company
My product development experience earned me a place at a company listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. There I saw a world that runs not on individual hustle but on systems — for quality, approval, responsibility. But once I ran my own company, I understood: a company without systems dies when its founder falls.
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"There's Someone I'd Like You to Meet"
Around the time I decided to go independent, a friend from my trading company days said casually: "There's someone I'd like you to meet." That one remark decided my business life. From the day after our first dinner, that man and I began working together — and for more than ten years since, we have worked side by side, morning to night. Introductions carry a strange power: a trusted person often sees a compatibility that neither party has noticed.
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The Day Two Men at Rock Bottom Started with Part-Time Work
When I met our Senior Managing Director, I was in the hardest stretch of my own life — and he was at rock bottom too. Two people at the bottom usually just lick each other's wounds. "Let's climb up together!" — we worked part-time jobs side by side while stacking up challenge after challenge.
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A Company Is a Work of Art — Why I Build Our Websites Myself
A confession: every website in our group — the holding company's, each subsidiary's, and this very series page — I built with my own hands. "Is that a chairman's job?" I've been asked. My answer is firm: this is precisely the chairman's job.
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Why Celebrating in Advance Starts the Brain's Engine — The Science of Yoshuku
Let me examine our practice of yoshuku — celebrating in advance — from the brain's side. Honestly: "dream it and it comes true" is not supported by science; research reports that merely fantasizing about achievement can trick the brain into feeling it already has the prize, draining energy for action. Studies suggest those who vividly picture the desired future and squarely face present obstacles — psychologists call it mental contrasting — act the most.
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Smiles Are Contagious — A Leader's Face Is a Corporate Asset
"If I am not smiling, no one around me will smile" — my conviction apparently has scientific backing. Psychology has long studied emotional contagion: people unconsciously mirror the expressions and vocal tones before them, and the mirrored expression moves their own emotions in turn. The facial feedback effect — we don't only smile because we're happy; smiling can nudge happiness — has been studied for decades.
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The Brain Cannot Leave a Question Alone — Why This Series Ends the Same Way
Let me reveal why every installment ends with the same question. Psychology reports that the unfinished stays in memory: completed tasks are forgotten, while interrupted tasks and unanswered questions linger — the classic observation known as the Zeigarnik effect. Studies also suggest that being asked a question makes people begin observing themselves along its lines, sometimes changing behavior itself.
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Motivation Can Be Managed — My Daily Routine at Forty-Five
To close the first half of Season 1.5, let me publish my own daily brain-maintenance routine — nothing special, everything with a reason. Morning: look at the blueprint of the future and confirm today's work is part of it, igniting the approach state. Order tasks by closeness to the blueprint, not by mood.
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Connection Is Health — The Science of Companions Who Rejoice Together
This half of Season 1.5 closes by grounding our philosophy — "cherish the companions who rejoice together" — in the science of health. A famous research synthesis integrating data on hundreds of thousands of people compared predictors of long-term health and longevity and reported that the richness of social connection was among the strongest, with loneliness argued to rival widely known lifestyle risks. The director of a celebrated decades-long study of adult life concluded that what most determines happiness and health is neither wealth nor fame, but good relationships.
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The Brain Writes While You Sleep — Sleep and Memory
The next ten essays are original pieces in which I retell what brain science has shown in my own language as a manager and a man. Neuroscience reports that memory is consolidated not at the moment of learning but during sleep: the sleeping brain replays the day, moves what matters onto long-term shelves, and discards the rest. Learning does not end at the desk; it is completed in bed.
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We Become Whom We Watch — Mirror Neurons and Leading by Back
That showing beats telling is not mere folk wisdom; it is partly a matter of how the brain is built. Neuroscience has reported neurons that respond while watching another's action much as they do when performing it — the mirror neuron system. Its scope is debated, but the direction, that people trace inwardly what they see, is supported by much research and by daily experience.
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We Grow Strong Because We Laugh — Laughter and Stress
When I say we exist to increase the world's total volume of smiles, it is not a sentimental slogan; laughter does measurable work in the body. Studies report lower indicators of stress-related hormones in states of laughter and positive emotion, along with changes in pain perception and immune markers. The magnitude and conditions remain carefully debated, but the direction — that laughter moves bodily state — is widely supported.
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Name the Fear and It Shrinks — On the Amygdala
Becoming the chairman of a listed company does not remove anxiety. Because it does not, I learned how to handle it. Neuroscience reports that attaching verbal labels to emotion is accompanied by reduced activity in the amygdala, the region tied to fear and anxiety — a phenomenon called affect labeling.
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Meaning Over Reward — The Research on Intrinsic Motivation
My answer: raise it, yes — but pay alone is not enough. Psychology has reported that adding external rewards to behavior people already enjoy can reduce the motivation welling up from within, and a widely known framework holds that sustained effort requires a sense of deciding for oneself (autonomy), of getting better (mastery), and of doing something that matters (purpose). I have watched this on the floor for decades: at the same salary, the person who is trusted with a decision grows; at the same task, the person who knows whom it is for endures.
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