Wellness
Health, wellbeing and everyday practice — including the brain-science themes of the chairman's Season 1.5 essays.
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CEO Essays·
To the Boy Who Never Knew How to Study
I read without understanding; I failed at arithmetic. Looking back, I wasn't unintelligent — I had never been taught how to learn. So I poured myself into sports, where effort visibly converted into results.
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Designing a Company on the Five Elements
Our group is designed on the five elements of Eastern philosophy — wood, fire, water, metal, earth. Wood (INSTINCT BROTHERS) grows products and brands; fire (INSTINCT RAS) ignites talent; water (HIROKI GLOBAL) carries trusted materials from around the world; metal (ARTISANS PRODUCTION) transforms materials into products; and the earth — our holding company — supports them all. Standard org charts describe functions; I wanted to design the company as a living organism, where each element generates the next and the whole circulates.
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2017: We Started from Materials Science
Our current path began in 2017, with materials science. Countless cosmetics companies are, in essence, planning-and-marketing companies — factories and trading houses supply the rest. We entered from the opposite end: the deepest layer, raw materials, because that is where quality originates.
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The Day We Built Our Factory in Kakegawa
In 2019 we built our own factory in Kakegawa, Shizuoka. Outsourcing keeps you light — no capital investment, no maintenance, no hiring. We built anyway, because I refused to entrust the heart of our manufacturing to others.
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Yoshuku — Those Who Celebrate First Pull the Future In
Japan has an old tradition called yoshuku — "pre-celebration." Hanami, cherry-blossom viewing, was originally a ritual to celebrate autumn's harvest in advance: feast under the blossoms for rice not yet grown, and pull that future toward you. Long before our listing was certain, we raised glasses "as if" listed; we have already celebrated becoming a trillion-yen company, more than once. Pre-celebration makes a future yours — no longer an unseen goal but a landscape already tasted.
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If I Don't Smile, No One Around Me Will
My most important self-discipline as a chairman is not health or time management — it is my own smile. If I am not smiling, the people around me will never smile. A leader's expression becomes the organization's weather: if I cloud over, meetings cloud over, then the workplace, and eventually even customers feel it.
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On the Frightening Face I Wear When I Concentrate
A confession: I, too, have hours when my face turns fierce — when I am concentrating, striving in earnest. After writing so much about smiles, this may seem contradictory. My foundation is to be fundamentally smiling, always wanting to deliver smiles; upon that foundation, my brow furrows at decisive moments.
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What Neuroscience Taught Me at 45
I turn forty-five this year, and I have come to appreciate the power of brain science — not as an academic field, but as a simple truth: human drive is determined less by willpower than by the state of the brain. When I am excited, I work dawn to dusk without fatigue; ideas flow, decisions come fast. The same man, drained of excitement, finds even simple tasks heavy.
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I Have Decided Never to Run Away
Asked to state my management philosophy in one word: never run. It sounds gallant; the reality is muddier. In business, moments that tempt you to flee arrive regularly — unpleasant reports, heavy negotiations, cleaning up your own failures — and escape routes are always provided.
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The Math Behind Delighting Ten Billion People
We chase one number — not revenue, not profit, but the number of people we have delighted. Ten thousand, a million, a hundred million — and ten billion. Count person × occasion — delighted by our cosmetics, by their health, ten and twenty years on — and ten billion is almost modest.
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"There Is Nothing We Have to Change"
After our listing was set, our Senior Managing Director thought hard and said: "I've been asking myself what must change now that we're a public company's officers — and my answer is: nothing. The real risk is becoming satisfied, stiff, conservative — ceasing to challenge. Changing in the bad sense is our greatest risk." Exactly.
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Children's Smiles Became My Conviction
Ask him why he continues this work, and his answer is fixed: "The smiles of the children, their teams, and their parents — and repaying the companies that sponsor us." A designer from Hiroshima who lost his business to COVID arrived at "children's smiles" — a landing I find beautiful. His dreams extend along that line: growing the tournament nationwide; supporting players' development and even their second careers; showcasing each host region's specialties to raise the region's own value; and someday delivering all of it to children around the world. All six of our executives landed on "smiles" in their separate essays.
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Human Stem Cells Struck Me Instantly
Why did a veteran of global finance choose us for his final act? Working furiously in Singapore, he received a call from an old audit-firm acquaintance: a Japanese company aiming to list was seeking a CFO. A conversation he would normally decline — but something nagged, so he listened.
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Six Essays, All Landed on 'Smiles'
I asked every executive to write a life essay — birth to present to future — with no format, no theme, no required conclusion, each written separately, unseen by the others. When the essays returned, I was astonished. Six utterly different lives — a former national-team trainer, a designer, a global finance veteran, officers risen from the floor — all landed, in their final lines, on the same word: smiles.
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We Are Not a Cosmetics Company
A sentence from our Senior Managing Director's essay deserves to stand as our company's definition: "Cosmetics may be our foundation today, but neither the chairman nor I have ever thought of this as a cosmetics company. What we operate is a company that increases the total amount of smiles in the world — unchanged since the day we met." Define a company by what it sells, and its meaning gets lost the moment the product changes. Define it by why it exists, and no change of product can shake it.
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It Begins With One Smile
Let me share the first article of our internal manifesto: "It begins with one smile. We exist to make one person's life a little better. One smile changes a family; a family changes a community; communities change society; and when society changes, the world changes.
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Health is the Starting Point of Life
The second article of our manifesto binds our whole business into one idea: "Health is the starting point of life. It is the strength to hold dreams, take on challenges, and live each day smiling. That is why we encompass beauty, wellness, food, education, work, and community — all exist to enrich life and deliver smiles." Why does a cosmetics company make health foods and look toward food, agriculture, education?
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Profit is the Strength to Challenge
On profit we offer neither platitudes nor contrarianism. Our manifesto's fourth article is explicit: "Profit is the strength to challenge. We do not deny profit — it is fuel for challenging the future.
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From Materials to Smiles – The Chain Story
Asked to explain our business in one phrase, I say: "From materials to smiles." Source trusted raw materials from around the world; research them; formulate; manufacture in our own factory; deliver as brands; and at the end stands the smile of the person who uses them. We hold this entire chain within our group — vertical integration, our shape. Because a chain breaks at its weakest link.
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Make the Invisible Visible With Data
Within our group is a company for sourcing and analysis, whose motto is: "Make the invisible visible through data." Cosmetics and wellness have long been worlds of feeling — "it seems moisturizing," "it seems to work," "the ingredient sounds good." Much of the industry stands atop accumulated "seems." We bring data there: analyze what is inside raw materials, verify quality in numbers, and allow only the proven onto Japanese manufacturing lines — converting "it seems" into "we confirmed." Why go so far? Because these things touch skin and enter mouths, where quality is hard to see. The less visible a product's goodness, the more honest a company must be in the invisible places.
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One Trillion Yen is Not the Purpose
We hold a long-term vision of a one-trillion-yen market capitalization. Reactions split in two: those who laugh, "How grandiose," and those who ask, "Why one trillion?" To the latter I answer: one trillion is not the purpose — it is a declaration of scale. Our purpose is to bring joy, smiles, and gratitude to every person in the world.
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Deciding by Faces, Not Just Numbers
Let me record my final check when a management decision hangs in the balance. I examine the numbers, of course — market size, margins, risk; management without numbers is gambling. But when the numbers are all in and I still waver, the last thing I look at is faces.
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Our Dream for Food and Agriculture
Among our dreams is the field of food and agriculture. Why does a cosmetics company speak of farmland? Trace how our daily meals, foods, and drinks come to be, and you always arrive at the same place: soil.
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Someday, Build a Town
Let me speak of our farthest dream: someday, we want to build a town. People gather from around the world; employment is born; people are paid, work together, and enjoy the town-building itself; the world's cultures arrive, mingle, and new culture is born. Because our purpose, pursued to its end, arrives there.
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What Comes After AI?
We already live in the age of the AI wars — companies worldwide racing to develop and deploy, believing the master of AI masters the next era. But a leader must always think about what comes next. After AI, I believe, comes quantum technology.
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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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Dopamine Fires on Approach, Not Arrival — The True Nature of Excitement
Research on dopamine, the brain chemical deeply tied to drive, reports a crucial property: it works more strongly while approaching an anticipated reward than at the moment of receiving it. The brain burns hottest not when it has obtained, but while it feels itself closing in. This matches my fifty years of experience exactly — the days running toward our listing were hotter than the listing day itself.
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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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What Changes When You Write "Thank You" — The Research on Gratitude
On gratitude, psychology has a famous family of experiments: some participants list things they are grateful for each week, others record hassles or mere events, and weeks later the groups are compared — with the gratitude writers reporting greater well-being and optimism. From writing alone, while circumstances changed not at all. The explanation is thought to lie in attention: the brain defaults to scanning for danger and lack, a useful survival habit, and a gratitude practice forces a weekly scan of what one already has and has received.
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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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Writing Orders the Mind — The Science Behind Management by Essay
When our executives wrote their life essays, one said: "I finally organized what my life has been." That sense of writing-as-organizing has a research pedigree. Psychology has long studied the effects of repeatedly writing about one's own significant experiences; a well-known line of studies reports beneficial changes in people who wrote for some minutes daily across several days. Writing gives swirling events the shape of a story — with a beginning and an end — and a shaped experience leaves the whirlpool of rumination and settles onto a shelf.
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Environment Builds the Brain — On Standing Somewhere Slightly Higher
Behavioral science repeatedly shows that human behavior is shaped less by individual resolve than by surrounding environments and relationships. Famous research reported that obesity, smoking, even happiness tend to spread through social ties; the standards around you quietly rewrite your "normal" — income, learning, appetite for challenge, all pulled toward the average of those you keep company with. One executive's essay is a living specimen: thrown among the prefecture's best as a freshman, he hyperventilated, clung on, and in six months owned a different body; at twenty-five, another stepped among adults who worked with joy, and his life began to change.
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Habit Beats Will — The Science of Stacking Small
How long until a new behavior automates into habit? Habit-formation research reports an average of around two months — sometimes half a year or more depending on the person and behavior. Quitting after three days is not weak will; it is passing judgment before automation could occur.
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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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The Mechanics of Attraction — Expectation, Attention, Action, Result
Asked whether I believe in the law of attraction, I answered: not as magic — but as a mechanism, with conviction. In a classic study, merely giving teachers the expectation that certain children would bloom was followed by those children's actual improvement — expectation changes treatment, treatment changes people, prophecy becomes fact. The brain discards torrents of information every second, keeping what you are searching for — buy a new car and the streets suddenly fill with the same model.
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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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Ideas Arrive When You Walk — Movement and the Brain
Good ideas do not arrive at the desk; they arrive while walking — and that is not merely a feeling. The effect of exercise on the brain is among the most active research areas of recent years: aerobic activity is reported to enhance factors supporting the growth and survival of neurons, with benefits for memory-related regions, mood stability and concentration, and experiments have reported broader idea generation while walking. Until I left for Canada at eighteen I was nothing but an athlete; I could not study, but I never stopped moving my body — and perhaps those years built the foundation of my brain.
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Words Reset the Brain — The Science of Self-Talk
We talk to ourselves all day long, and the quality of those words decides our state. Psychology studies self-talk: addressing oneself by name or as "you" rather than "I" is reported to create distance from emotion, improving composure and performance under pressure. Distance alone changes how the brain handles the moment.
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One Breath Switches the Body — The Physiology of Tension
Before any big moment I do exactly one thing: exhale slowly and long. Research on the autonomic nervous system shows that inhaling and exhaling shift heart rate and bodily state; a slow, extended exhale is reported to support the calming side of the system. When tension shortens the breath, the body concludes "danger" and thinking narrows; deliberately lengthening the breath sends the opposite signal from body to brain.
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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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Why the Brain Says "Tomorrow" — The Anatomy of Procrastination
Procrastination is not weak will; it is the natural consequence of how the brain values time. Behavioral economics repeatedly confirms that people steeply discount the future: the same reward feels smaller when distant, while a small pleasure at hand looms large. "Success in three years" loses to "one more drink tonight." The human brain comes fitted with a lens that shrinks whatever is far away.
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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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The Brain Can Change at Any Age — Plasticity as Hope
Season 1.5 closes with the one line I most want to leave: the brain can change at any age. It was once believed that adult brains were fixed. Neuroscience has repeatedly shown otherwise — neuroplasticity, the continual remaking of neural connections through experience and learning.
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