Kiyoshi Kurokawa's blog （en）

From Botswana to the Center of French Wine

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Romanee Conti

After spending 5 full days in Botswana, I said farewell to this charming nation to the next destination in the evening of February 28th.  By the next morning, March 1st, I was at Paris CDG airport via Johannesburg.  Took TGV to Dijon（photo 1） then from here to the center of Burgundy wine.   Then got on a car to run throughRoute des Grands Cru stopping by at ‘Romanee-Conti’ （only about 1.8 hectare…）（photo top and 2）, everybody’s dream, and finally arrived at Savigny les Beaune, the heart of Burgundy wine .  Here the vineyard spread for more than 40km!

In the afternoon, relaxed at one of the local wineries ‘Simon Bize et Fils‘ (Ref.1) (Photos). Time passes slowly here.  We enjoyed various good tasting wines.

Next day, we spent half day at Beaune ‘The Center of the Burgundy Wine’ （Photos）  This town had good soothing atmosphere, good food, sweets, chocolates…  We had lunch at ‘Caves Madeleine’.  As you can imagine from her name Mrs. Rika is Japanese.

 Photo１To Dijon by TGV

 Photo ２ Romanee-Conti

 

Caves Madeleine、Madame Rika and her husband Monsieur Rawland.

Food is all nice and fresh here and wine is of course local product..  Here, life is so nice.  I saw several Japanese youths in apprenticeship of wine making and other jobs.  There were some who even plan to stay here for living.  It is encouraging to see those focused and determined young people.

‘Hospices les Beaune’ (Photos)  a hospice known throughout the world, was established in 15th century in this town.

And of course this place is famous for Dijon Mustard.

I will stay here for two nights before leaving for Paris, my next destination.

 

‘Medicine and Art’ Exhibition Opens

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An exhibition‘Medicine and Art’ opened at Mori Art Museum. It is the fruit of nearly 2 years of planning, collaborating with Wellcome Trust  and will be exhibited until the end of next February.  Since I knew that Wellcome Trust is the largest foundation in the United Kingdom supporting medical research but is also making efforts to promote arts related to medicine, I was very happy to support this project - although there was not much that I could do to contribute.

Mr. and Mrs. Mori, the owner of Mori Art Museum, Mr. Nanjo, the Director of the Museum, and the museum staffs, His Excellency Warren, the Ambassador of UK to Japan, Mr. Kan Suzuki, Vice Minister of MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology), (in Japanese) attended the opening ceremony and reception.  I also gave a speech to congratulate the opening.

Among the exhibitions were several valuable drawings of anatomy by Da Vinci.  The words were written in ‘mirror writing’.  Also at display was a sketch by Michelangelo - a rare piece from the collection of The Royal Collection.  Since Michelangelo was a sculptor, he had a habit of burning sketches away one after another so only about 200 pieces are left, the fact which is unbelievable.  The paintings at the ceiling and the Last Judgment of Sistine Chapel in Vatican, are widely known as his masterpiece.  I remember having an opportunity of seeing some 90 of the sketches by Michelangelo in an exhibition 3 years ago (in Japanese).

A variety of special programs including lectures are offered at ‘Medicine and Art’.  I recommend you to visit this special exhibit.

Two Executive Sessions; Thoughts on Leadership, Innovation and Women Power

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Recently, I have experienced two executive sessions, one in London for top Global company of one major business sector on its global strategy; the company just underwent successfully a merger acquisition.

The member was extraordinary in that of its total 10 members from 10 countries (one woman), many have held very high positions for the government or administrative arms, eg, Minister, Supreme Court judge, Congress member, of their country and the region (eg, EU). They include, for example, Pat Cox, Chair of our panel, President of the EU Parliament (2002-04), and Chuck Hagel, Republican Senator for 12 years until this January. After some conversation with Mr Hagel, I firmly felt he is a very thoughtful and good politician gentleman. He is well known as the most outspoken critic of President Bush’s policy to Iran. I knew he assumed Chairman of the Atlantic Council, a powerful ‘Think-tank’ based in Washington DC, as I reported earlier this year. He told me that he was just invited by President Obama to Co-Chair the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, a very good news, indeed.

Pat Cox’s chairmanship of our session was outstanding, being very smooth and affirmative, and managing the entire meeting session with presentations by the corporate leadership followed by various questions and suggestions, taking notes even on seating and each members and corporate officers. I always feel privileged when I get to know peoples with such distinguished career through discussions and private conversation. I cold learn so much from them. Incidentally, a half of the corporate representation was women including its chair.

Upon return to Tokyo, I was in another executive session for one of global brand company of Japan whose sales in Japan accounts for about 25% of total annual revenue. The team headed by its CEO worked hard and developed issues for us to discuss. I enjoy the session very much with unusually lively questions and debates. This is because our members are pretty much out-of-box type individuals, for example, Natsuno-san (Ret.1) who invented iMode. It is amazing to see only one woman among total of about 15 members from the corporate side, not to mention none in its executive level.

The ideas of this company, in my view, are somehow derived from and targeted to men-thinking. Thus, one of my questions has been the fact that daily and major decisions for purchases are made by women as described in ‘The Real Emerging Market’ of my blog posting with a photo of the cover of Newsweek and in a more recent special report in Time (US version), Oct 26th, 2009, ‘What Women Want Now’ (Ref.1).  Mind you, the products may be targeted primarily to men, but the decisions to buy are made by women more often than one may imagine.

This gender issue is everywhere of Japanese society which needs a fix fast, which could serve as ‘Change Agent‘ of Japanese society and economy as I repeatedly insist in this website and recently in my interview in Japan Times.

Another thought occurred to me in these two sessions was the impression that somehow these high ranking officials in both companies may not have much of sense of what may be happening in this rapidly flattening world, ie, ‘Open and Demand-driven Innovation.’ This is becoming a very important core perception of every business sector in the global world.

A course of Prof. Mario Tokoro, e-mails in English

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Dr. Mario Tokoro of SONY CSL whom I have introduced to you in my posting of August 24  is also a Professor at Keio University (actually he moved to SONY CSL from Keio) and is offering a course on “Innovation” for graduate school students of science and engineering.

I was invited to give a lecture at the Yagami campus of Keio University.  The audience was about 120 students (master course and doctoral course), and I spent very enjoyable 90 minutes talking to those earnest students and answering to their questions.

In the end, as always, I requested them to listen to the 14 minutes’ commencement speech of Steve Jobs at Stanford in 2005.  I asked the students to listen and understand this speech by the creator of Apple, iTune, iPod, iPhone, etc. and tell me by e-mail via my website their reaction to it; what they felt or thought.

In the evening of that day, I received 4 e-mails.  I sent reply to all of them.  But after that - none came.

After having waited for several days in vain, I telephoned Dr. Tokoro to ask why.  He said “I think the students couldn’t believe that an important person like you could really mean what you said.”  So, I asked Dr. Tokoro to “Please tell the students to send me e-mails.  No need to be shy.”  Few days later, a flood of about 50 e-mails came in in two days!  Many of them were written in English.

I read the mails for 2 nights, sent my response to each one of them, and reported so to Dr. Tokoro.  I included Dr. Tokoro in CC to some of my responses since I thought he would enjoy reading them, too.  I stayed up for most of those two nights, but well worth it because there were so many things being said, including reactions to my lecture, in those e-mails.  Being able to exchange views with the students is also very amusing.

About a week later, one student sent me a message saying “Dr. Tokoro said that you responded to all e-mails from the students.  But I’m afraid I haven’t received your reply.”  I rushed to my PC to check.  Yes, I missed just one.  It was a fairly long, good writing.  I started my response by an apology for overlooking his e-mail.

By the way, I write my e-mails in English most of the time.  Even to the messages in Japanese, I reply in English.  When Dr. Tokoro introduced me to the students, he said “Dr. Kurokawa’s e-mails are always in English” so quite a few students challenged sending me an English e-mail.

Why English?  It’s not because it’s cool.  I have mainly 4 reasons.  My typing is not fast and not blind touch, to begin with…

1. Writing in Japanese needs converting typed letters to Kanji etc. which is time consuming.

2.  If I mistype one key of a word or phrase, I have to repeat all over again for that word or phrase, which is time consuming.

3.  In English, the meaning is understood even if I misspell a bit so I don’t have to be too nervous about hitting wrong keys.

4. And most importantly, language reflects culture.  In Japanese, ‘vertical’ relations such as titles or positions in society must be considered when deciding how you begin the letter.  You must first write some phrase of greetings such as “It’s been long time since I contacted you last time…” and so on (not a short one), to show respect politely.  Sometimes when I read those messages, I wonder what their point is.  English of course also has many polite ways of expression, but since people are basically “equal” as a person you can go straight and clear into the point without being rude.  In a ‘vertical’ society like Japan, one has to be mindful of the social positions of his/her counterpart; superiors vs. subordinates, professors vs. students, etc.  In my case, since most of the people I correspond with are younger than me, such as those students, it should be convenient for them to use English because they do not have to worry about greetings or being polite.  But I do have an impression that Japanese people are not used to writing in English.  My advice is – ‘just get used to it’.

Writing e-mails in English has an advantage of being able to convey your message clearly without worrying much about misspellings.   But sometimes your expressions could be too straight forward and there are times when you have to be fairly careful about it.

Reformer of Education for the Global Age

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After the Rehman shock, Japanese economy’s status is worse than it was initially anticipated by domestic authorities and the weakness of the structure of industry is rising to the surface.  'The 1955 Regime', beginning of 'Iron-Triangle Regime' of Post-War Japan coming to a deadlock may have something to do with this.  When situations like this take place, it is always the case that some people start discussing “Leader theory” that sounds nostalgic of the activities of the people in the Meiji era such as in the novel by Ryotaro Shiba, “Saka no Ue no Kumo” (Ref. 1).  However, the situation is very different today and their viewpoints seem irrelevant.　

Changes in the world today will not wait for Japan to catch up.  If we think of 5, 10, 20 years ahead from now, it is perfectly clear that the producing future human resources should be the most important basis of national policies (in Japanese).  Search in this site by keywords such as “human resources”, or “education” since there are many columns that I have written on this theme.

Budget for education is extremely small in Japan compared to other developed countries.  Political parties at last came up with manifests with budgets for “children, education” included for the next Shugi-in election – a speed not at all impressively wonderful.

However, though reinforcement of conventional budget on education is important, it is much more necessary to create strong policies for producing variety of talents for the future challenges.  At present, the changes in this nation are too small and timid even at the level of university education.  I have been pointing this out so many times in this site (Ref.1, 2) and although I do notice some good drastic attempts they are unfortunately too small to become big trends.  Such activities at Asia Pacific University or Akita International University , for example, are not well known even in Japan.  Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy, HItotsubashi University  is a revolutionary program open to the world and is evaluated highly by international standards.

By the way, reforms are underway in many of the Western universities as well as in the field of education utilizing IT technologies such as internet where totally new potentials are being sought after or being put into practice.  In this respect there are several Japanese active in overseas universities such as Dr. Miyagawa who was involved in the development of MIT’s OpenCourseWare  or Dr. Iiyoshi, who is seeking for new possibilities having recently moved to MIT from the Carnegie Foundation.

I met Dr. Iiyoshi in Dubai last year (Ref.1, 2)  Recently he edited and published a book “Opening Up Education” together with Dr. Vijay Kumar.  The book is highly evaluated as you can see from the book reviews written by people such as Dr. Charles Vest (who was the President of MIT for many years.  Search for topics related to him in my site.)

Photo: Dr. Iiyoshi and I at GRIPS

Recently, I had an opportunity to see Dr. Iiyoshi.  I learned that there is a possibility of unimaginably big change in the field of education in this “Flattening” world.  People of the world are very much devoted in effort to produce leaders who will lead the politics, industries, universities in the global societies with clear vision, strong will, and strong energy by strengthening the potentials of young generation, their spirits of challenge, minds not afraid to change in the face of this global age.

I strongly advise people of Japan to listen open mindedly to the opinions of educators such as Drs. Miyagawa and Iiyoshi, who have minds full of love for the nation (see footnote), working actively at “outside”, seeing Japan from “outside”

Footnote: Person with love for the nation as I understand is “Patriot” not “Nationalist”.

Asian Innovation Forum

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Mr. Nobuyuki Idei is one of the globally active business leaders.  I agree very much with his philosophy as well as his view of the time.  After retiring from the position of Chairman of Sony, he started a new challenge by setting up a new business consulting/investment firm named “Quantum Leaps” .  Many talented young people are gathering there to start new businesses or to support inception of new businesses.  His commitment as the great senior of business world is so admirable.

One of Quantum Leaps’ various activities is Asian Innovation Forum which was initiated in 2007.  I have the honor of joining in this forum to offer some help.  Unfortunately, I had to miss the 2007 meeting but did participate in 2008.  A great rise of energy and enthusiasm was felt in the air.

This year’s forum will take place in Tokyo on September 14th and 15th.   Dr. Hirotaka Takeuchi (Dean, Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy at Hitotsubashi University, also well known in connection with the Davos meeting etc.) and I will participate as senior advisors but most of the plans and discussions will be carried out by young members.  We all share Mr. Idei’s vision and the event should be very enjoyable.

Search with keywords such as “Idei” or “Takeuchi” in this site and I am sure that the search engine will come up with many “hits”.

The forum posted an announcement ad on Nikkei newspaper .  I whole heartedly wish that new businesses - driving force for the growth of economy - will emerge from such networks as in this forum.

I feel that wonderfully energetic young people; capable of developing “personal” power, open-minded to the world, spreading networks with high speed, are emerging one after another.  Each one of them are the resources we need for the good of this nation’s future.  They are our hope, and I intend to help them in any way I can.

University Students of the United Arab Emirates visit Japan

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The United Arab Emirates; UAE has a strong relationship with Japan.  Dubai and Abu Dhabi are probably the most popular among the cities of UAE.  Please search for these cities in this site since I also have had several opportunities to visit UAE since 2007.

Especially, Dubai had been the topic of the whole world for its fast growth but now things seem to be halting as if to see the trend probably partly due to the global economic crisis.

Among the Emirates, Abu Dhabi is the largest, producing most of the oil of UAE.  50% of its export goes to Japan, and 25% of oil import of Japan comes from Abu Dhabi. Thus, Japan and Abu Dhabi have been building good relationship and Abu Dhabi is known for being a pro-Japan city.

Photo; Students from Khalifa University, Faculty members of Keio University, people from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, His Excellency Hatano. In white clothes are the students from UAE.  This clothes are called Kandura (Ref.1)

Students from Khalifa University (it is a university of science and engineering) in Abu Dhabi visited Japan twice for about a week in a group of about 15 each time.  The first group was all female and the second group was all male.  I had an opportunity to meet the latter group.  I was told that they had quite a full time by visiting Keio University and the research facilities at Tsukuba.

Exchanges of young people are very important for the future.  They will all be partners in the global world.

Most of the students were from UAE, but some came from Sudan Palestine, Lebanon, or Syria.

Emirates Airline that uses Dubai as the hub base is famous, but an airline of Abu Dhabi, Etihad is also scheduled to operate in Narita from 2010.

My favorite brand COED beer

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As in the saying "a grain of pepper may be tiny but it still is sharp on the tongue," COEDO Beer is a "tiny but sharp" and stunningly "cool" brand.

COED means "little Edo."  Yes, it's Kawagoe in Saitama prefecture.  COED beer is manufactured in Kawagoe.

Take their website for instance - you will be impressed by its classy design.  A soothing, slow flow of time is in the atmosphere.  Good English site is available.  So sit back, relax and enjoy for a moment.

The beer comes in 5 types, 5 colors.  "Ruri," "Beniaka," "Kyara," "Shiro," and "Shikkoku."

Each beer is different in tastes, colors, and has beautiful labels.  You can almost feel in the air their posing you a question "Which one is your favorite?"  The choice may differ depending on time and situation.

COEDO beer has a wonderful record of prizes.  It is almost moving.  From the very beginning the brewery focused on being recognized internationally.  So, at the 2007 Monde Selection all  5 brands won awards including 2 special golden medals.  Products winning silver medals in 2008 challenged again. The total now is Special Gold Medals for "Ruri," "Beniaka," "Shikkoku" and Gold Medals for "Kyara" and "Shiro."  Have you ever heard of beers with such achievements before?   If yes, please let me know.

This year at one of the most prestigious food contest "iTQi (International Taste and Quality Institute) Contest", "Beniaka" was given the highest 3 stars award, and the other four brands won 2 stars meaning that all five brands became winners.  On top of that, a Crystal Award.  Package design and bottle design were also awarded prizes respectively.

The key to victory is "difference."  A brand strategy that focuses on a selected target.  This is a typical example of innovation in global age.

President Asagiri of COEDO brewery, and all who work there - I congratulate you for this another success of 2008.  It is so very wonderful.

"Nobel Prize and Academy Award" dialogue – a follow up

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A short time ago, I posted a story about my experience of being offered a rare opportunity of hosting an extremely charming dialogue under this title.

The dialogue was published on "Weekly Diamond" magazine so please have a look.

Enjoy reading the views and insights of Dr. Tanaka and Mr. Kato.  Also included in the article is my opinion, in short, "out of the box kind of people of the age bring changes to the society."  Search by key word "out of the box" within this site.  The search engine should hit a number of columns, since I have written repeatedly about it.

Education and human resource development for promoting 'Multilayered International Exchange'

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Over these 20 years and more, I have been pointing out the importance of having young people involved in competition away from home ground (Taryu-jiai) in the world.  Professional sports opened up their doors to the world too; Nomo in 1995 in Major League, FIFA World Cup and J League.  These sports earn high television viewerships in Japan just like in any other countries – the goals and values of young people are changing to the same direction as the young people in the rest of the world.

Even Sumo, the 'National sport' of Japan, have internationalized totally and the last two matches in the last two days of latest summer tournament were done by non-Japanese only.  The rates of number of foreign rikishis (sumo wrestlers) were in grand total 7%, Makuuchi 30%, Sanyaku 40%, and Yokozuna 100%.  Nevertheless, I don't think Japanese are being especially furious or anything about this.  Japanese also cheer for their good plays, and at the same time this in effect spreads the value of Japanese cultures to the world.  People liking Japan will increase through such experiences.

Yes, the basis of a nation is human resource development and this is the most important task for the future of Japan.  For the coming global age nothing is more needed than to urge young people to see the world outside – in order to recognize the differences or variety of people of the world, the value of oneself and to build up global networks of friends and colleagues for their future.  This is the recommendation I have been proposing repeatedly in my website.

In this year's January/February issue of 'Foreign Affairs,' Dr. Anne Marie Slaughter, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, wrote a wonderful paper.  When I compare this with the universities in Japan, I feel very uneasy and worried about the future of Japan.  Dr. Slaughter was appointed to the Director of Policy Planning of the U.S. Department of State starting from the end of January.  A nice selection!

Recently, I participated in a meeting at the World Bank.  The content of my discussion is highlighted in its website.  I take this as a sign that people are supporting my view.  It is about the importance of 'Multilayered Brain Circulation.'

Now, can Japan change? Ozumo-nization of universities and industries are so tardy – too many professors and CEOs are interested in domestics only, don't you think?

Please search within this website by various key words as the ones I have highlighted in Bold.