Thoughts from the President

Enter the world of uncompromising professionalism

As president, my background may be a bit unique. I was actually a professional soccer player.

At the age of 18, I signed a contract from the youth team of Yomiuri Soccer Club (now Tokyo Verdy) as a member of the first team, which had already turned professional at that time. Although it was still before the start of the J-League season, it was also around this time that I participated in international friendlies as a candidate for the Olympic team. At the time, my colleagues were players such as Tomoyoshi Miura and Rui Ramos.
In the world of professional sports, results are everything. You have to think for yourself, make your own decisions, and boldly take on challenges to produce results. It is a world where no compromise or laxity is tolerated. Because a single failure can be fatal.

The year before the start of the J-League season, I transferred to a Brazilian first division team out of my strong desire to challenge Brazil as a professional player. I dared to jump into a world that was even tougher than the one I was used to. While watching a game there, I caught the eye of Emerson Leon (later the manager of Shimizu S-Pulse), and I joined the J-League's Shimizu S-Pulse team.

Catastrophic Injury and a Second Try in Brazil

During one of my matches, I suffered a fatal injury as a soccer player. The injury was so severe that a bone in my leg popped out, and I was immediately rushed by ambulance to the hospital for emergency surgery. The coach thought I would never be able to play soccer again. However, I did not give up playing soccer. With hard rehabilitation, I managed to play in the local league.

Once I was able to compete, I wondered if I was really back on my feet. My spirit of challenge was tingling again, and I thought, 'I want to try myself in Brazil again. It was a second chance to go to Brazil. I returned to my former professional team in Brazil and played there for a little over a year.

Two things I learned from challenging the world as a professional

At the age of 18, I threw myself into the professional world and twice challenged the rigors of the real Brazilian world. Looking back, I feel that I learned and acquired many things during this period. Among them, I believe that I have nurtured two things that are close to my current beliefs.

One is a relentless spirit of challenge. In the world of professional sports, everything was about taking on challenges and producing results. I was able to realize my own evolution only by thinking and acting on those results and making them into the next result.

The other is a global, bare-bones feeling, with no prejudice against nationality or race. Especially in Brazil, it does not matter what nationality or race your teammates are. Rather, they are required to show off their skills without hesitation. Even in such a situation, through hard practices and matches, we shared victories, made friendships, and formed trusting relationships with many people. I believe this is the global spirit that I was able to gain because I was so serious.

Challenging the world through business

During my active career, I had a dim idea that I wanted to work in some way related to soccer even after I quit playing. However, the moment I decided to join Kyodo, I promised myself that I would never touch a ball, let alone play soccer, for three years. I wanted to seriously immerse myself in the business world and not look back.

I started from scratch in Taiwan, where I did not even understand the language. At that time, Kyodo started manufacturing parts for Japan in Taiwan, where production costs were lower than in Japan. The company was required to promote business speedily, but it was essential to reach a consensus on all important matters off site. However, my father, who was the president of the company, was extremely busy with the launch of the local subsidiary in the U.S., and it was difficult for him to make quick decisions. Even though I still had no idea what was going on, I was strangely aware of the irrationality of the organization and Japanese companies. Perhaps it was because I was experiencing firsthand the laxity and ambiguity of the Japanese people, which was different from the professional environment I had been placed in until then.

I started from scratch in Taiwan, where I did not even understand the language. At that time, Kyodo started manufacturing parts for Japan in Taiwan, where production costs were lower than in Japan. The company was required to promote business speedily, but it was essential to reach a consensus on all important matters offsite.
However, my father, who was president at the time, was extremely busy with the launch of the local subsidiary in the U.S., making it difficult for me to make quick decisions. Even though I still had no idea what was going on, I strangely sensed the irrationality of the organization and Japanese companies. Perhaps it was because I was experiencing firsthand the laxity and ambiguity of the Japanese people, which was different from the professional environment I had been placed in until then.

Once I had a thorough understanding of my job, I began to challenge the world with the borderless sense I had when I was a player, not only at the production site in Taiwan, but also by setting up sales activities in overseas markets on my own. First of all, in order to take on the challenge from world to world, I set up a local subsidiary in Thailand while negotiating on my own. I negotiated directly with the local people, even though I would normally ask a lawyer or an agent to do so. By doing so, I was able to clarify what they wanted, and I thought I could format the procedures for setting up the next factory or local subsidiary, and even the scale of the investment to some extent. We wanted to serve as a role model for Kyodo when they set up a new local subsidiary or factory.

In the future, I believe it will be possible to make investment decisions quickly, starting from a small scale, and anyone other than myself can go to the local market to set up a base. The Thai subsidiary has also established a global structure to serve the Southeast Asian market, which embodies my vision of a borderless, global company that is accepted by the local community.

Currently, the Kyodo Group is building a global network in the U.S., Brazil, China, and Europe, taking advantage of mutual benefits in production, procurement, sales, and alliances. In this context, we are not only manufacturing industrial production parts, but also taking on the challenge of producing finished products, mainly our own products, and jointly developing robot products that apply state-of-the-art technology, and we are taking on more and more challenges in new fields.

As president, I will continue to support the activities and challenges of young people who are not bound by existing fields or technologies. Supporting the challenges of the younger generation is my next challenge.