I grew up in the upper reaches of Yokohama, surrounded by forests, mountains and rice patties. When I was in elementary and junior high school, I did not excel at activities such as baseball and soccer, where participants had to follow a certain set of rules. Rather, I relished more carefree and leisurely activities such as catching crayfish, exploring mountains, and playing cops and robbers. I was engrossed in freedom. Since my body underwent puberty relatively late and I had a small build, I always dreamed about winning fights. When I was in junior high school I bought a book on karate and practiced karate kicks in my backyard. During my four years at university, I practiced Japanese Shaolin kung fu. My grades at school were very unbalanced; I did well in subjects where theories could be applied, such as physics and mathematics, but did poorly in areas, such as history and the classics, where a great deal of rote memorization was required.

Although my major in university was electrical engineering, I wound up deciding to do something completely unrelated to my major by becoming a policeman. My choice, made by the simple trains of thought, such as “I want to be a policeman,” or “being a policeman seems interesting,” were primarily out of simple intuition. In this regard, people around me thought that I was strange and my parents worried a great deal about my decision. I didn’t care; I wanted to decide how I would live my life on my own.

After working for a while as a policeman, I decided that I wanted to make a living doing business and made up my mind to become a patent attorney after browsing through a magazine that listed certifications. I quit my job as a policeman and transferred to a patent office and I managed to become a full-fledged patent attorney after three years of studying hard. As a patent attorney, I worked at the same patent office diligently for a while. Another five years later, I decided to become independent. I think this was a very natural route to take, upon reflection.

All of the big choices in my life were out of gut feeling; a sort of intuition. I think there is a part of me that is willing to take a leap of faith and do what my heart tells me is right.

I am currently engaged in a new kind of work. It is to enhance people’s creative and innovative capacities and to create new things that have value. There are methodologies that exist that help to draw out such abilities, and Western companies and schools have already employed such methods effectively. My goal is to spread this in Japan as well as in other Asian countries, so that more impressive things are made in Japan and Asia as a whole.