INTERVIEW

2050: The Odyssey Begins
At the Heiligendamm G8 Summit earlier this year, Japan put forward a strategy to combat global warming called Cool Earth 50 (CE50). Nextyear’s summit will be held at Toyako in Hokkaido, Japan. We spoke to Special Advisor to the Cabinet Kurokawa Kiyoshi, who has served aspresident of the Science Council of Japan and currently heads the Innovation 25 Strategy Council, about the direction of Japan’s CE50 longterm vision and efforts to nurture the human resources needed to carry it through.
meeting in January 2008 and the GlobalHealth Summit with the World Bank andothers in February, it is my hope that wewill be able to sustain the same level ofmomentum through to the Tokyo Inter­national Conference on African Develop­
ment (TICAD) in May and into the run-up
to the Toyako summit.
At the close of the G8 summit, I feelthat it will be essential for Japan to clearlyspecify what needs to happen next fromthe perspective of “G8 and beyond.” That

The Japan Journal: Innovation 25 is along-term policy that deals with changes
on a global scale toward 2025. The CE50
global warming strategy is an even longer term strategy that looks forward to2050. What are your thoughts on thepresent direction of CE50 as Japan prepares to host the G8 summit next year?

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The Japan Journal JANUARY 2008

What sort of specific action are we talking about?

SAKUMA TETSUO

Kurokawa Kiyoshi: CE50 sets out theuniversal target of halving global CO 2emissions compared to current levels by
2050. The fact that it was included in theagreement at the end of the summit shows
how much of an impact it had, especiallyconsidering that a specific agreement at thesummit had previously looked doubtful. Inthat sense, it would be fair to say that therest of the world has exceptionally highexpectations from Japan at the moment.
At this year’s conference in Davosprior to the summit, all eighteen sessions
on topics such as preventing global warm­
ing and energy issues were full. Govern­ments and companies were really discuss­
ing their roles passionately. In terms of theworld’s major countries, European Union
members have agreed to reduce green­house gases by 20% compared to current
levels by the year 2020. The United Statesmeanwhile continues to actively invest inenvironmental technology, but has notbeen so forthcoming with regard to setting
specific targets for reduced emissions.
The agreement is of particular signifi­
cance in light of concerns that, despite ac­tive discussion regarding the major issue
of global warming within the business sec­
tor in Davos, the G8 leaders would dosomething irresponsible such as failing toreach an agreement. I also attended a meet­ing of G8 scientific advisors in Slovenia
roughly two weeks after the G8 summit. I
genuinely believe that the tremendous
gratitude shown by advisors from theUnited Kingdom, United States, Canada
and other countries at that meeting can betaken as further proof of the significance of
this agreement.
As we continue to promote this ap­
proach on a worldwide basis throughevents such as the WHO commission

consensus-oriented human resources.
Times have changed however. Things aredifferent now that pretty much everythingis interrelated on a global scale. If you
think of the growth years as being like a
tournament, then the current era is more
like a league campaign. We need humanresources that are capable of winningleague matches.
We need to nurture people like the lateSony founder Morita Akio, people whowill go out and make their mark on theworld and at the same time send out amessage to the rest of the world.
It’s a question of nurturing “nails thatstand out,” as stated by the Innovation 25
Strategy Council.

Kurokawa Kiyoshi, special advisor to theCabinet and head of the Innovation 25
Strategy Council

will mark the beginning of our journey on­
wards towards 2050.
Having come into the spotlight by setting out the CE50 strategy, what will
Japan need to do after next year’s summit in order to lead the way forward on
the environment and measures to combat global warming?

We need to nurture human resources froma medium- to long-term perspective. In thepast, during the country’s period of rapid
economic growth for instance, Japan has
been content to follow a model based on

It is crucial that we engage in long-term
human resource development initiatives,
especially investment in younger genera­tions. Specifically, we need to expand ex­change and homestay schemes in order to
get young people involved in genuine in­ternational exchange. In 2008, fifty fifteento sixteen-year-olds from around Asia
came to Okinawa for a month to live to­gether and engage in exchange with fifty
young people apiece from Okinawa andthe Japanese mainland. Investment in thisscheme is set to continue for three years.
Whilst the aim is obviously to expand thesphere of exchange of the young people
taking part, we are also hoping that thiswill serve as an example that will encour­
age the likes of private companies and edu­
cational institutions to increase investment
in young people. The key to human re­source development lies not with govern­
ment subsidies but with the voluntary par­ticipation of other parties in exchange. It
all depends on implementing reform, par­ticularly at universities. I’m talking about
possibilities such as abolishing the entrance
exam system and departmental structure
whereby humanities and sciences are kept
separate or promoting international ex­change from the standpoint of university
departments or graduate schools.

What about education in schools?

The Japanese education system has re­mained more or less unchanged throughout
the postwar period. The world as a wholemeanwhile has gone through some majorchanges. Living in such a diverse era, we
can no longer teach our children that there
is only one correct answer to everything.
The key question is how to adapt to chang­
es in the world around us.
The process of education is not thesole responsibility of teachers and othereducational staff. Although teachers are re­sponsible for lessons during school, thiscommitment should shift to human re­sources from the local community afterschool hours. This makes it possible to useschools as an arena in which different gen­erations can share both knowledge and thejoy of learning. A wide range of human re­sources could be selected from the local
community, such as from students throughto senior citizens, with each person volun­
teering to take part in educational activities
for ten hours over the course of each year.
I’m sure that would bring about some sub­stantial changes.
There are actual examples of local en­
trepreneurs helping to revitalize local com­munities by taking part in community edu­
cation or providing support for child healthcare or working women. Such innovativemodels are far from uncommon.
It is the government’s job to help de­velop the necessary infrastructure in order
to expand such initiatives. Private sector
operators meanwhile need to voluntarily
make an effort to expand such networks
alongside their main businesses.
I assume that there are also examples oflarger companies participating in community education...?

Airline companies for example run threeday residential schemes to give first andsecond grade senior high school students
the chance to experience maintenancework. In some cases, children have re­turned from such schemes with a new­found gleam in their eyes and ambitionsof becoming engineers. I can’t help feelthat all private companies have a respon­
sibility to promote self-help initiatives
such as this. They are effectively intangi­
ble assets. Companies should be promot­
ing such efforts from a global perspective.
The rest of the world rarely sees this sortof approach from Japan, even though it is
the world’s second largest economic
power. The time has come to think about
Japan in terms of its global visibility. If
Japanese companies take in overseas en­gineers as part of training schemes andteach them new skills, it is fine for themto then go back to their own countries,
even if the company would prefer them toremain in Japan. If companies continue
such initiatives for ten or twenty years,
they will end up with considerable assets.
This is something that the private sector
should be doing though, not necessarily
the government.
Japan’s industrial structure has also undergone changes, especially those revolving around IT. What sort of humanresources do you think Japanese industrywill need in the future?

With companies having to implement re­forms almost continually in response toglobalization, the time has come to leavebehind the practice of lifelong employment[long-term employment]. Although it goes
without saying that there are still some
professions in which lifelong employment
is feasible, such as transport related posi­tions on railways or at airports or profes­
sions requiring high levels of experience,industries in which greater importance isplaced on individual abilities are set togrow at a faster rate in the future. Japanneeds to produce companies like Yahoo!,
Google or Linux. It is a question of how
Japanese companies and entrepreneurs re­gard the world market. They need to pin­
point where they can best market the value(or set of values) that they have to offer
and map out where in the world they canmake the most profit. We need human re­sources that are capable of doing just that.
So it’s not a question of skills or experience...?

Even if you make a living by making pro­totypes for high value-added products, that
doesn’t necessarily mean that, in the grandscheme of things, you will be able to makea living on an assembly line basis. To put
it another way, it is essential to also think
about business, rather than placing yourbelief entirely in technology. With emerg­
ing countries catching up in terms of tech­
nology, if we get drawn into low-costcompetition, we will be forced into a warof attrition. Customers want more than justtechnology. Games consoles are a primeexample. Sony’s PlayStation 3 (PS3) may
boast outstanding technology, but it is theNintendo Wii that is flying off the shelves.
That is not to say that the Wii isn’t out­
standing in its own way of course. TakeApple’s iPod as another example; despite
its popularity, it is just an assembly line
product on the inside. It is the concept that
Apple uses to make its money.

The Japanese have always been skilled atfinely crafting items. So that must meanthat a paradigm shift in line with thechanging times is also needed with regard to human resources. What would
be the essential nature of such a shift?

Japan is full of people who meticulously
perform detailed tasks irrespective ofwhether or not they will be of any real use
or who work with great patience. This isevident in the industrious nature of Japa­
nese people and their reliable approach tomanufacturing. You could even say thatsuch characteristics are one of the positive
things to have come out of Japan’s isola­tion from the Edo period [1603–1867] on­
wards, as the product of a stable society.
As a result of Japan being isolated whilst
the rest of the world was experiencing theage of discovery however, coupled withJapan’s position as an island country, theJapanese didn’t develop a feel for directcompetition with other people and became
somewhat introspective. Whereas the Japa­
nese have all the advantages of an ant’s
eye view of the world, there is a lack ofpeople with a bird’s eye view, capable oftaking everything in. Japan also has rela­
tively few people capable of adopting afish’s eye view in terms of reading the im­mediate situation, getting a feel for the at­mosphere and then acting accordingly.
That has always been one of Japan’s tradi­tional weaknesses.
Whereas Japanese people tend toworry about failure, just take a look at
Silicon Valley. Failure is inevitable. Ifanything, it’s more of a question of still
being able to take risks even after failing at
something. That is something truly worth­while. Learning from failure is quite im­portant. In the same way, Japanese industry
needs to break away from the past and nur­
ture “nails that stand out.”
I know that it is difficult to sum everything up succinctly with so many different layers, but what do you consider
to be the key concepts when it comesto human resources and human resource development?

The most important concepts from here
on in will be heterogeneity, adaptabilityand diversity.
As the process of globalization contin­
ues, we need human resources capable ofresolving global warming, climate change
and all of the other issues facing mankind
and establishing a sustainable society on a
global scale.
Interview by CHIBA Hitoshi, The Japan Journal

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