Monday, November 29, 2021 | The Japan Times | 9

sustainable japan

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Rohto invests in the health of individuals and society
ESG Talk
TOMOKO KAICHICONTRIBUTING WRITER

Rohto Pharmaceutical Co., which was
founded 122 years ago and holds the largest
share in the Japanese market of over-thecounter eyedrops, has not sat on its laurels,
always working to develop new businesses.
Its corporate culture of taking up challenge
after challenge while learning from failure isdriven by the founder’s wish to “contributeto the community at large through the drug
business.” Chairman and Chief Executive
Officer Kunio Yamada says he wants thecompany to expand the activities contributing to society that it has engaged in since
its foundation and step up investment in
the next generation, who will create Japan’s
future.
In Japan, Rohto is known mainly for eyedrops and stomach medicines, but skincare products actually represent over 60%
of its total sales, nearly 40% of which are
generated overseas. The company began askin care business with the launch of Mentholatum brand products under licensefrom The Mentholatum Co. In 1988, Rohtobought the U.S. company, acquiring its sales
network covering more than 110 countries.
In 2001, Rohto began selling cosmetics andcontributed to the creation of a functional
cosmetics market with “cosmetic productsthat have impacts only possible for a drugmaker to achieve.” The company’s productlineup “expanded naturally,” Yamada said,

as a result of adapting technologies it had
developed for its founding businesses ofstomach drugs and eyedrops and identifying current needs in developing products.
Rohto currently is putting efforts into
regenerative medicine, aiming to extend
healthy life expectancy, and operates afood-related business. It began working on
regenerative medicine in earnest in 2013. In
2017, the company became the first in Japanto successfully develop a technology that
can automatically culture and store mesenchymal stem cells derived from humanfat, which can become multiple kinds oftissue and are among the most frequently
used cell type for regenerative medicine.
Since 2020, it has conducted clinical trials
on novel coronavirus patients with severe
pneumonia symptoms using regenerative
medicine.
Yamada, who became the fourth-generation president from Rohto’s founding family
in 1999 and led the effort to expand its skincare business and shifts to new businesses,
said, “The wish of the founder to be helpful
to people, and his creed of pursuing thingsothers do not, are ingrained” in the company’s culture. Although Rohto remains
a family business, it has boldly pursued
expansions into new business areas and, if
going it alone is difficult, opportunities topartner with other companies or invest in
startups.
The more challenges the company has
faced, the more failures it has learned from.
Yamada said the failures Rohto has experienced “totaled at least three times the
Yamada served as
senior managing
director, head ofhealth care businesspromotion, vicepresident andpresident before
being apointed
chairman in 2009.
HIROMICHI MATONO

Kunio Yamada, chairman and CEO of Rohto Pharmaceutical Co. HIROMICHI MATONO

number of successes.” And that reflects
how “we have respected [employees’]
desire to take on new challenges,” he said.
“If we [overly] pursue success, we may
put [too much] pressure [on employees]
or make them cower,” he added. “Lessons
learned from failures are often used in subsequent successful products. We may betaking a longer path, but failures are nottotally wasted.”
Yamada said he is skeptical of the constant pursuit of the “right answer” typicallyseen in corporate culture and Japanese
education. “What appears to be going wellTimes Gallery

may actually be leaving problems [for the
future], and what appears to be not goingwell may actually be something very good,”
he said. “I’m a little worried about the
recent trend in which people seek definitive results too early.”
Thus, he thinks the period of Japan’s
rapid economic growth from the 1950s
to the 1970s may have made its people’smaterial lives more abundant but also
left a negative legacy of environmental
contamination, which resulted from corporate activities, to later generations. “Theeconomic growth at that time was both a

Colombia’s vice president and foreign minister, Marta Lucia Ramirez,
conferred the Order of San Carlos on Mitsubishi Corp. Chairman Ken
Kobayashi for his efforts to strengthen bilateral relations as chairmanof the Colombia-Japan Economic Committee of Keidanren. EMBASSY
OF COLOMBIAIn a courteous meeting with Masaaki Takei, mayor of Tokyo’s Minato
Ward, on Oct 20, Serbian Ambassador Aleksandra Kovac exchanged
opinions on possibilities for cooperation in light of the upcoming celebration of 140 years of friendship between the countries. EMBASSY OF SERBIA

Jarman International collaborated with YouTuber John Daub at Osaka’s
Tosa Shimizu World restaurant to spotlight Kochi Prefecture’s vibrantculture, world-famous Yosakoi dance and delicious seared bonito.
From left: Special guest Ai Urata and organizers Ruth Marie Jarman,
Kenta Tanaka and Keiko Marutani. JARMAN INTERNATIONAL

Haitian Ambassador
Helph Monod
Honorat welcomesvisitors to theembassy’s boothdisplaying Haitian
handicrafts and arts
at the Festival Latino
Americano 2021
Charity Bazaar, onOct. 24. EMBASSY OF

Jamaican Ambassador Shorna-Kay
Richards shares a bitof Jamaica with
Minako Suematsu,
chairperson of The
Japan Times, during ameeting that covered
sustainable development, freedom of thepress, women’s
empowerment andother topics.

HAITI

EMBASSY OF JAMAICA

Kagome Co., Calbee Inc. and Ebara Foods
Industry Inc. The fund offers money forpost-high school tuition, without requiring
repayment. The decade-old fund “has successfully created a cycle in which children
who have already entered society take careof children who follow them,” Yamada said.
“We have successfully established a newconnection between people.”
In October 2021, the company established the Rohto Foundation for Children’s
Future. Yamada said that what he wishes toaccomplish with the foundation is to support children who have difficulty in developing their abilities to the maximum under
the current educational system, so thatthey can grow into “people who can open
up the future.”“It’s important for us, a publicly listedcompany, to distribute profits to shareholders, but I also want the company tofulfill its responsibility for the homework
my generation has left to the next generation,” such as environmental and global
warming issues,“over the medium
to long term,”
Yamada said.
The ESG Talk series are interviews with business leaders
who are active proponents
of ESG investing and practices in Japan.

Big ideas, refreshing honesty

TIMOTHY SCHULTZCONTRIBUTING WRITER

Who holds the power in Tokyo? Where do
the real decision-makers meet?
The most honest answer: in the officesof government departments. These
immensely powerful organizations are
led by the “Fax Gang,” bureaucrats who
control every industry in Japan (using
fax machines). Like all systems that relyon central planning, Japan’s government
enriches the bureaucrats first, the zaibatsu
conglomerates second and the people last.
Competition is often decided by access;innovation is only an excuse to spend more.
The Fax Gang’s dominance is a source ofdespair for many Japanese, proof that thenational tagline might as well be “Sho ganai” (“It can’t be helped”).
The Fax Gang has a determined, underdog
enemy: the G1 Institute. Its Japanese and foreign members are entrepreneurs, creatorsand business leaders from every industry.
Since 2009, the forums, think tanks and college programs of G1 have fostered innovation
and better leadership for Japan.
The G1 Global Conference is their big
annual gathering. This year it was held at
the Globis Tokyo campus, a modern building in Kojimachi. Panels were held all day,on topics from the entertainment industry
to international relations. It was an exclusive affair; it seemed that most of the people
there knew most of the people there. Managing directors mingled with angel investors. Bow ties bobbed beside tribal piercings.
It was a decidedly no-fax zone.

In one panel, “Japan’s Tourism Going
Forward,” the audience saw four leadersfrom the travel industry discuss, debate
and predict the new reality of Japanese
tourism. The panel was moderated by
Tak Umezawa, Japan chairman and partner of A.T. Kearney and chairman of CIC
Japan. He posed a difficult question: Whatchanges are important for the Japanese
travel industry to consider?
Taku Yamada, whose company Churaboshi organizes guided tourist experiencesin Gifu, had a thoughtful answer: sustainability. “When I think about sustainability,
it’s actually all about transparency in the
supply chain,” he said. “When you stay at a
local hotel in the countryside of Japan, youwant to know the story: Where did thisfresh fish come from? Such details will give
travelers a better way to understand thatspecific region.”On the same panel, David Mark Atkinson, CEO of Konishi Decorative Arts andCrafts Co. Ltd, offered frank assessments
and anecdotes about luxury travel in Japan.
With a sonorous English eloquence, hesaid, “There are now 28 five-star hotels inJapan ... and it’s deeply questionable if anyof those five-star hotels are actually fivestar. Japanese developers believe if you
cover everything in marble, it’s a five-star
hotel. But the actual definition has nothing to do with chandeliers or stone.” Hewent on to tell some funny stories of foreign guests experiencing Japanese “fivestar” service: a billionaire who requested
a private car ... and was given a city taxi; awealthy guest asking for a manicure shop …
and being told by a concierge, “Use Google.”
The crowd laughed, a little nervously. The
bureaucracy of the Fax Gang isn’t the only
challenge facing Japan.

Overcoming climate change

Bolivian Charge d’Affaires Natalia Salazar poses at the embassy’s celebration of Dia de Todos Santos (All Saints’ Day) by the traditional table that is
prepared to honor people who are no longer with us. EMBASSY OF BOLIVIA

Rohto is mostly known in Japan for its eyedrops
and stomach medicine and overseas for its skincare products. ROHTO PHARMACEUTICAL.

G1 Global lays out visions forhelping Japan innovate and evolve
ESG/SDGs

The Spanish Chamber of Commerce presented an award to soccer
legend Andres Iniesta for his contributions to strengthening Spain’s
image in Japan. From left: Lladro President Colin Chow, SpCCJ President
Guillermo Gutierrez, Iniesta and Ambassador Jorge Toledo. SPCCJ

success and a failure,” he said with a slighttone of reproach. “You should look at thingsfrom multiple angles and from a long-term
perspective.”
The history of Rohto is full of wide-ranging social contributions in areas including
eye care, culture, sports and environmental
conservation, focusing on the health of individuals and society. There have been moresuch activities than can be listed in thearea of eye care alone. Founder Yasutami
Yamada supported the establishment of
the first school for the visually impaired in
his native prefecture of Nara. The company
has promoted knowledge of the correct useof drugs and conducted eye examinations
free of charge, mainly in emerging Southeast Asian countries. Rohto has “naturally”
engaged in such initiatives, a tradition for it
since before the term “ESG” (environmental, social and governance) was created,“because our corporate activities have been
linked with society and were supported bysociety,” Yamada said.
Rohto has broadened its scope of social
contributions as it expanded overseas, but
it also has recently placed a fresh focus on
activities to revitalize Japanese regional
economies. In 2013, Rohto teamed up withan agricultural corporation on the Okinawa
island of Ishigaki to launch an agriculturalbusiness. While engaging in livestock raising, farming and the processing and sellingof products, the company has worked with
the island town of Kumejima since about
five years ago on a project to create a selfsustaining, circular society in which energy,
water and food are supplied from theisland, local industries are revitalized andjobs are created through tapping renewable deep ocean water as a resource and asource of energy.
In addition, Rohto invests in the education of the next generation. It operates theMichinoku Future Fund, which supports
the education of children who lost their parents in the earthquake and tsunami disasterthat hit eastern Japan in 2011, jointly with

Kosovo Charge d’Affaires Arber Mehmeti hands a letter of appreciation
to Ryo Takizawa, mayor of the Niigata city of Sanjo. The same letter was
given to former Mayor Isato Kunisada. EMBASSY OF KOSOVO“Tourism” panel, from left: David Mark Atkinson, Satoko Nagahara, Taku Yamada andModerator Tak Umezawa. HIROMASA TAKEUCHI

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As they spoke, another session was occurring across the hall, titled “Innovative Resilience in Greentech: Will Technology Beat
Climate Change?” The panel, led by theeminent economist Robert Alan Feldmanof Morgan Stanley, revealed fascinating
new technologies. On his panel was Patricia
Bader-Johnston, CEO of Silverbirch Associates. She advocated for a sharp focus on
realistic technologies. “In Japan, 25% of allenergy comes from coal-fired plants. We“Greentech” panel, from left: Moderator Robert
Alan Feldman, Eriko Suzuki , Mitsuru Izumo andPatricia Bader-Johnston. HIROMASA TAKEUCHI

need that energy. We don’t have time tobuild new plants. But there is a technology
called CoalSwitch that uses woody pellets,
which can completely replace coal, using
biomass instead. We need new technologies that can be applied to the current situation. We need to solve the problem now.”
Sitting beside her was the young Eriko
Suzuki, managing director of MPowerPartners, one of the first ESG-integrated
venture funds in Japan. One of their investments, Jupiter Intelligence, is a climate risk
analytics service, helping companies inJapan and America better understand andplan for climate change.

More investment ... now!

Suzuki wanted the audience to know thatJapan’s investment levels are not highenough. “There still needs to be more capital in this space. In the U.S., they have large
funds investing into climate tech. These
are billion-dollar funds. In Japan, the largest VC that focuses on climate tech is $50
million … That’s a magnitude smaller! No
matter how smart we are, we’re still losing
opportunities to the West because of scale.
We want more funds, competing for thebest deals.”
The day wore on, the audience members circulating between sessions. On
each panel, colleagues, friends and rivals
discussed the challenges Japan faced, internally and externally.
The G1 Institute and its members are
the change agents in a system that doesn’t want tochange. They are the ones
who are defying the odds
to help Japan evolve andimprove.