6 | The Japan Times | Monday, February 22, 2021

sustainable japan

ESG promotional content
produced by The Japan Times Cube

Exploring Japanese companies from ESG perspective
ESG Talk
TOMOKO KAICHICONTRIBUTING WRITER

In this first ESG Talk, Japan Times publisher
Minako Suematsu interviews Nissay AssetManagement Corp. President and Chief
Executive Officer Hiroshi Ozeki, a businessleader actively involved in efforts to achievea sustainable society in Japan. She asks him
about the current state of ESG (environmental, social and governance) investing in Japanand aspects of it that Japanese companiesexcel in.

Public-private efforts
Were there any major changes in ESG
investing trends in 2020?
Since 2008, Nissay Asset Management has
taken ESG ratings of companies into accountin managing Japanese stock portfolios. I
think we are the only company in Japan thathas a track record of managing ESG funds
for over a decade. In 2020, Prime Minister(Yoshihide) Suga said Japan aims to becomea carbon-neutral society by 2050 in his firstpolicy speech. I can directly perceive thatmoves to promote ESG investing are accel-erating in all industries, driven by efforts inboth the private and public sectors.
Now that Suga has made the pledge, business executives who have hesitated to makea long-term, large-scale investment have nochoice but to accept that they must do it.
So I think signs of a significant change areclearly visible.

or (U.N.) sustainable development goals, companies need to generate profit to sustainably
maintain such efforts. The key is for themto incorporate environmental goals, suchas carbon neutrality and plastic reduction,
into their business and nurture and increase
germs of businesses that they can commit to,using in-house technology where possible.

There is a view in the international community that Japan is lagging in taking ESG
measures.
In Japan, the share of coal thermal power
was large, and the country had yet to havea definitive (energy) policy. This was a key
reason why Japan had been exposed to
criticism from the international community. But in reality, the levels of Japanesecompanies’ efforts are at the vanguard ofglobal moves.
To give you one example, as of the endof December 2020, the number of Japanesecompanies recognized by the international
nongovernmental organization CDP witha rating of “A” totaled 66. That is the highest
number for any country. The number ofJapanese companies that have endorsed theinformation disclosure recommended by
the Task Force on Climate-related FinancialDisclosures, an international framework,
totals 329. Again, it is the highest figure forany country. Forty-six Japanese companies,
or the second-highest number for any country, support the RE100, a global initiative
encouraging businesses to transition to 100
percent renewable electricity.

Discuss Nissay Asset Management’s stewardship reports, which first came out in2020.
The reports outline our stewardship activities for investors and customers. Our aim
is to send a message to investors, as wellas consumers behind them, that asset
management companies are interested inpromoting ESG efforts by encouraging ESG
initiatives through engagement, which I
mentioned earlier. I think it will be great if
we can serve as a catalyst, providing moral
support to business executives (startingor continuing activities) or giving them
opportunities to realize what they should
be aware of.
It is easy to find ways to improve (whatyou need to improve), but it takes time totake action and achieve actual improvement. To assist them in that process, on ourpart, we must continue to say the things
we should say and praise commendable
efforts to, for example, maintain a sustainable management structure or build a viablebusiness model. They may face issues that
won’t change in two or three years, but it isimportant for executives to work steadily oneach of them to show that they have the gritto achieve the goals. By doing so, they may
come up with innovations in the process orrealize that technology they need exists rightnear them, so thatthey can reach
their goals dramatically sooner.

Tailwind from Japanese tech

Nissay Asset Management Corp. President andChief Executive Officer Hiroshi Ozeki is actively
involved in efforts to achieve a sustainable
society. HIROMICHI MATONO

What about examples of Japanese companies’ technologies contributing to ESG
performance?
Awareness of the need to conserve energy
and resources has been high for many years
in Japan, and so we have many outstanding
fundamental technologies. For example,
one home builder sells “net zero energyhouses,” which are detached homes with

Hiroshi Ozeki and Minako Suematsu before the ESG Talk HIROMICHI MATONO

solar panels installed on the roof. In addition to featuring the capability of generating
their own power as a selling point, the company paid attention to their design. It alsobuys surplus power (from these houses) as
part of its efforts to achieve the RE100 goal.
It’s an initiative that has a significant impact
on saving energy and saving resources.
Japanese companies are good at reducing
energy consumption of white goods such as
air conditioners. Some of them have deals
with regulatory authorities to help promote(energy conservation). There are many
examples of companies that have achieved
success in using energy-saving products todevelop overseas markets and help conserve the environment.
As energy prices are high in Japan compared to European countries and the U.S.,
Japanese awareness of the need to saveenergy has been high since a long time ago.
As carbon pricing is introduced in Europe
and the U.S. and even emerging economies,
and energy prices go up in some way orother, awareness of conserving energy willgrow among consumers because they will
now have to think of higher energy costs,
not just the need to protect the environment. I think the global market is becoming
right for (energy-saving) Japanese products
to be accepted.
So the timing will soon be right forJapanese companies to showcase theirtechnologies.
I think there are many things companies
and the government can do for that. Japan
has strong fundamental technologies forgenerating and storing electricity. Technologies for lithium-ion (batteries), hydrogenbatteries and LEDs are examples.
Japan’s solar panel technologies are also
advanced, including for cutting-edge thinfilm solar cells. Using this technology, it ispossible to generate power in a car fromfilm affixed to the surface of the roof ora window, and there are people actuallyworking to develop such products.

ESG activities and profit
Discuss your criteria for ESG investing.
I think there’s still no established consensus
in the industry as to what exactly ESG investing is. For example, ESG index providers givevaried ratings on the same companies, andthere is almost no correlation among theirassessments.
Nissay Asset Management assesses companies on their efforts on the “E,” “S” and “G”
and the impact on their earnings from suchefforts. We don’t give a high rating to a company, even if it’s doing great from the ESG
perspective, unless such efforts have helped
improve earnings or have a significant bearing on its corporate value. ESG investingassesses what kind of ESG activities a company is committed to and how they have led
to improved earnings. In that respect, ESG
investing is different from (the concept of)corporate social responsibility, which does
not necessarily pursue profit.
Whether they pursue ESG activities, CSR

The ESG Talk series are interviews to businessleaders who are active proponents of ESG
investing and practices in Japan.

How the pandemic will change
artists’ spaces, choices and voices
ESG/SGDs
JACOB REEDCONTRIBUTING WRITER

On Jan. 28, the final part of a webinar series
on contemporary art after the coronavirus
was hosted by the Bunka-cho Art Platform
Japan, a project started by Japan’s Agency
for Cultural Affairs aimed at confronting theissues faced by artists in the post-pandemicera. The webinars collectively hope to“establish a foundation for the sustainable
development of the contemporary art scenein Japan” by bringing together an international group of voices from the art world.
The webinar titled “Art After COVID-19:
Navigating the New Critical Ecology” wasmoderated by Andrew Maerkle, a memberof the Contemporary Art Committee Japan,
and comprised of presentations by each of
the three panelists and a follow-up Q&A session with discussion.
The panelists included Jeebesh Bagchi, afounding member of the Raqs Media Collective, based in New Delhi; Tzu Nyen Ho, anartist in Singapore; and Hito Steyerl, a filmmaker and theorist from Germany. All three
are well-known artists, educators and criticaltheorists in their respective fields.
The webinar opened with the question“How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected
the critical ecology of contemporary art?”
and the panelists’ talks focused on threemajor themes: art spaces, funding andcriticality.

Art spaces

While going to an art gallery may have been
mainstream before the pandemic, things
are changing rapidly. Online venues for art
exhibitions using digital spaces like Zoom

In cooperation with Mitsubishi Estate, the webinar was held at SAAI Wonder Working Community, a community space in Tokyo’s Yurakucho area. HIDEYUKI SHIMABAYASHI

have become more commonplace, including a part of the Yokohama Triennale heldin 2020. Bagchi, who was an artistic director
for the Triennale, compares artists to lines
converging in a digital space within which
their further trajectories may be redirected
due to the novel ways their art influenceseach other. He sees the post-pandemic era as
a “shift in how education, art and economies
will be practiced.”
During the height of the pandemic inSingapore, an outbreak among migrant
workers living in overcrowded dormitories
caused the state to quarantine the workers.
Ho, himself from Singapore, introduced avideo called “Waiting” he produced in collaboration with a migrant worker called Ripon
Chowdhury. Lamenting the conditions
there through poetry, the video is filmed inlong, uninterrupted shots in an extremely
confined space due to the lockdown. “Confinement is not the only subject in the video,
but it did determine its form,” Ho explained.
“What interests me the most is that wetransformed the limitation of space into aparameter for making the final video.”
The pandemic has forced artists to grapple
with new limitations and consider how they
can be leveraged toward creative and criticalendeavors.

Art and funding

Ho Tzu Nyen, Jeebesh Bagchi and Hito Steyerljoined a webinar hosted by Bunka-cho Art
Platform Japan and moderated by Andrew
Maerkle. KOZO KANEDA

PAGE: 6To what degree should artists rely on external funding, and in what ways can this affectan artist’s expression?
Public and private funding of art institutions is another important topic. For example, Steyerl supposes that the fire damage tothe Notre Dame Cathedral in 2019 may havebeen partially attributable to an imbalance
in proper funding.
Problems exist within the digital land-

scape as well. Steyerl asserts that digitalspaces are “feudal” in the sense that private
enterprises are in complete control of information and spaces in which artists can find avoice. Specifically, she calls for their “decolonization,” which means that public digital
infrastructure needs to be created as well as
guaranteeing individual sovereignty overpersonal data.
Bagchi echoed this view and claimed thatthe pandemic has confronted artists withnew realities about ownership. “Twentyyears ago, owning a server was central
despite its high cost to maintain... but now
we rely on big tech companies, and it isimportant to get back to the conversation ofowning our own infrastructure.”

Art and criticality“Artists do not accept institutions as they are.
They are up for rethinking continuously,”
Bagchi said. On criticality, he suggested that
one of art’s core functions in the new ecology is to help remind us that the humanistlanguage of continuous progress throughtechnology has shortcomings; that “toxicity”(manifested presently as COVID-19) is andalways has been an inseparable part of thehuman condition, whether we like it or not.
At the same time, because of the pandemic
and the horrors it has wrought globally, heobserved, “We speak with concern for eachother’s lives in a much more interesting way
than I’ve ever seen before.”
Going forward, Ho warned artists
against simply speaking about digital
infrastructures and theirproblems, saying theyrather should learn how
to effectively use thosesystems to continue to
speak critically.