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sustainable japan

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Keio University draws new generation to build society
ESG Talk
HIROKO NAKATACONTRIBUTING WRITER

With Japan facing the challenges of a declining population and a prolonged economic
slump, the president of Keio University said
the university must accelerate building a
globally attractive educational environment
by inviting young people from around theworld.
“When the Japanese economy is struggling
amid the declining population and aging
society and when we think about how tobuild Japanese society for the future, the factof the matter is we should attract as many
young people as possible from around theworld,” Keio University President Kohei Itohtold The Japan Times in a recent interview.
“We have to review what our university
has done in the past two to three decades
and take on whatever Keio can do to makethings better,” said Itoh, who was appointed
president in May 2021.
The president said, however, that becoming one of the world’s top 100 universities or
exclusively focusing on research is not what
Keio aims to do, because its mission is contributing to the world by bringing leaders out
into society. In the latest ranking, only two
Japanese universities — the University ofTokyo and Kyoto University — are ranked in
the top 100.
When Itoh thinks about Keio’s mission,
he is always reminded of these words ofthe school’s founder more than a century
ago: “Making human resources that lead thewhole society.”“Since our mission is contributing to theworld, what is required for our university is
not just encouraging academics and increasing the number of graduate students. Whatmatters most is how to support students’
growth and how to create an environmentthat helps them to study on their own andtake off to the world,” Itoh said.
Itoh refers to the spirit of the founder,
Yukichi Fukuzawa, an educationist and philosopher of enlightenment, in influencing
the country at the start of the Meiji Era. He is
well-known as the author of “Gakumon noSusume” (“An Encouragement of Learning”),
published in 1872. His thought that “heaven
does not create one man above or below
another man” had a significant impact on
the Japanese people at that time, making
the book a bestseller, with sales of 3.4 million
copies.
At a time when Japan had just opened
itself to the world after maintaining a longisolationist policy under the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1867), the introduction of Western philosophy by Fukuzawa impressed a
citizenry emerging from a feudal society. In
the book, he wrote that all people are born
equal, and that what makes the difference
between a wise man and a fool is whether aperson learns or not. We should not only besatisfied with a good family and a good life,
but we always have to make efforts to create
a better society. For that purpose, we needto keep on learning, he said. In the era following the Meiji Restoration, Japan was slowly
transforming itself into a capitalist country.
Although taking its first steps as a modern
Kohei Itoh and The
Japan Times chairperson and publisher Minako
Suematsu go over theUniversity’s actionsin the past decades
KEN SHIMIZU

Keio University President Kohei Itoh KEN SHIMIZU

society, it was still controlled by a small number of privileged people. Fukuzawa, whofounded Keio in 1858 when he was 25 years
old, said the school’s mission was educating
people who could learn by themselves andguide all of society in the right direction tobuild a better country.
According to analysis by Shinzo Koizumi,
an economist who was Keio’s president from
1933 to 1947, Fukuzawa’s activities after heestablished Keio i. e., 1858-1901, took threestages. In the first stage, he “introduced theworld and Western education to the people.”
It was a time when the country was opening itself up to other nations, learning from
Western cultures, building a new economic

system and reinforcing military power.
During this period, Fukuzawa visited theUnited States in 1860 and Europe in 1862 as amember of a government mission. After thelong journeys, he wrote books to introduce
his countrymen to what he had seen andlearned overseas.
The next stage (1870-1880) was the“sweeping and destroying” stage. Fukuzawa
persuaded Japanese people to learn how
not to be controlled by the government, in
an era when national policymaking was still
dominated by a small number of aristocrats
and descendants of samurai, who accounted
for slightly more than 5% of the overall
population.

“Fukuzawa said the commoners,consisting of about 93% of the population,needed to learn how to not merely deferto the government but to make a contract
with it, pay taxes and express their opinions
on an equal footing with the government,”
Itoh said. “In this way, he showed what
democracy is all about.” The Keio president
said that what Fukuzawa taught people wasthat government ends up oppressing thepeople if they don’t learn enough.
In the last stage (1880-1901) of Fukuzawa’s
influence on society, he proposed “construction and management” of the country. In thisstage, Fukuzawa said Japan should develop
as a democratic country. He recommended apolitical system along the lines of the British
two-party system, insisted that the emperor
should play a symbolic role and criticized discrimination against female students.
One thing that makes today different
from that era of absorbing knowledge fromoverseas is the fast development of information technologies. “People think they aremaking judgments by themselves, but SNSand other personalized media tend to feedpolarized information that makes themfeel comfortable,” Itoh said. This trend could
affect many aspects of our society, including
voting behavior and ethical decisions, Itohsaid.
Since he was appointed president last year,
Itoh has had meetings with university presidents in many parts of the world, striking
partnerships for study exchange programs.
He aims to make not only Keio University
but all Keio schools attractive for younger
generations. “I’m responsible of developing
our school, from the elementary school tothe university,” Itoh said.
He said the mission of the school is to create leaders in the country, and not merely
to join a race to be ranked in the world’s
top 100 universities by increasing naturalsciences and cutting liberal arts to push up
rankings. About 70% of the university currently consists of the humanities and social
sciences, and the rest is natural sciences and“We have to review what our university has
done in the past two to three decades andmake it better” said Itoh. KEN SHIMIZUengineering.
That said, the prime strength of Keio University comes from its medical department,
which makes its biosciences competitive
worldwide. The university’s Human BiologyMicrobiome-Quantum Research Center(Bio2Q) was selected as an outstanding
research center under the World PremierInternational Research Center Initiative(WPI) in October. The WPI program waslaunched in 2007 by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Bio2Q, led by Keio University School ofMedicine professor Kenya Honda, was thefirst center at a private university to be soselected. The research run by Bio2Q focuseson the interactions between the microbiome— the microorganisms living in and on thehuman body — and multiorgan networks,facilitated by artificial intelligence technologies and quantum computing. Keio was alsoranked ninth in the Nature Index Japan thisyear.
Keio also supports startups based on technologies originating from the university. Keiolaunched a venture capital firm, Keio Innovation Initiative, in 2015
to finance promising
startups.
The ESG Talk series are interviews with business leaders
who are active proponents ofESG investing and practices
in Japan.

Suntory restores healthy forests Sumitomo Foresty’s long history
to recharge clean natural water of environmental consciousness
ESG/SDGs
MAIKO MURAOKACONTRIBUTING WRITER“Today Birds, Tomorrow Humans.” This is theslogan created by Japanese beverage giant
Suntory Holdings when it started bird conservation activities in 1973. It indicates thatvarious environmental risks affecting wildlife
will come to hurt people as well. The company initially established a bird sanctuary at
the Suntory Hakushu Distillery in Yamanashi
Prefecture and published its first newspaper
ad advocating the importance of conserving
nature, with an illustration of wild birds. That
was followed by a series of more than 100
ads published across different newspapers. Inan era of rapid economic growth, the industry-leading company’s running of ads that
didn’t tout its products at all gained plenty ofattention and received the Asahi AdvertisingAward.
Instead of using its profits only to expand
and improve its business, Suntory follows acorporate value of “Giving back to society,”part of its ethos since Shinjiro Torii founded
the company in 1899. Society cannot exist
without the blessings the natural environment provides. “Especially for us, no natural
water means no business. Our founder andpredecessors knew that from the start,”
said Shigeaki Kazama, executive officer anddeputy division COO of the Sustainability
Management Division. He explained that
this outlook is what made the publication ofsuch forward-thinking ads possible almost
50 years ago.
In 1989, the company established theSuntory Fund for Bird Conservation. It has
granted a total of more than ¥620 million

Suntory employees pruning trees SUNTORY(currently $4.5 million) to 472 organizations,producing remarkable results including therecovery of red-listed birds such as Japanesewild geese, Okinawa rails, grey-faced buzzards and oriental white storks. “It takes
long-term efforts to make any achievementsin this kind of conservation. We should not
let them give up just because they are shortof funds to continue their efforts. Our intention is to support various organizations until
they take off and get on track to achieve theirgoals,” Kazama said.
The Japanese Association for Wild Geese
Protection is one of the organizations thathave received the grants. Migratory birds
that went locally extinct decades ago arecoming back to Japan as a result of joint
Japan-Russia efforts led by the organizationto conduct research and to raise and release
the birds. The director of the organization,
Masayuki Kurechi, received two honorable
awards this year: the Yamashina Yoshimaro
Award, which recognizes contributions toornithology research and bird conservationin Japan, and the Ramsar Wetland Conservation Award, which honors achievements inpromoting the conservation and wise use ofwetlands globally.
The fund launched a global program in
2021 to accept applications from overseas
bird conservation organizations. “There areno borders for wild animals, especially birds,”
Kazama said. He stressed the importance oftaking collaborative and holistic approaches
in the conservation of birds and their habitats. Suntory goes beyond providing financial support to those who engage in birdconservation activities. It runs the Japanese
Bird Encyclopedia website, which introduces over 200 species of wild birds throughillustrations, photographs, explanations andaudio samples of bird calls. The company isalso a main sponsor of eBird Japan, an application that allows users to not only search
for information on birds but to add data suchas what birds they observed, and when andwhere. eBird is among the world’s largest
biodiversity-related science projects, withan enormous database on birds developedby the Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Cornell

Unraveling Japanesecompanies
HIROKO NAKATACONTRIBUTING WRITER
Aleutian cackling geese SUNTORY

University in the United States. By sharing
information on birds through these efforts,
Suntory aims to raise awareness about theimportance of protecting birds and environments in which diverse wildlife can live.
Suntory’s bird conservation activities arealso in sync with its Natural Water Sanctuary Initiative, launched in 2003 to conserve
forests in 21 locations across the nationand improve their ability to recharge water
resources. Suntory is now cultivating morethan twice the amount of groundwater thatits production facilities actually use.
“To improve the water-recharging capability of forests, the balance of all the wildlife,including animals and plants, needs to beregained,” Kazama said. He explained that
forest management, including thinning andpruning, is necessary to maintain an adequate amount of sunlight streaming throughtrees, keeping not only the trees but also thewhole ecosystem healthy.
Forest management also contributes topreserving apex predators like large raptors. When initiatives began in the Natural
Water Sanctuary Northern Alps in Nagano
Prefecture, traces were found of goshawks
but the birds themselves were nowhere tobe seen. “Hawks tend to fly low among trees
when they are trying to find places to build
their nests. If trees are too dense, they cannot fly low,” said Kazama. He explained thatthey cut down some trees to make room forgoshawks to fly, and that the thinning was
also good for the forest and its biodiversity.
In two years, they confirmed that the birds
had returned and were using nests placed by
the conservation team. “Large raptorial birds
sit at the top of the biodiversity pyramid ofa forest. They are a barometer of the forest’s
health,” Kazama said.

Sumitomo Forestry Co. always looks
back on what happened to the Besshi
Copper Mine in Ehime Prefecture, which
opened about 330 years ago and was one ofJapan’s biggest copper mines.
Sumitomo Forestry’s history goes backto 1691, when the House of Sumitomo
opened the mine, as they needed wood tosupport mine tunnels and to fuel smelters.
But the excessive logging and the smokefrom the smelters had turned the mountain devastated by the end of the 19th century. In 1894, a project to regenerate theland was kicked off.
“It took more than 100 years to make themountain how it used to be. That is the origin of the company and our spiritual pillar,”said Tatsuru Satoh, executive vice president
for Sumitomo Forestry.
When a strong typhoon hit the region in
1899, landslides from the mountain devastated the mining facilities. A large amountof soil was brought in to afforest the mountain with Japanese cypress, a type of treethat grows well in shallow soil, Satoh said.
They planted more than 1 million trees
every year until the mountain was fully
regenerated. The copper mine was closed
in 1973, but nature has continued to berestored. Today, Sumitomo Forestry manages a total of about 48,000 hectares ofNAONORI KIMURA
INDUSTRIAL GROWTH PLATFORM INC.
(IGPI) PARTNER

Sumitomo Forestry’s efforts
to regenerate nature began
in Kyoto, 400 years ago,
where the Sumitomo Grouporiginated, with reforestation of the mountain startingin 1894. Since then, the company has launched a series of cooperative
forest-related businesses. To respond to therecent social need for reducing emissions ofcarbon dioxide, it is contributing to a carbonneutral society on a global level based on its

PAGE: 7February its plan
forest fromto launch a global
Hokkaido toforestry fund withKyushu, about
the scale of ¥100
one eightbillion ($700 milhundredth oflion). In Norththe country’s
America, Oceania,
overall land
and Southeast Asia,and the thirdsustainable forest
largest amountmanagement isof forestland
Tatsuru Satoh, executive vice president for Sumialready established
owned by atomo Forestry. THE JAPAN TIMES
and with thesecorporation.
forest assets as its core, the fund will creThe company is also aware of the sigate carbon credit through forest restoranificance of its businesses at a time whention and conservation in South East Asia.
climate change is an increasingly urgent
Investors will receive profits from timberissue. Satoh said one of the major rolesand carbon credits.
that Sumitomo Forestry plays in mitigatSumitomo Forestry will also provide
ing climate change is to systematically fellconsulting services for forest manageold trees and plant seedlings every year
ment and conservation. For example,
because the amount of carbon dioxide
the company succeeded in establishingthat trees can absorb declines as they growa peatland management technology inolder. Furthermore, carbon stored in trees
Indonesia’s West Kalimantan province.
remains even after harvested. “We believe
The firm tied up with IHI Corp., whichthat, based on the sustainable forest manowns satellite weather observation techagement, using more timber and wood
nologies, to precisely measure the waterproducts and replace old trees with young
level and preserve soil, where in the past,ones would lead to a larger carbon storageillegal logging and slash-and-burn practicesof the whole society,” Satoh said.
were repeated, leading to massive CO2“We hope to establish an ecosystememissions.
that enables coexistence of the nature andSumitomo Forestry currently owns andbusiness; expanding forests itself should
manages about 230,000 hectares of forestsustain as business ” Satoh said. He said aland overseas, most of which is in Indonetotal of about 178 million hectares of forsia and the rest in New Zealand and Papua
est disappeared in the past 30 years, andNew Guinea. “Our goal is to expand thein recent years, 70% of the drive behind
forestland at home and abroad to 500,000
deforestation is conversion to farmland.
hectares by 2030,”
To contribute to building a decarbonized
Satoh said.
society, Sumitomo Forestry announced inWood Cycle concept, which brings together
its efforts on decarbonization: planting trees,
logging them and storing carbon, using
them for construction, and recycling themfor renewable energy. Owning one eighthundredth of the country’s land, Sumitomo
Forestry not only has a viewpoint as abusiness, its long-term plans — taking into
account a broad view of the whole country and the global environment — provethat it retains its corporate DNA stemmingfrom a century of restoring nature at thecopper mine. The company also aims for abetter working environment where many
workers feel satisfied, declaring respectfor diversity as one of its corporate values.

What unifies Sumitomo Forestry’s diverse
business and human resources is its identity originating in the Besshi Copper Mine,
helping its customers and workers share its
philosophy. I believe its business management approach of cooperating with nature
while wielding a strong unifying power andtaking an extremely long-term perspective
has been sustainable since the foundation of
the company.
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