The New Normal interview series: Reorienting yourself in a changing world

‘The Japanese food industry, which consists of food production, logistics and restaurants, is a ¥76.3-trillion market. If you count agriculture, forestry and fisheries plus all related investment, you get to about ¥90 trillion. It’s an extremely broad-based industry, and one in which Cafe Company has long sought to use food as a means to creating communal spaces both in Japan and abroad.

‘World population is expected to reach 10 billion people by 2050. We’ll have to think hard about how food will change from here on, and about what communities later in the 21st century should look like. Advances in technology will allow us to grow meat artificially and come up with alternatives to meat. Will we be eating more insects? Agriculture is being significantly industrialised. Those changes are likely to transform the values and patterns of behaviour of those of us in the food industry. At my company, we thought the next five years would be particularly key if we wanted to lead the food industry beyond 2025. That considered, we were taking stock of our past experiences and making all sorts of preparations last year.

‘Then the coronavirus started spreading around the world, and we realised that we hardly had time to look at things that might happen five years down the road; we had to start moving at full speed right away. I’m sure it’s the same in many other industries, but working with food, I can’t help but feeling that Earth just keeps presenting us with pressing issues to be dealt with.

‘While taking measures such as shortening the business hours of our cafés and developing takeout capabilities, I’ve been busy participating in food-related conferences and preparing policy proposals. We also joined hands with a few other companies in the industry to kick off a project called #Oishii Demo, which is intended to inspire action that would ease the pain of restaurants suffering from the crisis, encourage those already working to rescue restaurants, and help make those efforts even more effective by making them more familiar to the public. We’re hoping to support everyone involved with food in one way or the other.

‘On May 16, Nippon Broadcasting made our project the main theme of a 3.5-hour radio show, which helped get our message across to politicians, officials, businesspeople – people who are doing their best to overcome the current crisis. I think the situation we find ourselves in has made many people realise how the work done by restaurateurs, farmers and everyone else in the food industry is directly connected to people’s lives and livelihoods – that we’re all part of “communities of life”. I don’t think we have time to stop and criticise the details of coronavirus-related policies; we should focus on realising that the current crisis affects us all on a personal level, and take appropriate action in our respective fields.’

‘Online Merges with Offline (OMO) is a buzzword I hear a lot these days. Debates used to revolve around how people not used to the internet could do things online, but now we’re living in an entirely “online” era – one in which talent, money and power are centred on the online realm. I think Amazon Go, the automated convenience store chain launched in 2018, is symbolic of that.

‘But in 2019, I noticed a strong emphasis on the importance of “real” experiences in our online era. Japan was gearing up for the Olympics and Paralympics and we welcomed more foreign tourists than ever before. There was a really positive vibe in the air, with people seeking to understand and respect foreign cultures. 2020 was supposed to be the peak year for Japanese businesses; a year in which we’d pursue and present the best, most attractive real-world experiences to our customers. The coronavirus crisis was like having a bucket of cold water poured over you…no, it was more like being swept down a waterfall – that’s how suddenly everything changed. It was extremely frustrating, especially since we were so well prepared [for 2020].

‘Still, that’s not to say that the value of the real world has in any way disappeared. It’s more accurate to say that the social changes we’ve seen have brought the real and online worlds closer together. We all live on this real planet together with billions of people, social changes happen, and new times create the need for new types of communities. That’s equally true for food, so I’m sure we’ll see the emergence of new collaborations and services.

‘The town of Onagawa in Miyagi prefecture was the first community to emerge reborn after the triple disasters of March 2011. People called it the “miracle of Onagawa”. But why was the town so quick to rebound? After 3.11, the head of the local merchants’ association pledged that “nobody over 60” would have any say in the rebuilding process. Everyone in positions of power locally – the head of the tourism association, the union bosses at the wholesale market – agreed. The future would be built by people in their 30s and 40s, and older folks would only play supporting roles. That allowed people like Yoshiaki Suda, the mayor, and Yosuke Komatsu, who established a nonprofit called Asu e no Kibo (“Hope for the Future”) to take centre stage. Onagawa still attracts like-minded people from all over Japan, and the town is thriving.

‘When thinking about the notion of a community, Onagawa always comes to mind. People with similar interests and ways of thinking find it easy to connect with each other over the internet, but such communities sometimes tend to exclude people with different values. I believe that real-world communities can soften the tendencies of such small groups.

‘The coronavirus crisis will probably change the role of big cities such as Tokyo. Big cities are where people, goods and capital come together to grow, but now that we have to avoid crowded places and close contact, dispersion away from cities will take place at a rate beyond that seen after 3.11. New ways of living and new solutions will become visible, revealing new forms of community and new customer value.’

‘As for Japan after the coronavirus, though we are a quite inward-looking nation, learning from other countries could be beneficial. Tohoku could learn from the Nordic countries. Both regions have sawtooth coastlines and are extremely cold in winter, but they’re also places where people have a feel for the abundance of life. Cities like Aizu and Morioka represent noble ideals in Kenji Miyazawa’s stories, they were quick to embrace Modernism, and were hubs of the mingei (folk art) movement. That makes them very compatible with Nordic cities. On the other hand, Kyushu people have a Latin temperament, while the area of Kyushu is about the same as that of the Netherlands. Kyushu might as well declare independence from Japan and become its own country [laughs]. Things appear different depending on how you look at them.

‘Japan is also part of the Kuroshio [Japan Current, the warm current that flows past the country’s Pacific coast] territory. The Kuroshio is one of the world’s three major ocean currents, flowing from Southeast Asia past the Ryukyu islands and the Kii Peninsula towards eastern Japan. To put it simply, Japanese culture is the result of all sorts of cultural influences and knowledge from China and the rest of Asia having been transported here on the Kuroshio and developed further. To bring Asia together once more, I think it would be great if we could stop thinking of Japanese cuisine or Japanese culture as “number one” and instead start “giving back” to Asia as thanks for all the things we once received.

‘We could also learn from another type of positioning. The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in New York state is known as the “Harvard of food”. From 2007 to 2010, I worked together with that institution on a project aimed at popularising Japanese cuisine, and right now the CIA is collaborating with MIT on food-tech analysis that incorporates IoT solutions. Taking after the CIA, the University of Hawaii recently launched a Culinary Institute of the Pacific (CIP). It’s a way of promoting Hawaii as the centre of pan-Pacific gastronomy, and a means to attracting top-level talent and knowhow.

‘Back to the Nordic countries, chefs there have put out a ten-point “Manifesto for the New Nordic Cuisine”. This document was the brainchild of Danish chef René Redzepi and his compatriot, entrepreneur Claus Meyer, the men behind famous Copenhagen restaurant Noma. The important thing is that they weren’t content with creating a manifesto for Danish cuisine; they wanted to bring chefs from the entire region together. Had they written a manifesto for Danish cuisine, we’d probably have had Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish chefs all come out with their own versions. But Redzepi and Meyer looked beyond national differences and sought recognition for a shared Nordic food culture. That allowed them to seize the initiative, breaking New Nordic Cuisine into the big time.

‘What I’m trying to say is that people who get involved and do something for others tend to succeed. That was true after 3.11, when farmers and nonprofit workers started all kinds of altruistic initiatives, becoming local leaders in the process. That dynamic has been playing out on a global scale during the coronavirus crisis, and I think Japan should approach other Asian countries with a spirit of solidarity and a desire to learn from each other. I think the spirit of our time is moving from the typically male type of “battle” leadership towards a softer form of leadership, one that emphasises solidarity and harmony.’