22｜The History of Glass: Kimoto Glass's Challenge and the Story of Glass Manufacturing 5

Hello, I have a rather contrarian personality and I find it difficult to do the same things as others in a group. When I was in elementary school, it was the era of popular things like Giants, Taiho, and Tamagoyaki (a Japanese omelet). Even when the whole class would go on field trips wearing Giants hats, I would wear a different hat and get bullied by the other kids (laughs). Even my teacher would bully me, saying I had an abnormal tendency to lack cooperativeness.

Even then, my dad always laughed and defended me. He was from the wartime generation, and it seems he looked with a cool eye at everyone taking the same actions during the Pacific War, when everyone was expected to fight to the death. Since it was wartime, he couldn't change his actions, but he seems to have been a maverick (laughs). In today's terms, it would be like "If everyone crosses the red light, it's not scary" or the "boiled frog" analogy.

Because I spent my childhood like that, I don't feel uncomfortable doing things differently from others, and I'm not afraid to act quickly. I currently call myself a "hentai" (meaning deviant or pervert, but used here in a humorous, non-sexual way to mean someone who is unconventional), but I proudly enjoy being a hentai. And a hentai attracts other hentai, further evolving the hentai.

Hentai is not sexual behavior (laughs). Even Darwin's theory of evolution states that it's not the big and strong that survive, but those that can adapt to environmental changes, those that can "transform." The same is true in today's world; sense changes in the times and act immediately. If you fail or are about to fail, stop immediately or change direction. Even if you fail, you still have the experience and content. Doing something or not doing it is not a matter of zero or one; I believe it's the difference between zero and infinity.

When I joined Kimoto Glass, it was the heyday of department stores, and both manufacturers and wholesalers were focused on them. When I started doing business with the supermarket Jusco (now Aeon), everyone in the industry sneered, saying that Kimoto Glass had fallen into decline, with the son joining and starting to do business with supermarkets, even though my father's generation was so solid.

Times change. If customers and production systems change, naturally distribution also changes. Thanks to taking on the challenge of a market no one else was touching, ahead of others, Kimoto Glass is still surviving today.