iU President Gachon. Mr.Ryo Morikawa

■iU President Gachon. Mr.Ryo Morikawa

Former CEO of LINE. He built LINE into what it is today. And then he started C Channel. Amazing!

At its roots it's music and computer engineering.

The road to C Channel

When I was at Nippon Television, the Internet came out. I thought in my 20s that the Internet would change television. I also helped launch BS. Since then, I've been working on digital media. However, I felt restricted by the fact that television stations' main business is television, and that we can't go beyond television.

And I thought that Sony would become like Apple today, so I moved there when Idei was the president. I was trying to connect audio and televisions to the Internet and distribute content, but there was strong resistance within the company. I created a joint venture with Tokyu and Toyota, and launched a video distribution business earlier than YouTube. However, in Japan, rights issues are noisy and distribution is not possible.

So, since Korea was a broadband powerhouse, they decided to make games before videos, and moved into the gaming business. They created the first gacha system in Japan, which was a success. Then came search. They started in the social search field, such as NAVER Matome.

With the earthquake and tsunami, we decided that the time for communication via smartphones was over, not the time for search, and so we launched LINE. This was a hit, and we launched a business model that combined LINE with our products.

However, since the capital was from Korea, there were many complications.

I want to do something to invigorate Japan for the rest of my life. I've been doing videos since my time at Nippon Television, so the next step is vertical videos. I launched C Channel seven years ago (recorded in July 2022) as a new business model that combined these two.

It's not that hard because I'm scaling and tracing the future of digital and media in Japan. I'm grateful that I'm doing what I think I should be doing.

◆School

My father was a principal at an elementary school. He often told me that teachers' children should be polite. It was a bit of pressure. At the time, I was not good at studying or sports, and my grades were not very good. It was a relatively uncomfortable environment because the teacher's child's grades were poor.

Then I got into music and I was obsessed with it.

Fortunately, I was able to study before I knew it, and I continued to go to middle school, high school, and university. I had the feeling that studying wasn't something you did at school, so when I was younger, I tended to study alone.

I studied computer engineering at university. At the time, synthesizers were coming out, and I was researching them because I thought they would be fused with computers. From there, I got into jazz. I was involved in technology, but I wanted to do something that didn't fit into technology.

School is a community that expands your possibilities. It's more like a toy box with all sorts of interesting things than a place to study. It's like picking out the things that interest you and playing with them.

◆Message for you guys

For some people, studying can be difficult or boring, but for me, studying is an extension of curiosity. Digging deeper and deeper into things that you find interesting may ultimately be called studying. Growth is an extension of curiosity. Don't forget your curiosity, always be excited and do your best.