The Desire to Actualize the Cool Japan Strategy Promotion Council Report Items

The government side of the Cool Japan Strategy Promotion Council includes general affairs, foreign affairs, financial affairs, literary courses, agriculture and fisheries, childbirth, etc’s vice ministers are participants. I participated as a private-sector member.

　There is a concrete plan for a civilian model project to produce “Design,” “Content,” “Cuisine,” and “Regions/Tourism.”  I was in charge of Content.

The Content plan was structured around the pillar of J-pop. It will "Establish a J-pop agent organization that will propel the unified overseas expansion of the music industry.”

Altogether, it will “assign artists ID’s and manage an ‘artistic database’ (artist commons), accumulate past works in an easy-to-use archive, utilizing the Takeshiba District National Strategic Special Zone (CiP).“

On another front, the government launched a plan where “government branches work together to assist private-sector initiatives aimed at constructing hubs that bring together people and information from many fields and disseminate information.” A new government-civilian connection platform that functions as a place of active project composition and matching as well as a shared space for leadership examples was begun at the end of 2015.

Another government plan is “human resource accumulation and transmission point formation.” It aims to recruit highly talented and skilled persons from around the world in the fields of design, cuisine, content, and more, in order to stimulate Japanese human resource cultivation. It will also construct a hub with information transmission functions.

My affiliated graduate school of KMD began with the same purpose of content human resource cultivation, which has been a topic for some 20 years. However, progress is still midway. It is extremely appealing to consider that Japan can have the international mechanism of cooperation between food, design, and so on. CiP raises its hand as that vessel!

Well now, the reports have been completed, but government projects frequently are satisfied at this point and come to an end. This is the beginning. Let’s make it all happen.

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How Can We Raise Future Innovators?

In "Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World," Harvard Innovation Lab Expert in Residence Tony Wagner describes parents’ educational policies and the roles fulfilled by universities. It is a good book.

Wagner advocates the importance of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) education. He presents a policy of cultivating critical thinking ability, creativity, communication, and collaboration.

The book scathingly judges US university innovative education quality as low. One ponders his consideration of Japanese universities.

Wagner says university reform is essential. He states that, as the impact of “MOOC” (Massive Open Online Courses) implies, the value of knowledge and information is close to zero. I too gave lectures on the MOOC, but in my view existing instruction is not the value of university. We are asked whether we must hasten the formation of universities as models of creation and opportunity, or if we must try to protect past models.

The MIT Media Lab is given as an example. It gives no grades, classes can be taken freely, and there are no required subjects: it is enough to simply create. Lessons are rich in immediacy and utility, and directly connected to business, social conduct, etc. I also like that vision and put my efforts into the media lab. I want to create such an environment in Japan as well.

When David Kelley made the Stanford University d. school (Institute of Design), it seems that instructors with business experience held a lower position than academics, which caused trouble, but the school was completed with the contributions of SAP’s Hasso Plattner. When attempting to break through a large wall, the finishing move (fundraising in this case) means victory or defeat. This appears to be the same everywhere.

Creator education is filled with unconventional mentors. Rather than teaching, they create opportunities, make students act, and play a supportive role. When I was at MIT and at Stanford University, my time was spent on research (or rather, project creation) rather than direct training. Now I am finally also engaged in teaching at Japanese universities, but the learning style is that students are given industry-academic project opportunities and learn in the midst of actual performance.

My thoughts align with this book, I am not achieving its concepts. I think this is because I lack the politically strategic mindset of training innovators. Rather than training, I am preparing to train. So something is lacking. Yet such is my situation; I feel that it is easy to merely devise project ideas.

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What is the Superhuman Sports Society?

Anyone can become a superhuman and enjoy sports. Through the unification of body and machine, anyone can overcome physical and spatial restrictions to enjoy new sports with a “single human-machine body.” the community for that purpose is the "Superhuman Sports Society." I am employed as a representative.

　http://superhuman-sports.org/

Enacting Superhuman Sports means many “enhancements.”

“Physical enhancements.” This means developing technology and designs to enhance the body with smart augmentations: exoskeleton sports, super artificial limbs, etc.

“Object enhancements.” This means the development of such devices as a magic ball that anyone can throw, a bow and arrow that can pierce through a target any number of kilometers away, etc.

“Field enhancements.” This means developing virtual space and cultivating real land, sea, and air sports locations.

“Training enhancements.” We can anticipate not only matches, but also daily practice and training innovations.

“Player class enhancements.” Superhuman sports will not only deal in serious, high-end games. It is more important that anyone be able to participate. Men and women of all ages, people with disabilities...anyone would get excited and want to participate. For example, wonderful sports like bubble soccer are fun for everyone.

Prospectively,

2020: The Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics align with the opening of a superhuman pentathlon international tournament.

2028: Superhuman Sports is adopted as a formal Olympics and Paralympics event.

2030: The Superhuman Sports game population reaches 10 million and the market scale of superhuman technology reaches ¥1 trillion.

We are creating a community where persons from many fields participate: researchers, scientists, designers, and artists from fields like VR, IT, sports engineering, and neuroscience. We are advancing development and promulgation of new sports, with everyone’s help.

We are already opening a Superhuman Sports hackathon, developing and implementing all manner of games, and expanding places for people to personally experience the sports with such things as the Superhuman Sports Expo.

Many of the current Olympic games were developed in the 19th century and are the sports of agricultural society: soccer, baseball, and rugby. The industrial societies of the 20th century developed motorsports. So what are the 21st century information society sports? What are the new games that incorporate IT and digital technology into the body?

That is our homework.

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