Japanese → English transcript

Around when I was thirty, um, I was really, uh, constantly suffering from

this huge gap between the ideals I had and how pathetic reality was. That’s kind of

how it felt. So, I took my company public when I was twenty- six, and, uh,

we listed in 2000,

and the first year we were in the black for the full year was 2004.

Until then we kept posting losses and getting bashed all the time, so, basically,

right around when I was thirty was exactly when we finally turned a profit.

But even then, uh, the company was still small and kind of pathetic,

so in terms of what I wanted to do and what we were proclaiming,

we didn’t have the money or the people,

and the scale of the businesses we were running, we didn’t have anything we needed,

and, yeah, time would eventually solve it,

but I just couldn’t stand waiting for that time to pass.

I’d grown really fast in my twenties, so by comparison,

once I hit thirty it felt like time was moving incredibly slowly.

That was the feeling I had. So those days around age thirty, uh, I feel like I just

kind of drifted through them in that state, and I still feel that way now.

Looking back on your thirties,

is there any advice you would want to give to your thirty- year- old self?

Uh, just stay still and endure it. That would be it, I guess. Because, well,

it’s the same for everyone, but if you take a long, long- term view,

uh— sorry to use mahjong as an example again,

my head is basically always thinking in terms of mahjong. When you play mahjong,

more or less everyone takes first place at about the same rate,

and even someone incredibly strong,

if their first- place rate hits around thirty percent, they’re insanely strong.

Roughly speaking, since you usually play with four people,

the average is about twenty- five percent. So on average it evens out, but sometimes

you get first place four times in a row, and sometimes

you finish fourth— meaning last— four times in a row.

When people get four straight last places, everyone falls apart mentally,

like,“ Uh, maybe I’m doing something wrong,

maybe there’s something wrong with me,”

and they start wondering what the cause is, and they start to waver.

And then, on the flip side, there are also stretches where you just happen to take

first place four times in a row, and that’s when you usually get carried away.

And then that’s how you lose your balance.

So if I were to say something to my thirty- something self— well, I actually did try

to be careful about this, but I would say,

do not waver when things are going really badly.