[Start]

1985. The beginnings of ‘wanting to create something new’ go back to my school days. After entering school, as a physics major, I attended a laboratory in the engineering department hosted by a senior student from the same high school, where I ran a lathe, built electronic circuits and made equipment for research. Although entrepreneurship as a student was mainly a sales activity to earn money, I also made use of computers and built equipment for automation. (In front of the sputtering equipment at Obara Lab. (I am second from right)

[Connection ]

2001. Through a relationship with a classmate, I met a legend from Kagoshima who was the first in the world to put this into practice on television at a time when there was no concept of a platform for product creation, and who established Sony's golden age. At the time, in my own BtoB business, I was exploring the provision of a service to determine the creditworthiness of business partners  with reference to updating of the content of their websites. (Japanese Patent No. 4719684, US Patent No. 8,341,135, Chinese Patent ZL2005 8 0030013.2). The legend introduced me to the president of the Entertainment Robot Company (president of Aibo), who supported me for activities in Silicon Valley. The idea of a computer with a spherical display as a way of representing these contents was also conceived at this time. (From image sketch of the spherical display computer.)

[Study]

2007. Business activities started as a student? I don't know if you could say that. I was going about it blindly, but then I started to wonder, ‘Well, is this what I want?’ I was seeking learning opportunities and attended business lectures at university. In the process, I decided to knock on the door of the Chuki University. My mentor asked me the fundamental question: ‘What do you want to do? During the year-long seminar, I came to believe that my mission was to ‘foster an increase in communicating the excitement of discovery and creation’. (From a paper presentation at the Chuki University Business Management Course)

[Hop]

2012. My mission was combined with a new sound-absorbing material and eventually led to the creation of a product that controls the sound environment: the sound-isolating phone box ‘Bodyphon’. The product also had an additional display and speakers to provide a sense of presence, and even had a hologram ready to go. During this time, I was supporting a vein identification company, spun off from Sony by the former president of Aibo. (From the process of developing a masking device in a phone booth)

[Step]

2021. Through the vein authentication business, I got acquainted with an engineer from Sony. Display technology has improved remarkably in recent years with FHD, 4K and 8K, but for about 70 years since TVs were commercialised, images have been confined to a flat surface. He launched an in-house venture to develop and commercialise an extremely high-quality aerial display based on his belief and vision of ‘unleashing a revolution in imaging by releasing vivid images from the flat plane into the realistic air’. I was strongly surprised when I actually experienced bright, vivid images floating in the air and freely manipulating them with my bare hands. I was attracted to the technology, and as I was originally trying to build a computer with a spherical display, we decided to work together to open up a new world of aerial computing, rather than displays anyway. And of course, vein authentication in the air. And 200 years later, in the cockpit of a Mars base.

 This was the moment when he received the baton of innovation from the TV legend: ‘Twenty years ago, the spherical display computer you were trying to do became the Aerial Computer.’ We are still at 10 in the Legend's book ‘Management is 1, 10, 100’. (From the development process of the first SOVL-P30)