Host:Thank you very much. Now, I’d like to open the floor for discussion. First, Dean Okamoto, can you give us your impressions of the talk?

Dean Okamoto: If we forget about the past, we can’t flip the next switch. I also feel like the new era will be that switch for Japan. What Atsushi said about the new era ushering in the next innovations resonates deeply with me. We tend to think that existence is born of nothing, but really there’s an accumulation of memories and past experiences. These are ordinarily forgotten, but when new topics come up, that switch is suddenly flipped. That’s what I thought when I listened to you today.

Fukuda: Thank you so much. I worked for big companies for around 20 years, and I think they are interesting. Three-year plans (medium-term management plans) start with a goal for three years in the future. One time, I told my boss that I wanted to check and see if the situation we had anticipated three years ago had really come to pass, and he told me not to worry about something as superfluous as that (laughs). However, if you get people together who don’t even know what they are going to eat tomorrow, there’s no way they can think about three years from now. If you’re going to think along those lines, you’re better off thinking about how now, today, the present is the result of an accumulation of past history. Archeologists study old things from the past to understand what the future holds, I think. So, there are elements of the future in the present.
Recently, the percentage of people who believe that Prime Minister Abe is responsible for fraudulent statistics in the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare has climbed to 80%. The statistics of the most trusted administration were bunk. Some of you may have read the trendy business book FACTFULNESS: Ten Reasons We're Wrong about the World - And Why Things Are Better than You Think. The book says that people don’t see reality properly. However, if you put faith in statistics, all of Japan’s economic indicators are favorable, so looking at the numbers indicates that there’s no recession at all. The book would then indicate that those who feel the recession aren’t seeing reality. So what I want to say to the author of this book is, the facts alone are not enough. You have to understand the mood of the time and the place to understand what people are feeling.

So what kind of era are we in, now? Since today has presented me with such an incredible opportunity, I’d like to look down on the world from the sky. If we could that, we could start to see what the future will bring. That outlook shows me that play will be vital in the future. I also think that society will need those who graduated from art school more and more.