At the 2016 Classic Car Festival at Meiji Jingu Gaien Park (Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery) sponsored by the Toyota Automobile Museum Left: Mr.Nunogaki, Right: Mr.Masuda
Special Interview Section
Nunogaki: You’re a big car fan, right? You’ve got a ton of car books at your new Daikanyama Tsutaya Books concept shop.
Masuda: Cars are my one hobby. I’ve certainly driven my fair share of them [laughs]. We Japanese live quite well now, following Japan’s postwar rapid economic growth. But people don’t learn how to use money in ways that allow them to enjoy their lives. And the Japanese economy is now stagnant. The concept behind Daikanyama Tsutaya Books is to encourage people in their 60s and 70s to spend money on themselves. In other words, enjoying time with cars more and a good meal. Things like that.
Nunogaki: The same can be said for cars, too. I wish people in Japan enjoyed the automobile culture more. The Classic Car Festival at which you had a close look this time is hosted by the Toyota Automobile Museum every year. In addition to refining new-car technologies, I think also getting people to realize the breadth and depth of ways to have fun with cars will make life richer and drive us to improve the quality of our manufacturing as well.
Masuda: I agree. I think we live in an age where culture and civilization are coming together. Civilization is about making things more logical and convenient. Culture is the pursuit of an inner richness. Automobiles come out of a drive toward civilization, but these days, I see them more as cultural objects. They’ve gone from being a means of transportation to also being part of an aspirational lifestyle.
Nunogaki: I’m a little concerned that younger people are losing sight of that aspect these days.
Mr.Masuda
Masuda: In my mind, living in a prosperous age is not about material consumption, but about intellectual consumption—in other words, the consumption of joyful ideals. My guess is that the cars of the future won’t just have to compete in terms of functionality and price. They’ll also have to serve a kind of iconographic role. They’ll need to inspire people toward intellectual consumption.
Nunogaki: That makes a lot of sense. These days, we’ve got “likes” on social media, and I wonder if culture is about concentrating those “likes” into one place. Perhaps culture happens when countries, companies, and communities come together and enthusiastically “like” something. No matter how hard we try to make something, if people don’t accept it, it will hardly catch on as a commercial product—much less a piece of culture. It’s really through ongoing communication between creators and recipients...
Masuda: …that things develop.
Nunogaki: Exactly. They develop. The original founder of Toyota Motor Corporation wanted to use the automobile industry to make the world a better place. Tsutaya is the same in that it uses content to enrich people’s lives through culture, which translates to better communities. When I’m in Tsutaya Books reading a good book over a cup of coffee, I get this profound sense that life is good. It’s critical that every company offers something that really resonates with consumers.
Masuda: You’re right. It all comes down to giving people something to strive for in their lives. Again, intellectual consumption.
Nunogaki: I see what you mean now. In our case too, it’s not just about making cars. We want to build the kind of cars that people fall in love with. And just like people have personal virtues, I think companies can have corporate virtues as well. The Corporate Citizenship Division gives shape to those virtues, so in a sense I guess it’s really the “Corporate Virtue Design Division”. In other words, our division aims to give actual form to our company’s virtues by conducting activities that reflect such virtues and benefit people and society.
Masuda: The “Corporate Virtue Design Division”, huh? Pretty interesting.
Nunogaki: In the past, I think companies treated social contribution as icing on the cake—more like philanthropy when things were going well. But that concept no longer applies. The Great East Japan Earthquake that struck in 2011 is a perfect example. Many companies and individuals offered their support—not because they had extra money lying around, but because they looked for ways that they could be of use organizationally or individually and took action.
Masuda: I used to think that it was the government’s job to use taxes to take care of the disadvantaged or handicapped. So in my mind, the most-important responsibility companies had to society was obviously paying taxes.
Nunogaki: Naturally we have to pay our taxes. Toyota was in a precarious position after the 2008 global financial crisis. At the time, I realized that companies themselves had to be sustainable—that is, they had to be companies that people wanted to exist.
Masuda:That makes sense. I’ve also gradually come to the conclusion that altruism is what’s really at the heart of the Japanese way of life. In other words, finding one’s joy in the joy of others. It’s probably a lot like the idea of virtue that you talked about earlier. I think it’s the main reason the world is so fond of Japanese culture. Capitalism can be very self-serving at times, but our history as an agrarian society in Japan has taught us that working together for the common good is what altruism is all about.
Nunogaki: Altruism really is about consideration for others.
Masuda: Right. It’s culture and the way we live that teach us to be altruistic. Unfortunately, Japanese people are becoming more self-centered. I wonder if we need to go back to this idea of altruism in order to discover a new kind of joy. If we think back to the times when we were truly happy, we inevitably find that they were the times we made others happy.
Nunogaki: Having someone say “thank you” really is a wonderful feeling.
Masuda: It is. It makes us happy. No matter how many 10,000-yen notes I pile up, it doesn’t turn into joy. I think, precisely because future society will be a coming together of people with the spirit of altruism, it will have value.
Mr.Nunogaki
Despite the fact that I was bracing myself to meet the amazing founder of Tsutaya, the conversation flowed cheerfully from the moment we met and had me smiling from start to finish. I found a lot of similarities between the idea that Tsutaya is selling a way of life rather than physical things and Toyota’s goal to not simply provide a means of transportation but cars that people fall in love with.
They say that a spirit of altruism can go so far as to affect your physical health, and research has shown that people who participate in volunteer activities actually live longer. I would imagine that this is probably true not only for people, but for companies as well. (Nunogaki)
Born in Osaka in 1951, Masuda joined Suzuya Co., Ltd. after graduating from university. There, he was involved in the development of Bell Commons in Karuizawa and various other projects. In 1983, he left Suzuya to found Tsutaya Shoten (now the Tsutaya Hirakata Station Square Store). In 1985, he founded Culture Convenience Club Co., Ltd. (CCC).
Born in Kyoto in 1958, Nunogaki has worked in design centers in both Tokyo and Europe since joining the company. He has proposed and marketed numerous innovative concept cars, been involved in brand strategy, and served as the general manager of the Global Design Management Division, among other duties, before taking up his current post. Nunogaki is also director of the Toyota Automobile Museum.