Mitsu Kimata; Director-CEO of JKSK participated a symposium "21st Century Women Leaders: Building Bridges Across the Pacific" held by GOLD (Global Organization for Leadership & Diversity)and made keynote speech at welcome reception. Here we introduce the speech.

"21st Century Women Leaders: Building Bridges Across the Pacific" Keynote Speech

H. E. Consul General & Mrs. Kodama, Distinguished Guests, Dear Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is an honor and a privilege to be here at GOLD's Symposium "21st Century Women Leaders: Building Bridges Across the Pacific" as one of representatives of the Japanese side.

From the end of 2006 to the beginning of 2007, I was shocked at what I read in Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations: 21st Century Japan. At the same time, it gave me a new awareness.

From the 1960s I worked for 16 years for the Japanese government's Overseas Development Aid projects in developing countries, then I served for three years as the Minister of Japanese Mission to the UN in New York , and then for ten years as the founding president of an English-born business advocating for change in the way we do business in the 21st century,The Body Shop, Japan.

Through those experiences, I learned firsthand that Japan, far from being loved by other countries, in Asia and in the rest of the world, was neither respected nor did other countries expect much of Japan. The reason might stem from the fact that Japanese people themselves do not have much awareness of what to do, despite their appearance of affluence. Professor Huntington points this out as well:

When we look at Japan from the standpoint of culture and civilization,

*

Japan is an isolated nation.

*

Despite being the first country outside the West to succeed at modernization, it did not Westernize. While Japan reached the peak of modernization, it has maintained its fundamental values, lifestyles, human relations, and behavior patterns, which are non-Western.

*

While it is true that both Japanese culture and American culture are modern, the differences exist in the areas of "individualism and collectivism", "equality and classes" "freedom and authority" "contracts and blood relations" "guilt and shame" "rights and responsibilities" "universality and the exclusion principle" "competition and cooperation" "heterogeneity and homogeneity", and none of these are likely to eventually change.

*

Because Japan was able to modernize without a revolutionary upheaval, and its revolution was bloodless and did not tear the social fabric, Japan was able to maintain its traditional culture's unity while building a highly modern society.

*

Unfortunately, the truth is that Japan is not trusted by most other East Asian countries.

*

Japan is an isolated country, meaning that there are no countries that share Japan's unique culture, Japanese people who emigrated to other countries do not make up a sizable proportion of the populations of those countries or they adopted the culture of the host country.

*

Japanese culture shows a high degree of exclusivity, and does not include a widely supportable religion (like Christianity or Islam) or ideology (like liberalism or communism), and therefore it is difficult to communicate the culture to people of other societies and build cultural connections.

First of all, I could not help but feel surprise to have a foreign person clearly identify and analyze these trends more clearly and vividly that I had felt as a Japanese person.

At the same time, the important thing is to recognize that this country Japan has no other countries like it in the world, yet because it has no resources, it can only exist in cooperation with other countries of the world.

Another characteristic of this Japanese society is that while women can enjoy their daily lives, in the 60 years since the war's end, tertiary education was opened to women and many women have pursued college education, graduate education, and study abroad in developed countries, many earning MBAs in the US, but still, we must take a straight, hard look at the fact in politics, finance, and bureaucracy, the percentage of women involved in decision making is miserable, the lowest in the world. We have a past of leaving things up to men, but we must put a period at the end of this history of under-utilizing women's talents, power, energy and sensitivity, and work vigorously toward realizing a 50-50 society.

Especially, after recognizing differences between the US and Japan, the two important allies must both face the challenges of the 21st century, and in doing so take full advantage of women's potential. I have high hopes that this Symposium, 21st Century Women Leaders: Building Bridges Across the Pacific will be the first page of that new history.

Thank you.