“Infrastructure,” according to Wikipedia, is defined in a general sense as “the physical components of interrelated systems providing commodities and services essential to enable, sustain, or enhance societal living conditions.” It is the result of the merging of the Latin word “infra,” or “below,” and the Latin/French word “structure.” An infrastructure can be considered a foundation, and in this context, it is the base upon which society, the economy, and indeed our lives depend. We have also taken up the mantle of building an end-of-life infrastructure, or foundation, in Japan’s super-aging society. We are currently engaged in this business, and in this edition, I’d like to touch on how we got here and what it is that’s driving us toward achieving our objective.

Regular readers of this column will be aware that I sit on the board of a social welfare corporation that operates a children’s home and an infant care facility. It is a facility that houses babies and adolescents who, for any number of reasons, are unable to live with their parents. These young ones are not in financial distress. In fact, there are likely many youths who are in less favorable economic situations despite living with their families. The children in the facility are afforded the opportunity to live in a manner that does not differ significantly from that of a so-called a typical family—evidenced by the fact that, at a certain age, they are even given smartphones. A while back, I had the opportunity to visit a room in the facility. It was more than amply furnished, and I noticed quite a few rental video receipts on a desk. I remember feeling a bit disarmed by the scene being so vastly different from the image I had created in my mind.

Children living in such institutions do not lack a stable economic infrastructure. Conversely, it hit me for the first time that the problem was the children not being afforded sufficient psychological or emotional infrastructure, such as the love they would normally receive from their parents and the sense of security that comes with feeling protected. Economic infrastructure can be financed by national and local governments or through donations. The real difficulty lies in the limits to providing psychological or emotional infrastructure that cannot be compensated for regardless of how dedicated and caring the staff may be. In spite of the impression some people may have, issues such as young people constantly getting into trouble and low rates of college enrollment are not a matter of genetic makeup. Rather, they can be attributed to the psychological or emotional infrastructure necessary for people to grow not having been provided. (I’m not saying this is true in absolutely every case, of course —just in a general sense.) Incidentally, there are times in our lives when we express our gratitude to our parents for having raised us, which is in fact us thanking them for having provided us with a psychological and emotional infrastructure. Our lives are being built on a foundation provided by our parents, and it’s not possible to build a sound structure on an unstable foundation. As such, it is very important for us to feel gratitude and respect for our parents, as many of us will eventually find ourselves in the position of being a parent.

The theme here is the importance of infrastructure in the growth and development of people.

This can be applied to businesses as well. While our company has grown steadily, we cannot attribute this solely to our own blood, sweat, and tears. Japan has economic and social infrastructures, and we are growing on this wonderful foundation, so we should be careful not to take an inordinate amount of pride in this growth. There are many countries and regions in the world—such as Sudan, Ukraine, and Myanmar, where conflict is constant—where such infrastructure is not available. Without the existence of a rich infrastructure, we cannot expect a company to realize growth.

Just as parents afford their children the infrastructure they need to grow, companies can flourish on the strength of a country’s well-developed economic and social infrastructure. We must also consider who it was that constructed that foundation. The answer is simple—our predecessors, including the generations represented by our parents and grandparents. These people were certainly forced to make sacrifices along the way, and the growth of our company was made possible by the infrastructure created by those before us. A little thought reveals to us the role we need to play—contributing to building the infrastructure for the next generation.

It is this notion that led to Kamakura Shinsho selecting the advocacy of end-of-life infrastructure as its mission. Since the foundation laid by our predecessors is the reason we have grown successfully, it is incumbent on us to now lay the foundation for those who come after us. I readily and gratefully accept this responsibility, and I owe a debt to my parents and to society. Furthermore, I hope to work cooperatively with various stakeholders—including employees, customers, and shareholders—to bring the end-of-life infrastructure crucial to Japanese society to fruition. And the continued aging of Japan’s population has brought this need into stark relief. Thinking about it, we are nearing the first station of the mountain, and when we near the summit, we will prepare to climb the next mountain. The way I see it, my role is to get us to the top of the mountain we’re currently climbing.

Hirotaka Shimizu
Chairman and CEO
Kamakura Shinsho, Ltd.