# Lunch with Iwao Nakatani

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 2003-02-04T14:08:40Z


I just had lunch with Iwao Nakatani. I met him at the Sony Open Forum. Nakatani-san is one of the outside directors of Sony. He suprised everyone when he left his position at Hitotsubashi University to join Sony's board. Hitotsubashi is a public university which does not allow professors to take commercial positions. Nakatani-san is also well known for being very outspoken on political and economic issues. He held important advisory roles for the Hosokawa and Obuchi cabinets. He is now a professor at Tama University.

At the Sony Open Forum, he commented that he agreed with me that the dysfunctional democracy was one of the core problems with Japan. We talked a lot about the Japanese system today. We both agreed that "change was in the air" and that somehow we needed to change the system. It was very interesting getting his insight and advice. He liked the idea of blogs driving change, but he thought that I should also write a book. I wonder if I could write a book that ties together emergence, blogs and democracy in Japan...

Encouragement from intellectuals who actually try to change things like Nakatani-san  is exactly what I need right now...





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