Chikahiro Terada: "Kamiyama Marugoto College" Aiming to Cultivate Entrepreneurs

I believe that business has been and will continue to be my main battlefield. However, I have had a desire to start a school for over seven or eight years.

It is obvious that there are social issues that business cannot reach, and I knew that what can be solved through business is actually quite small. Rather than just donating money because I had some to spare for those areas, I wondered if there was something I could do in my own way, and I thought, "It has to be establishing a school."

Then, to build a school in the most 'me' way possible, I considered what kind of school and what angle would make it meaningful. As I combined several keywords, it ended up becoming a KOSEN.

I went from Chutobu Junior High School to Keio Senior High School, and I didn't know anything about KOSEN itself. It was only after I started my company (Sansan) and people who graduated from KOSEN joined that I realized such a system existed.

When thinking about establishing a school, I felt that high schools often become like prep schools for universities, and universities, in reaction to that, become places for job hunting preparation. I wondered if that period of time could be used more effectively for young people.

That's right. I felt that the experience, skills, and abilities I gained as an entrepreneur were rarely obtained within school education. I thought there might be more that could be done within the framework of school education to cultivate entrepreneurs.

Also, this was an inspiration, but I thought that if there were a school with the keyword 'KOSEN' where students could learn technology and design to become entrepreneurs in Kamiyama Town—a place I had a connection with at the time, which is a marginal settlement at the opposite extreme of Tokyo, often called a 'miraculous countryside'—it might actually work.

When I visited Silicon Valley in the US during my time at Mitsui & Co., I had the impression that it was a place created because Stanford suddenly appeared in the desert. So, I thought that if an educational institution that could serve as a hub, even a small one, were born in Kamiyama Town, it might become a place like Silicon Valley decades from now.

I started with such a vague idea, but initially, I had an image of being more like a 'big donor.' I imagined creating the concept and saying, 'Alright, do your best, looks good,' but even though I launched the concept, it didn't progress at all (laughs).

We had a principal, but no chairperson. At the time, I approached entrepreneur Saki Yamakawa, who was introduced to me by Lin Kobayashi of ISAK (International School of Asia, Karuizawa), to be the chairperson. After she looked into it very seriously, she told me, 'Either Mr. Terada becomes the chairperson, or this project should be scrapped.'

Those words resonated strongly. To go as far as saying 'scrap it' was incredible. So, I reconsidered that even if it might mess up my life, I had to do it myself. The two and a half years from then were truly difficult. At the time of the announcement, I told people inside and outside the company that it was a 'double full commitment.' It's a nonsensical phrase, but I said I would work twice as hard and give 100% to both the company and the school (laughs).

To be honest, there was a long period where I was moving solely out of a sense of responsibility, and it was painful. Teachers were being decided one after another, making the life choice to relocate. The number of donors increased. We raised 2.7 billion yen in opening funds. The responsibility grew day by day, thinking about what would happen if the school didn't materialize. If you ask if I was doing it with excitement every day, I was actually more desperate. It's only recently that I've started to think I'm glad I did it.

I was enjoying myself back then. I thought, 'This place is great, the Mountain of God (Kamiyama) is the best' (laughs). When I first met Mr. Ominami, he used the term 'creative depopulation.' He has been running a construction company in Kamiyama since his grandfather's generation, but he himself has a double master's from Stanford. I was very intrigued by this 'construction company uncle' who brought up such intellectual concepts (laughs). From there, it was interesting to see the town change firsthand.

I had considered middle schools or elementary schools, but I didn't feel like I was 'hitting the core.' I feel like we got attention because we did it in Kamiyama. If it were a Shibuya KOSEN, it might not have been that big of a deal.

It was good that we could design a five-year period directly connected to society. If you build a high school, you inevitably have to be conscious of the connection to university. In the case of a KOSEN, it is complete in itself.

KOSEN students are in extremely high demand for employment, so I thought it would be fine to put entrepreneurship in the mainstream. While KOSEN has a narrow image of training good engineers, I thought it might actually be the most versatile school with the widest range of options. After all, technology and design are, so to speak, the modern-day 'reading, writing, and arithmetic.'

At the time, the person I talked to most was Mr. Ominami, and KOSEN was new even from Kamiyama's perspective. If you build an elementary or middle school, you end up competing for students in a shrinking population. If you build a high school, eyes naturally turn toward university entrance. So we agreed that a KOSEN directly connected to society was indeed good. I feel that KOSEN is a format that should be rediscovered and repurposed.

I wanted to do something that only I could do if I were to do it. Many places advocate for things like 'cultivating global leaders.' Initially, I said we weren't raising global leaders, but 'Nobushi' (wild warriors).

Everything is so new that I don't even know if it's going well (laughs). We have 15 and 16-year-olds from Hokkaido in the north, London, and Okinawa in the south. Also, since tuition is free, their family backgrounds vary. The kids who decided on this "Kamiyama KOSEN" at the point of entering high school are very edgy. Since they live in a dormitory, a lot happens every day.

Just this week, we had people from the companies supporting the free tuition come, and the students had the opportunity to give presentations in groups of four. I saw their presentations as 9th graders at last year's summer school, and compared to then, they had become very skilled. I thought, 'Wow, everyone is steadily growing.'

On the other hand, as I face the KOSEN as the chairperson of the school, I realize how well-structured a corporation (Kabushiki Kaisha) really is.

I think a company takes growth as a given. Therefore, there are sales, profits, and scale, and because of those things, there is a flow that doesn't stagnate, making it easy for each person to link their contribution and evaluate each other. And if there is no growth and no profit, it dies.

On the other hand, growth is irrelevant to the school organization itself. There is no concept of sales or profit. Moreover, the members gathered there are teachers, students, and the students' parents. No matter how much a company says the employees are the protagonists, the emphasis is actually on their own organization. But in a school, the students are truly the protagonists. In that context, I wonder every day, 'What should a chairperson do?'

I think it would be profitable for the school to create a fund that invests in graduates. It would be beautiful if we could create a cycle where the money generated by such a fund is used for something for future students. During their time at school, we have prominent entrepreneurs come every week as 'entrepreneur lecturers,' and since there will be opportunities to connect with them, I think the students will be in a very advantageous position to start a business.

Yes. Just yesterday, Yoshiharu Hoshino of Hoshino Resorts taught a class over two days and one night, and he was talking with the students around a bonfire for a long time. Doing things like that every week is quite a luxury.

The entrepreneur lecturers interpret 'entrepreneurship' in a broad sense, so there are artists and government officials as well. The students talk to these people and start to feel, 'They're amazing, but they're just normal people.' Even if it's a misunderstanding at first, I have expectations that something will be born while they think big and experience failures.

Gathering teachers was just as hard as gathering money. I was asking them to move to the mountains, after all. Moreover, I thought it might be impossible to find teachers who could teach our syllabus.

However, the teachers also seem to have grown significantly in the past six months. At Kamiyama KOSEN, there are people from some company every day, and since we are not from the education world, there are naturally clashes. But because it is a school open to society and somewhat unusual, I think everyone is changing in a good way through contact with society.

I do feel that risk to a certain extent. On the premise that this is not a normal school, how do we work well with the teachers? On the other hand, since I am an amateur in schooling, there are naturally things I don't understand, and I struggle with that every day, truly feeling my way through.

Since it's a school, I wanted a school song. When I asked Saki Yamakawa to 'plan something good,' she said that from the perspective of a support song that lasts 100 years, the only composer could be Ryuichi Sakamoto. He was bedridden, but he chose it as one of his final works and took it on. For the lyrics, we approached UA, whom he had designated, and 'KAMIYAMA' was born.

Thank you. It doesn't sound like a typical school song. English appears suddenly, and I wondered if the students could sing it. But it's full of messages. I feel like I've received a precious baton and want to cherish it.

I barely managed to graduate from Keio Senior High School (laughs). I was even suspended; it was terrible. I had ambition and aspirations, but I couldn't get excited about what was right in front of me.

But then I went to SFC, did something like a student venture, and felt like I opened up a bit to society, which felt right. I was in the 6th graduating class of SFC, and at the time, it was like a mecca for the internet. By talking about that, I felt like I could interact with adults.

I think the fact that there were no university entrance exams was probably very good. Since KOSEN doesn't have university entrance exams, there might be a connection there.

I think the feeling of freedom during my high school days was very good. On the other hand, I was also someone who had more ambition and aspiration than I knew what to do with. So, I am creating a school that responds to those kinds of kids.

I'm doing this while facing my past self, thinking, 'Young Terada, if you had gone to Kamiyama KOSEN, you might have achieved something more impactful sooner.'

Everyone talks about education, don't they? And everyone tries to reproduce the times that were good for them. My time as a Keio student was good, but the thought that there might have been more I could have done was a strong perspective when I started the KOSEN.

I think that's true. Keio felt like a place with a somewhat objective atmosphere—so to speak, an atmosphere where everyone is independent and moves freely. But I don't think we should just reproduce that as it is.

In my 20s I was a salaryman, in my 30s I worked frantically, and from around 40, it was no longer a battle of whether the company would live or die, so I felt I had to do 'one more track' and launched Kamiyama KOSEN. That's now taking shape, and I'm almost 50.

Establishing the school this time felt like starting a business from zero again; the difficulty was high, and I have a strong sense of having grown. I don't quite know yet what that will bring as I enter my 50s.

Right now I'm very busy just doing both, but I'm thinking a little bit that while what we do are business applications, I'd also like to try social implementation that rises to a more scientific level.

I am committed as a shareholder to a company called Amoeba Energy, founded by my Keio classmate Masashi Aono (Project Professor at the Graduate School of Media and Governance and the Graduate School of Science and Technology). They are doing things like biocomputing, and I think that kind of thing is interesting.

That's right. The phrase 'Creating things to make things happen,' which is the mission of Kamiyama KOSEN—I have a sense of creating things in the form of software, but because my own background wasn't like that, I wanted to tell the Terada who was at Keio Senior High School to study those things properly.

I'm looking forward to seeing how they will bring about transformation in society.