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; in fact, I realized that what can be solved through business is very small. Rather than just donating because I had some money, 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 create a school in the most 'me' way possible, I considered what kind of school and from what angle I could create something meaningful. As I combined several keywords, it felt like it naturally became 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 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 school education to cultivate entrepreneurs.

Also, this was an inspiration, but I felt 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, often called a 'miraculous countryside' but also a marginal settlement at the opposite extreme of Tokyo—it might actually work.

When I visited Silicon Valley in the U.S. during my time at Mitsui & Co., I had the impression that it was a place that suddenly appeared because Stanford was built 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 in a few decades.

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).

Even after the principal was decided, there was 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 powerful. 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 crazy 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 fairly 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. Oonami, 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 guy' who brought up such intellectual concepts (laughs). From there, I found it 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 create 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 for the time being.

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

At the time, I talked most with Mr. Oonami, and Kosen was new even from the perspective of Kamiyama. If we built an elementary or middle school, we would just be competing for a decreasing number of students. If we built a high school, eyes would 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' (independent 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, and even London, to 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 those kids are living in a boarding school, a lot happens every day.

Just this week, we had people from the companies supporting the tuition-free program come, and students had the opportunity to give presentations in groups of four. I saw their presentations as third-year middle schoolers at last year's summer school, and compared to then, they have 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) actually is.

I think a company takes growth as a given. Therefore, there are sales, profits, and scale, and because of those things, there are elements that don't stagnate; it's 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 not relevant 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. In a company, no matter how much you say the employees are the protagonists, the emphasis is actually on your own organization. But in a school, the students really are the protagonists. In that context, I wonder every day, 'What should a chairperson actually do?'

I think even if the school creates a fund to invest in graduates, it seems likely to generate profit. If we can create a cycle where the money made from such a fund is allocated to something for future students, that would be beautiful. During their time at school, we have prominent entrepreneurs coming 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.

That's right. 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. Since we do things like that every week, it's quite a luxury.

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

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

However, over the past six months, the teachers also seem to have grown a lot. At Kamiyama Kosen, there are people from some company every day, and since we are not people from the education world, there are naturally clashes. But because it is a school open to society—and in a sense, not a normal school—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, because I am an amateur when it comes to schools, there are naturally things I don't understand, and I worry about that every day as I feel 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 really sound like a school song. English comes out suddenly, and I wonder if the students can sing it. But it's filled with a strong message. I feel like I've received a precious baton, and I 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 aspiration, 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; I felt like 'this is it.' 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 was no university entrance exam 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 Keio Senior High School days was very good. On the other hand, I was also someone who couldn't handle my own ambition and aspiration. 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 era that was good for them. My time as a Keio student was good, but I strongly had the perspective when I started the Kosen that there might have been more I could have done.

I think that's true. Keio felt like a place with a slightly 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 struggle of whether the company would live or die, so I felt I had to do one more track and started Kamiyama Kosen. That's now coming together, and I'm almost 50.

Establishing the school this time felt like starting a business from zero once 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 are doing is 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. Regarding the phrase 'Creating things to make things happen,' which is the mission of Kamiyama Kosen, I have a sense of creating things like 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.