 And good morning, everybody. A really interesting discussion prior to our panel, and I hope this session won't let you down, and we'll continue the momentum in a very positive, engaging way. Our session over the next hour or so was really intended to be a look forward through a market-centric lens about Japan's potential for success and its future growth. We heard in the last panel about abinomics and how Japan has a plan for growth. So what we want to do is take this maybe a little bit from the macro perspective and turn it to the micro perspective, what's going on in the marketplace, what's going on in Japanese technological leadership, and how will that bridge and translate to what is increasingly a globally integrated economy that Japan has to not only participate in but succeed in. So we know that Japan is excellent at building things. And we know that Japan is excellent at creating technologies that have impacts. But how does it do and how will it do at building processes or platforms in a global economy that's increasingly being characterized as connected, integrated, and frequently and more than ever termed as a sharing economy, where purchases become less and shares become more? There are a number of global socioeconomic macro trends that should play well to Japan's capabilities and excellence, increasing urbanization, increasing investments in information and innovation infused infrastructure, or smart infrastructure, public infrastructure, increased focus and commitment to sustainability, increasing energy alternatives and efficiencies. All of these, if we were sitting in a strategy session for what are the assets and the strengths for Japan and its historic capabilities, would be winded our back, it seems to me. And the market place that we see shifting, however, is going to ask this question, what will a shared economy and integrated economy put a high premium on? And the question for Japan and from my perspective and what we hope will be the conversation for the next hour is, in a context of innovation, there is a distinction that's very important in the economy today and how markets put premiums or discounts on value added. And it's the distinction between disruptive technologies and disruptive business models. And the question for us, in part, is, given Japan's historic strengths, we know it's good at creation of technologies and we know it's great at invention. But how is it on the creation of disruptive business models? Now, what do I mean by this distinction between disruptive technologies and disruptive business models? Clearly, the iPhone was a disruptive business model. It was supported by an ecosystem in order to purchase and to select music and smart capabilities. So originally, the iPod was not a disruptive technology. It was standard MP3 technology. But what was built around the iPod by Apple was an economic community of stakeholders and integrated economic community of vested interests that changed the marketplace for how music was going to be procured and how music was going to be supplied. In turn, the smart car versus car to go, or versus Zipcar. Car to go is a disruptive business model. It's taking a technology, in essence, a small and more efficient car, but driving it into the marketplace in an entirely different way, capitalizing or taking advantage of the trends of urbanization, where young people today who are going to cities either don't have a place to put their car because cities are so congested, don't have a desire to purchase a car, but still have a need for a car. And therefore, car to go, if you see it here in Washington, DC, and many other cities around the country and the world, ends up creating a shared business model that's very disruptive in its potential for how it will impact auto sales, how it will impact the insurance industry. So that's another example of a disruptive business model. Uber, another example of a disruptive business model. Airbnb, another example of a disruptive business model. People are choosing because they can, because we're connected, to stay in non-traditional lodging. What is the impact of that to traditional hotel environments? So I'm just trying to dramatize here for you. The marketplace is increasingly seeing a growth in disruptive in companies that are creating value using disruptive business models. Yet, disruptive business models frequently stem from some kind of leading edge technology. And the question for Japan is, where will it play? And where will the premium come to Japan and Japanese competitiveness in its growth in this new globally integrated marketplace that is typified by a balancing act between premiums assigned to disruptive business models versus premiums assigned to disruptive technologies? This morning, we're going to hear from three leading experts on the panel. I'm going to first turn to Ed Gresser, who is the executive director of the Progressive Economy Project at the Global Works Foundation. For those of you who have worked with Ed before, you know he's a renowned expert on trade and technology and has been in Washington dealing with policy issues for quite some time. Then I'm going to ask Kevin Ichikawa, who's general manager of Central Japan Railway Company, to talk about his company and the leading technology and attributes that they've had since 1987, when Central Japan Railway Company was founded and has been a leader in transportation technology, high-speed rail. Obviously, you see that photograph up on the screen. Maglev and Bullet Train Technology. Kevin will talk a little bit about what his company has done and will be doing, but I think he'll have an interesting perspective on it. So if you create the technology, does it necessarily penetrate the marketplace? Or are there barriers to the marketplace that have to be addressed because you need an ecosystem or a business model that accommodates the disruptive technology? And finally, I'll turn to Eric Lundell. He is president and CEO of International Technology and Trade Associates here in Washington, D.C. And Eric's going to focus a little bit on two technologies, in particular one robotics and the other one will be around 3D printing or advanced manufacturing and the impact and the opportunity for Japan affiliated with those two activities. So Ed, let me turn it over to you. Thank you very much. It's quite an honor to be here at CSIS. I really appreciate the invitation and very grateful to Chris for thinking of me for the event. I think what I would like to do is set the scene a little bit by three questions, what then, what now, and what next. And first look back a little bit at 1964, given the theme of our conference, a little bit at Japan in the modern world of technology and manufacturing and invention and research, and then at a couple of possibilities for what next, given two big problems that the world, in one case, is thinking hard about and in the other case, maybe not so much. So what then, if you look back at Japan in 1964, the Olympics, you have the launch of the bullet train, you have a lot of other firsts in which you can see some of the origins of world economy, manufacturing, daily life, consumer affairs today, and a couple of other things where you can look back at Japan and see things that didn't happen or things where trends visible to time stopped and went into reverse. Things that you can draw out from then to now, 1964, Japan first began manufacturing color televisions. Americans were beginning to buy Japanese cars, 16,000 automobiles imported from Japan that year. That was six years into Japan's life as a car exporter, which began in 1957. You saw almost but not quite the first anime film that was 1963, Astro Boy. Now one of the major cultural influences on animation and popular culture, especially for American teenagers. A lot of the things that we as Americans associate with Japan and make up Japan in the American mind, high quality cars, high quality animation, consumer electronics, I could also mention the first desk calculator. It was made by Sharp in 1964. It cost about $25,000 in a way at 55 pounds. It was first one in the world, made for public sale. Then a couple of things that you could look back at Japan then and see very little of today. One was a extremely severe problem with industrial pollution. You had Minamata disease from mercury poisoning. You had cities polluted by cadmium. You had on December 24th, 1964, a darkness at noon event. They sometimes have in Beijing, where drivers had to turn on their lights because the smog in Tokyo was so bad that they couldn't see. And those are areas where Japanese companies, Japanese government, Japanese public looked hard at an existing problem and one that if you forecast it out in the future would create a tremendous public health and quality of life problem for the country and largely solved. Japan's rates of pollution are relatively low by industrial standards. You do not have darkness at noon events anymore. Air quality in cities in Japan is similar to those in the US, which is quite good. So you can see that technology innovation ideas in Japan in 1964 both brought us a lot of what's very common in life worldwide today and also helped to eliminate problems that could have been very large parts of life today. Second, what now? A bit of context for Japan's role in trade and technology manufacturing. In the last panel, a lot of little bit of pervasive pessimism, low growth, all those sorts of things. If you look at more the micro, I think you get a much more happy picture or much more room for optimism. If you look at output, Japan is 2% of world population, a bit less. It produces 5% of world output, 11% of world manufacturing, 13% of vehicles, has 309,000 of the world's 1.4 million working robots. Trade is a very complex and interesting story and one that's hard to work out through statistics because so much of Japan's industry is so integrated with American and European and Chinese production. But if you look at really iconic products, you look at the iPhone, the display module, the flash memory, the touch screen, or Japanese made. If you look at the Dreamliner, new Boeing aircraft, wing boxes, scallies, lavatories, carbon fiber, or Japanese. If you look at Medtronic pacemakers or satellites, you also, Japan kind of embedded inside, not on the nameplate, but as a integral part of production. You look then at technology development. Japan's research spending, 3.35% of GDP, one of the highest in the world, $150 billion in research spending annually, which is 10% of all world science. And if you look at what this produces, it's very hard to compare patenting statistics across countries, but you can look at ours and see that last year, there were 302,948 patents registered, of which 147,600 were local, and 54,170 from Japan, and the whole rest of the world combined, 101,000. So in America's scientific life and technological development, you can see a very, very large Japanese presence. So in that sense, I suppose as opposed to GDP trends and those sorts of things, I think you see a very powerful, very lively, very well integrated Japanese industrial base and Japanese scientific base. And let me just, having spoken a bit to the pollution problem before, I look ahead to two big problems where I think Japan is likely a central part of what will come. One of the big problems is sort of an obvious one that a lot of people are looking at. This is climate change. We have annually about 33 billion tons of CO2 produced, of which cars and trucks produce about 4 billion tons. There are roughly speaking 800 million cars in the world. Within the next 30 or 40 years, there'll be 2 billion cars. If things go on their current track, these 4 billion tons of auto emissions will go up to about 10 billion tons. What can be done about that? One thing is to make more efficient cars, cars which don't burn gasoline, and you can see quite a lot of experiments with electric cars, hybrids, fuel cells, and so forth. And this will, I think, quite likely keep those 4 billion tons stable or growing much more slowly than trends would suggest. But more fundamentally, if you step back a bit, why do we have to separate the emissions from transport and autos from the emissions from industries? Because we have two different energy systems. One is the petroleum system that's used to run cars and trucks and planes. The other is the coal and nuclear system that's used to run factories and homes. There is an experiment that's run by Honda Motors right now that, going on in Japan and at UC Davis in California, to sort of abolish this distinction. To run the car as part of the powering device for the home, and that you would be running on an electric vehicle, you would generate heat that would be used to generate the home's electricity. Then during the day when the car is out, the home will be taking in solar energy and that will be used to power up the car's battery so that you would run basically your family at something like 90% efficiency level. There would be very, very little energy wasted in the car cooling off or wasted in the house day to day. The other big problem, which not many people are looking at, is the massive amounts of deaths that occur every year from auto accidents. If you look in the United States, year by year you would see 35,000 people killed in auto accidents. That is against about 11,000 people killed in murders and about 2,800 to HIV-AIDS. Auto accident deaths in the United States is a very, very big public health problem and worldwide it's even worse, about 1.2 million deaths per year. That can probably be brought down by 95%. If we are careful and clever in inventing the driverless technology, this is something that manufacturers, Japanese American and others will be able to do within a short number of years. Google has already produced a car that will run without a driver at all. The established companies are developing cars that will have autopilots. And that will mean essentially no deaths due to drunken drivers and distracted drivers and so forth. And a massive and almost ignored problem that exists today, not gone, but gone as much as you could say those darkness at noon days in Tokyo have been gone through some disruptive technologies and through some collaborations. And so I think looking to me, looking at Japan's role in the world of technology and science and manufacturing, it looks quite good, it looks bright, it looks impressive. Thank you, Kevin. Yes, thank you Chris. We celebrate our talk at Shinkansen for 50 years anniversary this coming October. And I just wanna finish my speech in 10 minutes. I don't want to over time, our Shinkansen is already on time, so. Just a speech, start video, that's our Shinkansen operation and the company outline to enhance your understanding. Thank you. JR Central operates the Tokaido Shinkansen, which connects the Tokaido Megalopolis between Tokyo and Osaka. And conventional lines operating as transport in primarily urban areas of the Tokaido region. We strive to provide service chosen by the customer while ensuring safe and reliable transport. While the Tokaido Megalopolis, JR Central's operating area, covers just 23.7% of Japan's land area, it's home to 59.5% of the country's population numbering approximately 126 million people and accounting for 64.1% of its gross domestic product. 1987, the Japanese government divided and privatized Japanese national railways into six passenger rail companies and one freight rail company. Central Japan Railway Company, known as JR Central, was formed to operate passenger trains of the Tokaido Shinkansen and conventional lines in the central region, as well as to maintain those infrastructures. JR Central was listed on Japan's major stock exchanges in October 1997. Then in April 2006, all shares held by the government were sold to achieve full privatization. With consolidated operating revenue totaling about 16 billion US dollars and net income approximately 2 billion US dollars, JR Central has not required any government subsidies since its privatization. In 1964, the world's first high-speed railway, the Tokaido Shinkansen, was open to link Tokyo and Osaka at a maximum speed of 210 kilometers per hour. The Tokaido Shinkansen, the backbone of JR Central, links the 552.6 kilometer route from Tokyo to Nagoya to Shin-Osaka. It runs at a maximum speed of 270 kilometers per hour and it completes the route in as fast as two hours and 25 minutes. With high-speed, high-density operation at approximately four-minute intervals, 336 trains run each day with a seating capacity of 1,323 passengers per train. The Shinkansen offers mass transport that carries about 410,000 passengers a day. As such, it plays a vital role in Japan's social and economic development. The Tokaido Shinkansen's share of the transportation market between Tokyo and Osaka is overwhelmingly superior to that of airlines at approximately 80 percent. The Tokaido Shinkansen is also world-renowned for safety record and punctuality. It has not had a single passenger fatality or injury due to train accidents since its opening in 1964. The annual average delay for operational train is less than one minute, even including delays caused by natural disasters such as typhoons. The Shinkansen is a dedicated line on which only Shinkansen trains operate. The system is not shared by conventional lines or freight trains and there are no level crossings, thereby eliminating collisions with other trains or road vehicles. Well, thank you. That's what we achieved for the last 50 years and what our next 50 years is our superconducting margaret to be applied to Chuo Shinkansen. Chuo means the central region of main island of Japan to link Tokyo and Nagoya first by 2027 with a $54 billion budget and this 100 percent money will be borne by JR Central. No government money inside. That shows how our leadership is visible and push forward to this project. And I think the superconducting margaret is cutting edge Japanese technology and very advanced high volume of high speed, ultra high speed rail, next generation transportation. So next video show your superconducting margaret of what we are doing in Japan, please. To continue operation of the high speed railway that links Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka, which is our mission and the company's lifeline, JR Central plans to build the Chuo Shinkansen that employs superconducting maglev technology. As the current Tokaido Shinkansen quickly approaches its 50th anniversary, we feel it is necessary to make Japan's major transportation artery redundant to prepare for future structural aging and large scale natural disasters. This is why JR Central plans to bear the complete cost of construction of the Chuo Shinkansen that utilizes superconducting maglev technology and operate it along with the Tokaido Shinkansen. Furthermore, in order to complete this plan, while strictly maintaining a sound management and stable dividends, we will first build the Chuo Shinkansen between Tokyo and Nagoya and then quickly extend the line to Osaka. In 2011, based on the discussions held at the Transport Policy Council, the Minister of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism designated JR Central to be the primary contractor and operating entity between Tokyo and Osaka. The Minister then decided on a plan and instructed JR Central to start construction. In response to this, JR Central is steadily moving forward with the Chuo Shinkansen plan by conducting environmental assessments and clarifying the actual route and location of stations. The superconducting maglev technology employed for the Chuo Shinkansen will enable ultra-high speeds of 500 kilometers per hour by utilizing the magnetic force produced between coils on the ground and superconducting magnets installed in rolling stock. Furthermore, since the train will be levitating 10 centimeters off the ground, it will have a high level of safety in regards to earthquakes when running at high speeds and also have superior acceleration performance. In July 2009, the Maglev Technological Practicality Evaluation Committee determined that superconducting maglev technology has reached a level that does not hinder commercial operation. In December 2011, the Minister of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism enacted superconducting maglev technological standards. We are currently conducting running tests using the new series L0 on the Yamanashi Maglev Test Line that has been extended from 18.4 kilometers to 42.8 kilometers. We are also in the midst of revining superconducting maglev technology for practical application and making efforts to reduce costs. Well, thank you. And what we are trying to do here in the United States is bring our superconducting maglev to northeast corridor to link DC and New York just one hour. And the N700 series Shinkansen to Texas to link Dallas and Houston with just 90 minutes traveling time. The both project, if successful, that will bring a huge benefit on both regions, particularly northeast corridor. I hope that this will work well and it's just 10 minutes. An ideal panelist, thank you very much. Eric, can I turn to you? It's a pleasure to be here and I want to thank CSIS for the opportunity to participate this morning. Just to jump in, in considering today's theme of Japan 1964, one of the primary stories over the last 50 years, as we've already heard, is obviously the key role of Japan's manufacturing industries, the role they've had in the country's economic growth. And so in considering future successes and challenges, I'd like to highlight two technologies for discussion regarding Japan's continued manufacturing competitiveness. First, robotics and then secondly, 3D printing. In the first area, Japan is widely considered one of the global industrial leaders. In the second area of 3D printing, Japan was rather active in early phases of the technology for prototyping applications, but recently has become more of a consumer of 3D printering technology rather than a provider. However, over at least the past couple of years, it seems Japan has increasingly identified 3D printing as an area for attention. And so with my time today, I'd like to offer just a few comments on both of those areas. First, robotics obviously continues to receive greater and greater attention as a key technology for the future. And recent acquisitions of robotic startups by companies such as Amazon and Google, I've also served to focus investor attention in this area as well. I'd like to divide my comments on two areas, on industrial robots and then on service robots. As noted, Japan's already one of the leaders in industrial robots in terms of both production and use, with many of the most recognized industrial robotics companies residing in Japan. And this global markets also keeps expanding, so it offers a key opportunity for continued growth for Japan as well. The opportunity and challenge for Japan then, it seems would be to maintain and expand its current position as more players are gonna be entering this market and as this technology becomes more and more diffused across the global manufacturing sector. And these trends offer a number of implications then. First, with inevitably greater competition, one of the keys is going to be maintaining cost competitiveness, especially at the lower end of the markets. And also, those companies that are able to make robots easier and easier to use on a shop floor will also have an advantage in the coming years. And this point on user interface also underscores what I'd offer as one of the key ongoing shifts in robotics innovation from hardware systems where Japanese companies are widely considered to excel to software systems. Especially at the higher end, continued innovation in areas such as intelligence software and vision software are gonna be critical. Secondly, it highlight the importance of continued export growth. As growth in the Japanese market itself is slowed compared to others, especially China. In fact, just last month, the China Robot Industry Alliance reported that China has become the world's largest market in terms of annual sales. But given Japan's strengths in this technology, the Abe administration's clearly targeted robotics as a key driver for growth to include reinvigorating that domestic market. Most recently, as we heard at the first panel, among the 10 key reforms summarized in last month's revitalization strategy, it was reform number five that called for stimulating innovation in science and technology, specifically through a quote, robotics revolution. And the strategy called for establishing a robotics revolution initiative council to create a new five year plan to be complete at the end of 2014 to double the use of robots in manufacturing and increase their use in service sectors by a factor of 20. So as this strategy highlighted, the service robot markets obviously offer a key opportunity for Japan as well. In fact, the service robot sector is expected to grow faster than the industrial sector, with estimates of the total market reaching over 46 billion by 2017 with a compound annual growth rate of over 17%. These service robots, there's a lot, obviously a lot of discussion all over the media because it really does include such a wide range of applications from maintenance to repair, cleaning, security and just on and on. It would offer that in this sector, Japanese policymakers have widely been promoting healthcare and nursing applications, driven in no small part by considerations of the country's own aging population. Again, as was discussed with the previous panel. The ability to bring such robots to market in Japan is also seen, I think, as an early leader advantage in capturing what could be a growing global market as populations in other developing countries also continue to age. One well-known development's been the HAL exoskeleton suit developed by Scuba University and the company Cyberdyne in that area. Back in 2009, METI launched its project for the practical application of service robots. And a key focus has been formulating the safety standards and testing methods for service robots. And I think this goes to Chris's point about really the ecosystem for these new technologies, what are going to be the safety issues and testing to bring these kind of products to market. And Japan worked with the ISO in developing just this February, the ISO 13482 as a new global safety standard for personal care robots. And using the standard, the Japan Quality Assurance Organization has already certified systems from companies such as Panasonic and Daifuku. Under this project, METI, along with NATO, also established Japan's Robot Safety Center in Scuba City, which focuses on the safety of robotic systems that are specifically designed to interact with humans. And there are many other robotic safety centers around the world, but again, thinking about the moving to these new service robot models, a lot of times robots were designed to eliminate the human, do the dirty work, the dangerous work. As we look at these co-robots, it's really actually, we're talking about bringing the robot together with the human as a very different approach and obviously raises all sorts of different safety issues. On a project level, according to METI, an announcement in May, it's gonna be supporting 51 service robot projects this year, including 31 new projects and 20 continued from last year for a total subsidy of about 1.82 billion yen that they'll be putting into those projects. Just a few final comments, I would mention Japan's work in robotics at Fukushima Daiichi, which has been a source of innovation in this area, such as there's a Quince 2 robot deployed at the site developed with Chiba Institute of Technology. Lastly, the media has also paid a considerable attention to Japanese participation in the Department of Defense's ongoing robotics challenge here in our country, headed by DARPA. We're a Japanese team shaft, which was also one of Google's robotics acquisitions last year, did very well in the challenge competition that was held last December down in Florida. In closing, one of the key themes in the industry it would offer is that in the long-term, for really thinking about long-term success in that service sector, particularly for those healthcare and nursing applications, is that success is gonna be driven not just by technical innovation and capability, but also by a company's ability to truly understand those customer interface issues. Essentially, the successful companies I'd offer are going to be those that have the products that people feel the most comfortable with. Again, to echo some of Chris's comments at the beginning, similar to how Apple was able to dominate that MP3 player sector with its iPod, or the smartphone sector with its iPhone. So to summarize, I think industrial robots offer a great growth engine for Japan. Challenges would be one, to maintain that cost competitiveness in the face of greater competition. Two, to pursue continued innovation, especially in those software and user interface issues. And three, to both maintain the export growth that Japan has been able to achieve, and also reinvigorate that domestic market. In the service sector, at least one key would be bringing that success in the industrial area to those more consumer-oriented markets. Again, with that focus on the user interface issues. And in the time remaining, I'd like to offer just a few comments on 3D printing. Another technology that I think offers or merits attention for Japan's future competitiveness in that core competency of manufacturing. 3D printing, I would argue, is one of the most talked about technologies in the manufacturing sector at this time. A lot of blog sites, a lot of new talking groups that are emerging on the internet. And just as a quick background, it's essentially based on printers that would be depositing thin layers of material over and over again to create that final manufactured product. So truly a complete switch from current, or traditional manufacturing technologies were basically cutting away material. The concept's not new, it's actually been used for prototyping for the past several decades. But companies now are working on a variety of materials to include metals for a wide range of finished goods. The U.S. government to include the Departments of Defense and Energy as well as NASA has expressed great interest in 3D printing. And the technology received a lot of attention as the focus of the first program under the Obama Administration's National Network for Manufacturing Initiative back in 2012. This was the first institute to be formed under that program in Ohio to be focused on 3D printing. Given the potential of 3D printing as a disruptive technology in manufacturing, the importance to Japan I would offer is significant. 3D printing in Japan this time, I think most commonly associated with prototyping and production of basic consumer or even novelty items. However, depending on the ability of industry to commercialize the technology for industrial purposes, it has wide-ranging implications. And new developments again in the technology are literally coming out every month. At this time, I would offer Japan's not often identified as a key innovator in the sector compared to others. However, in terms of the global market for 3D printers, Japan has indeed emerged as one of the leading consumers of the technology. Well, the U.S. is currently the largest market for 3D printers. Japan, with China and Germany close behind, has become a leading secondary market for the technology. And furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, various components of the Japanese government, such as Meti and Mext, have also now been increasingly promoting 3D printing, and it's becoming a subject of increased discussion, it seems, in Japan, in the policy sector, particularly. For example, in September last year, Meti devoted an issue of its Meti Journal to an article entitled The Potential of 3D Printing, which discussed some ongoing university and company activities, as well as the development with government support of a new public-private alliance on 3D printing and metals powders. So, again, trying to move the technology from kind of the, on what you could even say, the novelty items, using resins or plastics, to truly more industrial goods in the metals area. Members cited for the program include, on the government side, the Japan National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, with over 25 companies that have expressed interest in it, and with Meti contributing about $36 million to the effort for the year. And according to reports, the idea would be for the alliance to have its first prototypes ready in 2015. In this area, I also note, press earlier this year, at the beginning of the year, that Mitsubishi would be marketing a metal-forming 3D printer from Matsuura machinery here in the North American market this year. Along with the focus in the metals area, there's also been a lot of press just earlier this, the past couple months, a Japanese medical technology company called NEX21, which is working on a 3D printer for artificial bones. That's also received support from NATO, also Tokyo University. So, in summary, on the topic of 3D printing, at this time, Japan is not often referenced as a lead in the development of the technology, but it has become one of the larger markets for the 3D printers that are out in the market today. And the government, in conjunction with industry and academia, does now seem to be working on a national strategy on the topic. With that, again, I'd like to say thank you very much. I hope these comments are helpful in introducing at least two issues that I think are gonna be impacting not only Japan's manufacturing sector, but obviously the global manufacturing sector. And I look forward to watching all the new developments that I'm sure are gonna be coming out in the future. Thank you. Thank you, Eric. Thank you very much. Before we go to questions from the audience, I wanted to just talk a little bit about, see if we can get the panel's thoughts and comments. And Kevin, I'd like to start with you perhaps if we could. A traditional Japanese practice in business has been to start with Japan first and then go to the outside marketplace. And in the business in which Central Japan Railway Corporation is in, you obviously can't do that and grow into the future. You have to have adoption and embrace by non-Japanese markets. And there are going to be certain things that are gonna be accelerators to your growth and Japan's success in this space and there are gonna be certain things that are barriers to that. One, could I just ask you, and then I'd like to get Eric and Ed's comments if you'd like, on does the traditional Japanese business model of Japan first, outside second hold up in today's globally integrated economy if Japan is going to be able to accomplish its growth objectives that it set out for itself? Given the macroeconomic characteristics and situations that were discussed in the first panel and that are characterizing the challenge that Prime Minister Abe and Japan's both private and public sector leaders have for themselves. You know, railway business is very domestic. We have no revenue from overseas. But looking for future, Japan heading to senior-aged society and that means railway industry, domestic railway industry will be shrinking. So that's one of the big reason to export our technology to overseas. Overseas deployment idea will be born. Over here. We could diversify our revenue source, not only just to diversify our revenue sources, but enabling domestic railway manufacturers to maintain or strengthen their technology or skills through its expansion of international railway market. That's a very crucial issue. Working together with railway industry people to bring our technology here in the United States. I think it'll be a bit of both end in that there is this challenge of slow GDP growth and slow demand in Japan, which means that companies that are making things for a mass market, I think we'll have to work very hard to introduce things internationally and not rely so much on pioneering them within the country. On the other hand, country that has very large elderly population, declining overall population, those are new phenomena. There's not another wealthy country that has experienced this before. There are some others that are going through at the same time in Korea and so forth and a couple of European countries, but there'll be new types of demand that are like, what will a very large centenarian population want? Nobody knows and that will be pioneered within Japan. I think there'll be a lot of those types of industries where the model of doing something first in Japan will remain quite a good one because there's some unique things about the future Japanese society. Eric, any thoughts? Yeah, just a couple of things come to mind actually on that concept of Japan first and then the world actually. There have been some stories about in the nursing care robotics actually that one of these key issues is it's not simply developing that product but there are obviously, at least in this technology, some real important safety issues as well and actually I think some companies have found that perhaps it's actually easier to introduce those robots here in the United States, some of our hospitals actually then, again just some of the stories I've heard in Japan where there are actually perhaps some more issues with regulations in terms of introducing these types of co-robots or especially in a nursing care situation. So I think in that regard, again just thinking about the topics I was speaking about, I think the regulatory body actually, so moving away maybe from the consumer products like the iPhone and what have you, but some of the regulatory regimes across the world I think are going to impact how some of these service robots actually are developed. I think in terms of again thinking about robotics or 3D printing, as Ed mentioned, Japan does remain one of the key manufacturing centers in the world and so both of these technologies, at least on the industrial robot side and then 3D printing, they themselves are not the finished good. They are those fundamental technologies, cross-cutting technologies for manufacturing. So I think in many ways, Japan offers a very good base or laboratory even for trying to really incorporate some of these technologies in these areas. Great, thank you very much. We have some time for audience questions, if there are any questions from the audience or comments for that matter. If there are new areas that you think we've missed or we should have touched on, yes sir. Please introduce yourself and wait for the microphone. Thank you. My name is Kunio Kikuchi and I'm with Washington Research and Analysis and perhaps it's a comment for Mr. Ichikawa and to everyone, this picture as you found out is that of October 1st, 1964. The background is dark because I think it was at six in the morning when they started the regular run. I'd like to go back to August of that same year. I finished college in Cleveland, Ohio with my mechanical engineering degree from KACE and it was a very hot, dry summer, dusty everywhere in Tokyo because of the older construction going on and I was wondering how to get to Shikoku by to see some friends and then a friend of mine that I met in Cleveland said, Kikuchi-san, I'll get you on the first official test run of Shinkansen, the Hikari on August 25, 1964. It would be the first four hour through run of the Hikari Super Express. The day before was the Kodama, which took five hours and this one would be four. So I went there with my suitcase and got on this official run which was televised by NHK throughout and it started exactly at nine with the internal announcement announcing each kilometer all the way to Shin Osaka at one PM and I got off the train with my suitcase. Everybody else went back to Tokyo. These were the students and so forth from the conductor and motorman school and all the dignitaries. I got off Shin Osaka, which was still under construction with the finishing touches. I took a cab to Umeda and went on to travel to Shikoku. I just wanted to say that after that, billions and billions of people took the Shinkansen but perhaps I was the first person ever to use it as a means of transportation, as a passenger. So my obituary might be the first Shinkansen rider. Thank you for the long comment. Well, Kevin, you don't get a much better validator than that. Would you like to respond or offer up a comment or go kiss his hand maybe or something? I appreciate that. Any other questions or comments? Yes, Hugh. Hugh Patrick, you raised the interesting question about a company going global or an industry going global rather than starting off developing in the domestic market and that's a really interesting question and I hadn't thought about it very much in the case of Japan or any country. Two industries did occur to me. Normally we're talking about economies of scale relative to the domestic market size. And there are two industries. One is shipbuilding, oil tankers, bulk carriers and so forth and the other is commercial aircraft. And both of these, it seemed to me, developed in Japan aiming for the global market or the United States case of commercial aircraft and Japan sort of starting making specific components. It turns out both of these have a historic military element as to why they had some technological capabilities to start with, but I can't think of other industries. So maybe other people can think of other industries that started really with a aiming for a global market rather than having to rely only on the domestic market. Those are the only two I could think of. Any comments from the panel or from the audience? I think one of the things that, I'll come back, yeah, in one second, one of the distinguishing characteristics today is that the instant, the distance from going domestic to global has been eliminated through electronic and digital marketplaces and economies. So allegedly somebody who starts a business on the internet is global instantaneously, but there's a huge distance from having an offering in the global offering by having a digital business or being an internet-based business to being able to manage and scale and supply your customers around the world because of your business model. So this is a build out to your point, you, this is a build out that is happening in real time now and one of the reasons why I thought that Eric's comments about 3D printing and advanced manufacturing were so important is that this is a forward-leaning, high-value, high-economic space that is gonna typify this digital physical integration and what it can do to disassemble traditional physical business models and sectors of the economy. One could envision, or at least I could envision, all the staple stores around this country and around the world becoming the factory floors of the future because of the advent of 3D printing and 3D manufacturing. Kevin, do you have any thoughts and then we'll go, Stefan will come to you. I'm sorry, Eric. I just wanna jump in there. Yeah, I think that, again, in terms of robotics and the 3D printing that I had commented on, looking to the future innovations, as I mentioned, I think obviously the hardware innovations are critical as well, especially in a lot of these mobile robots as well as the industrial robots, but in both areas too, it is the software innovation that drives a lot of it and even the sense of what they call software robots. They could do a lot of business processing or back office work in the future. And that is something where the developer of that, those software programs is gonna be looking at that global market immediately. And the people they collaborate with too, I think we just see a lot more, again, looking at the discussion groups and development groups that are emerging. It's kind of international from the beginning almost. And in the 3D printing, I think it's, obviously there's a lot of hard science there, material science that's gonna need to really push forward on the metal, especially in the metals area, but also big business in terms of those companies that are gonna be developing the 3D printing software, not just for the machines, but for every single product that needs to be produced. So again, it's a global business from the beginning. And a global business on the customer side and on the competitor side. It's not as if you're gonna have time to just try to service your customer because instantaneously you have a competitor as soon as you're up and vice versa. Ed, do you have any comments on this? Only one thing that occurred to me in listening to this is the distinction between national and global businesses. It'd be interesting to go back a little bit too. We used to use the gross national product accounting for the size of economies. And what I've read, although I don't, those figures aren't produced nearly so much as they used to be, that if you look at GDP, you have, US is about 17 trillion, China is about eight and a half or nine trillion, Japan is about five trillion. If you look at GNP, Japan is much bigger and China is much smaller. Japan would be about seven trillion, China maybe seven and a half or maybe eight. And so a lot of the distinction maybe between national economy and the global economy, when you think about how at least the major corporations operate, may not be so relevant or meaningful as it used to be. Okay, Stefan, you'd want to? Yeah, maybe to bring it back to recent developments. I was wondering if the way Japan generates its innovation is still sort of like as effective in this global environment as in the past and what I'm alluding to is, we were quite surprised over the last year, the yen depreciated by over 20%, and yes, it was, it appreciated before, but there has been no or very, very limited export pickup and in fact what we've seen on the contrary, there was a big increase in imports and this had to do with people were consuming more last year and what did they import there, imported electronic gadgets, tablets and so on and so forth, which Japan has entirely, I think, lost out in its global activity. And I was wondering, is it the way Japan generates its innovation? My perception is it happens in the larger companies and so they integrate its supply chains and well, the more modern or the more recent way is that it happens on a decentralized basis. You had the US Silicon Valley, lots of startups, lots of turnovers, ideas come in, they fly or you're out. You basically have no turnover of smaller, medium-term enterprises. If you try out an idea, you fail, you sort of get dead fish, you can sort of reinvent yourself, you sort of like, off you don't learn from that experience. Is this something that's all like, is gonna be an obstacle for Japan going forward? Panelists, anybody would like to respond to that? Kevin, do you have any thoughts on that question or point? Ed? Eric? No, I think that's a, again, the topic here today of Japan and perhaps the next 50 years, kind of the innovation ecosystem concepts that are talked about a lot. And I think in general, there's been that generalization or that stereotype of the United States has this very open ecosystem, a lot of cross-connection between our industrial sectors, our universities, our government labs, and Japan has a much more siloed structure where innovation is really coming in a very siloed way from the major tech companies, internal resource and that. I think both of those, I think, are generalization stereotypes, but perhaps there is truth in both of those. And I think that is, though, where, I think that's also very well, or at least over the past several years, I think it's kind of been talked about a lot in Japan, I think, as well. And as Professor Omori pointed out in the reform programs, that's even one of the specific goals that's brought up in terms of, as I mentioned, that it's reform number five that we, Professor, add up on the screen there. I was just to stimulate innovation through science and technology and a robotics revolution. And I speak specifically about this point of trying to build greater connections between those three legs of an innovation ecosystem of the university labs, the government labs, and the companies. And to try to get more of that cross-fertilization of new ideas and a more open innovation system, I think it's very positive. I think it also goes to the issue that was talked about in terms of the labor reform as well, in that it's not just companies interacting with universities, but it's the fact that people are moving from universities to companies to government and back again, and that that's a normal career pattern. And so, but again, I think those types of issues have been very much engaged in Japan and trying to think through what are the benefits and weaknesses of moving to some of the systems you might characterize as being American. So, I think it's, again, it's definitely an issue that exists and I think it is also being addressed. And so, hopefully we can see some more progress. Yeah, I just add that I think Japan's growth strategies will confront what I consider to be maybe a nuance, but a very important nuance, structural nuance to your question, which is there's a difference between an invention ecosystem and an innovation ecosystem. The innovation ecosystem is much more open, much more expansive. An invention ecosystem can be much more proprietary, much more vertical in its nature. And the world is moving so rapidly and there are so many consumers and therefore so many instantaneous consumer preferences that success will come from countries and companies who master the ability to have an innovation ecosystem primarily supported by an invention ecosystem if they choose to, if they choose to. We have time for one last question. Yes, ma'am. Yes. Thank you. My question is for Mr. Ichikawa. Thank you for the railway system. I'd like to ask if you have any other plan for global development for infrastructure in all the countries, especially the connectivity between India, Dao, Myanmar, India through Cambodia, Thailand and Dao to Vietnam. Vietnam has a very long coastline and we're hoping that we can build infrastructure from the inland into Vietnam. So have there been any plans and is there any chance that you can join venture with maybe the US companies to develop that? Thank you. Yes. The country we are targeting, it's a allied country or the country we can share the same value democracy, human right, rural, free market. And the United States is number one target. And the Vietnamese case, in 2008, I was in Hanoi together with my boss, Mr. Gassai, a chairman of the central based on the request from CEO of Vietnamese National Railroad. They really interested in building a high speeder between to link Hanoi and Hottimin. But we clearly said it's too long. It's over 1,000 miles range route. It's not high speeder route. It's airlines business. Since we dominate our market between Tokyo and Osaka, it's a 350 miles range route. And over 64% market share between Tokyo and Hiroshima. It's almost 700 miles range route. It's only 10% to Tokyo and Hakata in Kyushu Island. That means the high speeder is not all mighty. So you should think about what is the best way because the railway business is infrastructure business. Infrastructure means huge initial investment you need. Plus maintenance cost and the long term perspective needed to renovate your infrastructure. So yeah, we can work together with the Vietnam. We are accepting several intern from Vietnamese Railroad to bring them up for future leaders of Vietnamese Railroad since we are working together. It's not our criteria, but looking at your current situation, we are working together. And they are spending a very nice time for a couple of months in Tokyo to learn about operation as well as the maintenance, thank you. Well, we opened this session promising that we would give you a look forward from a market-centric lens and that question I think was the perfect way of capping that and closing our session. We've run out of time, but let me thank the panelists for your contributions and please applaud. Thank you.