Starting way back with tin toys, the TOMY Group has spent nearly 100 years creating toys that fuel children’s dreams. When I had a child of my own, the first toy I bought was a traditional wooden toy that is still sold in the toy shop near my home in Berkeley, California. Analog toys harbor a charm that appeals to the human instinct, something that will never cease however advanced digitalization becomes. Looking at the broad topic of sustainable society, I believe sustainable product concepts will become increasingly important in the field of toy development as well.
I have pursued a professional career in the IT field primarily in international markets for over 20 years. Now that the TOMY Group is striving to integrate digital tools into various manufactured products and operational activities, I believe part of my role will be to apply my IT experience and knowledge in these areas.

The impression I have gained from my experience in the Board of Directors and the Risk and Compliance Committee is that the TOMY Group is very open and transparent. It is vital that information is not hidden in order to enhance management effectiveness. I very much appreciate the lectures offered to new directors which carefully explain the history of TOMY and its group companies, former managers, corporate performance, and everything from product ranges to internal business terms, so that we can immediately participate in discussions.
Given there is such a solid basis for debate, I would like to offer an outside, female perspective on key product development issues and commitments, and introduce cutting-edge IT technology that could contribute to product development and research results that could help achieve the SDGs.

Many Japanese companies are struggling with the governance of domestic and international group subsidiaries, but, thanks to the determination of Chairman Kantaro Tomiyama and President Kazuhiro Kojima, the TOMY Group is striving to establish and consolidate solid governance frameworks, and I feel that policy is sufficiently shared with outside directors such as myself and managers of overseas subsidiaries. Forging mutual respect among the managers of subsidiaries and the parent company is vital to effective group governance stemming from a deep, joint commitment to specific corporate and management principles, global business insights, and mutual trust. Mr. Tomiyama and Mr. Kojima both have a strong understanding of American and European business approaches, and are able to form strong relationships of trust with managers of overseas subsidiaries based on mutual respect.
In addition, the Board of Directors is more diverse than I had expected from the point of view of individual specialization and international understanding. TOMY currently does not have any directors who are not of Japanese nationality, but top management has a sharp international business sense that facilitates ample discussions with CEOs and CFOs of overseas subsidiaries to a global standard. I feel TOMY is developing true diversity rather than focusing on the physical number of international staff or surface impressions.

COVID-19 has weighed on the Japanese economy, and, unfortunately, the pace of recovery is likely to be slow. That is unavoidable to some extent, and we must focus management resources in areas with high growth potential. Pillar items such as TOMICA and LICCA dolls, which have advanced with the times, remain flagship products for the TOMY Group decades after their original release. These products still have not been sold in some markets, so that could be an attractive prospect.
Continuity is extremely important. The TOMY Group’s near 100-year history and its corporate philosophy and historical perspective that have been passed down through the generations all constitute irreplaceable assets that cannot be imitated by other companies. That is one of TOMY’s key strengths.
In Board meetings to date, I have enjoyed considering future TOMY Group growth potential with managers who I can genuinely respect. I would like to take various opportunities to debate with employees of this proud company and help create a company that will continue to shine for future generations 30 years from now rather than focus on a much shorter three to five-year horizon.

Since my days in corporate planning at Nippon Steel, I have supported many Japanese and global companies in three key areas of: M&A, new business and general business planning; the effective use of IT and digital tools; and global business development. Now based in Singapore, I currently provide practical support for implementing these strategies by promoting global collaboration as the ultimate tool in our arsenal.
The TOMY Group is currently focused on strengthening its global business and promoting integrated digitalization. I would like to help progress these aims by drawing on the knowledge and experience I have gained to date to fulfill my position as outside director. I am a completely independent director with no past or existing business relationship with TOMY. Outside of business, I am involved in adult education and am deeply interested in training and education in general. I loved playing with PLARAIL up until my early years in elementary school, and I am delighted to be able to contribute to a brand that I have been fondly familiar with over many years.

I have had the opportunity to examine conditions at many different companies. What impresses me the most about TOMY is how transparent the company is and how extremely open people are in sharing all manner of different information. I feel TOMY has created additional training opportunities for new outside directors and is currently striving to increase transparency even further. Debate in the TOMY Board of Directors is extremely vigorous and we always have thorough discussions, even if that means going over the allotted time. Outside directors draw on their individual expertise in accounting, law, and other fields to add meaningful and multifaceted insights on the same agenda items. Going forward, I will strive to apply my own knowledge and experience and offer advice from a business perspective to fuel sustainable growth of TOMY Group corporate value.

TOMY’s most senior executives have a wealth of global experience and are proactively pursuing M&A opportunities. We also hear from executives in charge of international operations in Board meetings, and I feel that the firm promotes very advanced global management.
Having said that, as with all Japanese companies, the TOMY Group does face certain challenges in its global operations. Japan lags behind some other nations in terms of cultivating business personnel with practical international experience, and there are very few business people in Japan who can successfully run an operation without suffering some miscommunication with international staff who speak different languages and stem from diverse cultural backgrounds. The TOMY Group began formulating its global strategy very early on. As the company’s international business expands further, we will need to introduce global operational frameworks for various elements such as strategy, finance, and human resources. My job is to make proactive recommendations to spur these new mechanisms while assessing any immediate business risks involved.

The most important element for TOMY when integrating digital technologies is to remain aligned with its corporate mission of fulfilling the dreams of stakeholders. While profit growth is important, companies that veer off their philosophical path will undoubtedly weaken. In that sense, when it comes to digital integration, I want to support TOMY in its endeavors to pursue its mission in the most appropriate way possible.
From the TOMY Board meetings and other committees I’ve attended in so far, I have been struck by how strongly each and every employee advocates TOMY’s mission of fulfilling stakeholder dreams and how passionately they work to achieve it. It is vital that we expand digital channels in today’s with-COVID world, but it can be difficult to appeal the value of TOMY products that can be more readily conveyed by getting people to pick up the actual products in their own hands. However, in addition to being a great sales tool, I believe exploiting digitalization will kickstart the creation of a digital ecosystem for the toy industry as a whole, introduce new value areas with no existing competition, and help further expand our business. I want to contribute to the expansion of the TOMY Group portfolio by promoting this metabolism in a good way.

I grew up with LICCA dolls and my husband was a diehard TOMICA fan. It is a real pleasure to join the management team of a company I have felt such a strong affinity for over many years. While I am not an engineer, during my career I have served as an intermediary translating engineering language and bringing latest technologies to market, and participated in businesses that have transformed the very structure of industry by introducing new world views, business models and market creation approaches. I want to serve as an antenna that is always on the lookout for new technologies and how they could expand horizons for TOMY products and business. I would like to incorporate external elements, such as technology-driven insights for the near future coupled with carefully nurtured human resource networks, to help TOMY develop various vital tools for its future business.

To date, we have tended to look at online and offline channels as conflicting binary entities, but in an advanced digitized era, the real world will be enveloped by the digital world. Even when people occasionally visit a physical store, they will always be connected digitally. If you look at things this way, even if customers leave stores and spend their time in on line virtual worlds, as long as you can remain linked to a customer’s consciousness, there will always be fresh business opportunities to exploit.
In my career, I witnessed the transformation brought about by the advance from early-style rotary dial phones in the home to liberating portable smartphones. If we had just accepted and never felt inconvenienced by a phone that was linked to a cord that had to be unplugged and plugged into a different jack every time you wanted to move around, then we would never have witnessed this innovation. TOMICA, PLARAIL and other expos may have been canceled due to COVID-19, but even if you cannot gather people together in the flesh, you can achieve the same effect and offer more as well by using digital technology. The same goes for your business model. You can restrict yourself to selling the toys you have made, or you can forge an environment-conscious cycle in which unwanted toys are collected rather than discarded by building an ecosystem that extends from the selection and development of materials through customer use after purchase. Moreover, unique TOMY opportunities in the toy-manufacturing sphere are not limited to plastic reduction, but span many other areas such as contactless technology that can reduce dry battery use.

I have experienced lively discussions in all the meetings I have participated in so far, not just the Board of Directors. We primarily discuss various resolutions for the Board. The atmosphere is open and internal directors, outside directors, and auditors all proactively express opinions based on their respective areas of expertise. Everyone appreciates the willingness of the Board, led by company chairman Kantaro Tomiyama, to listen to people’s opinions, which makes it easy for new directors like me to voice their thoughts. At a Board meeting the other day, we discussed what is unique about the way TOMY does things, because it is very important to ensure a company’s management decisions are always based on its core philosophy. We would be able to do that even better if we injected a little more diversity. Information is shared with outside directors, but not to the same extent as with full-time corporate officers, and the lack of female internal corporate officers is also an issue. Diversity is important to capture society’s wants and pains. I think the company needs to consciously strengthen its ability to reflect various perspectives, not just women, but people of different nationalities and people with disabilities as well.

Personally, I am pretty good at recognizing my strengths and weaknesses when working as a team, but I think it is easier for us to feel a strong connection to each other, even if offline or not face to face, when working in a flat, horizontal setup where we can complement and support each other rather than in a vertical relationship where it is hard to reveal any weaknesses. I am keen to build relationships with employees and other stakeholders as equal partners.