Meet The Team

Former Vice Minister of Defense

 

Masanori Nishi is a Senior Advisor at Nippon Life Insurance Company. He was a Special Adviser to the Minister of Defense from August of 2017 to October 2018 after holding the role previously from 2015-2016. Mr. Nishi has held numerous roles at the Ministry of Defense such as Director General of the Bureau of Finance and Equipment, Director General of the Bureau of Defense Policy, and Administrative Vice Minister of Defense.
Mr. Nishi first joined Japan Defense Agency (JDA) in April of 1978 and through the years held various roles in the Secretarial Division, Bureau of Personnel, Bureau of Equipment, NAHA Defense Facility Bureau, and the Technical Research and Development Institute.
Mr. Nishi holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Tokyo and a M.Litt of International Relations from the University of Oxford.

Senior researcher of the Security Strategy Research Institute of Japan
Retired Lieutenant General, Japan Self Defense Force

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Osamu Onoda is senior researcher of the Security Strategy Research Institute of Japan. He is also a board member of the Research Institute for Peace and Security. 
He was born in Yokohama in 1954. He is a 1977 graduate of the National Defense Academy. His expertise in the Japan Self Defense Force (JASDF) was a communication and electronics.
He was a program manager of Aircraft Control and Warning System, E-767 AWACS, KC-767 and C-2, the head of Defense Planning and Programs Division, the Director of Personnel and Education Department in the Air Staff Office. He was a commander of 7th Fighter Wing, the Western Air Force, the Air Education and Training Command.
He retired from JASDF in July 2012 as Lieutenant General. 
He became an advisor of Toshiba Infrastructure Systems & Solutions Corporation in 2012.
He was a senior fellow of the Harvard University Asia Center from July 2013 to June 2015. His research focuses national security strategy of Japan, U.S. and China and Chinese military capabilities.

Advisor, CANON Institute for Global Studies
Dean and President of OITA prefectural college of arts and culture

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Mr. Daisuke Kotegawa was the Executive Director for Japan at the IMF from July 2007 to August 2010. He was in charge of the introduction of various new measures of the IMF to tackle the world economic crisis after the Lehman shock. Among other things he chaired the negotiation of the New Arrangements to Borrow, which successfully raised $ 600 billion for the IMF. 

He has been occasionally invited to Chinese Government to explain his experiences at the financial crisis in Japan in late 1990s. He was the member of Special Task Force of the Japanese Government to work on the reform of SOEs and NPLs of Viet Nam. He also serves as a board member of many NPOs such as Mariinsky Foundation. He has extensive human network in China, Russia, Korea and South East Asian countries. 
He teaches at School of Economics of the Moscow State University and in August 2017 assumed the position of the president of the newly established Asian Economic Center at the St. Petersburg State University. In 2016 he was awarded the Special Medal of Friendship by President Putin. 
Born in 1951 in Usuki city in Oita prefecture, his extracurricular activities include Russian interpreter for Soviet artists while he was in the University of Tokyo. He is fluent in Japanese, English, and good in Russian and German.

CEO, the Securities Analysts Association of Japan

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Takashi Kozu spent thirty years with the Bank of Japan and whilst there was assigned to various areas including economic research, money market operations, bank examination, international banking regulations, Diet affairs, and public relations.  He became Advisor to the Governor in charge of Diet affairs in 2005 and similarly for international banking regulations in 2006.  He was a member of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision 2006-10 and co-chaired its Macro-prudential Supervision Working Group 2009-10.  He was also Deputy Chair of the Working Group on Banking Supervision of the Executives' Meeting of East Asia Pacific Central Banks 2006-10.

He left the Bank in 2010 and joined Ricoh Institute of Sustainability and Business as Chief Research Fellow.  He was President of the Institute 2016-21.

He has been a member of the SAAJ Board of Directors since 2019 and was a member of the Policy and Coordinating Committee 2019-21.

He has been a member of the Japan Association of Corporate Executive, Keizai Doyukai, since 2016 and a Trustee since 2019.  He chaired its Economic and Fiscal Prospects Project Team in 2020 and chairs the Study Group on Economic and Fiscal Prospects and DOYUKAI Institute for Economic Research in 2021.

He is also a Visiting Researcher at the Research Institute for Socionetwork Strategies, Kansai University and at the Australia-Japan Research Centre, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University.

He graduated from the Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo with a BA in 1980 and obtained a PhD in economics from the Graduate School of Economic Science, Saitama University in 2007.  He holds the CMA(Certified Member Analyst of the Securities Analysts Association of Japan) designation.
 

Chief Executive Officer, MKK Asia Partners Co., Ltd.

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Shuichi Kondo is a Chief Executive Office at MKK Asia Partners Co., Ltd. Before launching MKK Asia Partners in 2020, he was previously responsible for Greater China business (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan) as a Chairman of GCA (Shanghai) Investment & Consulting Co., Ltd. and Chairman of GCA (Taiwan) Investment & Consulting Co., Ltd from 2011. 

Mr. Kondo first joined Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank (currently Mizuho Bank, Ltd.) in 1987. From 1996 to 2005, he worked at the bank's Shanghai Branch (merged with Mizuho Corporate Bank, Shanghai Branch). After return to Japan, he played vital roles at several divisions such as International Sales Department, China Sales Promotion Department. From 2009 to 2011, he served as a China Advisory Department Manager in Shanghai.

Mr. Kondo holds a Bachelor of Economics from Meiji Gakuin University. He previously studied at Fudan University and Taiwan Normal University for a year respectively. He is the author of The Challenge of the Chinese Consumer Market (Japanese, 2009) published from Nihon Keizai Shimbun Publishing Co.
 

Partner, Roland Berger Ltd.

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Masayuki Igarashi is partner of Roland Berger and have been also co-head of Roland Berger global Capital Goods business. Prior to joining Roland Berger, he worked at Mitsubishi Corporation, Research Institute and US based global consulting firm. Also he was in charge of strategic advisor for WHILL K.K. on a part-time basis.

He has extensive consulting experience in business strategy, new business development, corporate transformation, M&A strategy and due diligence, etc., focusing on industrial goods, heavy industries, EPC/Engineering, leasing and Japanese trading house businesses.

Mr. Igarashi holds B.S. from Waseda University and MBA from Keio University.