Katsuma & Tanaka: A Grand Design to Reboot Japan

Economic commentator Kazuyo Katsuma and former Goldman Sachs MD Kei Tanaka lay out a prescription for rebuilding Japan, focusing on organizational dysfunction, dormant assets, and how to work in the AI era.

• The minimum skill every executive and legislator should have is bookkeeping level 3 — it trains you to see stock, not just profit and loss (Katsuma)
• Japan’s biggest organizational bug is the absence of merit-based reward and punishment — effort rarely changes outcomes
• Roughly ¥2,100 trillion in personal financial assets plus ¥500 trillion in government assets are sitting idle; mobilizing them is the top priority (Tanaka)
• 70–80% of Japanese carry the risk-averse SS-type serotonin transporter gene, so institutional design must compensate for this tendency
• The eight-hour work rule is a poor fit for the AI era and contributes to the birth-rate decline — AI can compress effective focused work to two or three hours (Katsuma)
• Rigid dismissal regulations have created a structural contradiction that caused non-regular employment to explode — Western countries end up resolving dismissals with cash settlements too, so the outcomes converge
• Top graduates from UTokyo’s law faculty flow into government and the judiciary rather than the private sector, sapping the economy’s earning power (Katsuma)
• AI has already reached the level needed to pass the UTokyo science entrance exam — the time to build fluency with these tools is now

2026-04-12 · Watch on YouTube

Japanese page: 勝間×田中の日本再建グランドデザイン