What is Your reason for entering the real estate business?

Our company was founded in 1949 and I inherited the business from my father when I was 35 years old, 25 years ago. It was a small to medium-sized company with about 50 employees headquartered in Nagoya, Japan, and had established some name recognition in the local community through multiple businesses despite its small size, including real estate leasing, a chain of coffee shops, Japanese restaurants, surveying equipment sales, and imported sundry goods sales.

However, the real estate bubble burst in the mid-1990s, followed by the Japanese economic slump known as the "lost 30 years. My father had drawn down a large amount of loans from banks using as collateral the real estate he owned, including multiple commercial buildings, condominiums, and warehouses. Most of the loans were not used to strengthen or expand existing businesses, but were funneled into derivative products on the financial markets.

As a result, he lost almost all of his assets when the bubble burst; many Japanese in the 1990s lost a lot of their assets in the Japanese securities market, which collapsed with the bursting of the real estate bubble. People lost confidence and were anxious about the future, so they cut back on consumption. The local economy stagnated, and my father's restaurants and import grocery stores fell into the red and closed their doors.

The bank held my father responsible and demanded that he be removed from his position as president of the company, and they pressed him to make me, who was only listed as a director on the company's board, the president. At the time, I was running a computer store and computer classes in an independent company. I strongly refused, but the bank forced me to take over the company from my father, and I was left with a huge debt.

It took me 13 years to pay off the debt, which was supported by three old apartments with low occupancy rates that were already dilapidated and not secured by bank loans.