For the start of the new year, Akimoto was interviewed by a major Japanese business magazine, and made a forecast for 2017.

The magazine featured “Forecast competition 2017 by Red(female) and White(male) team” . Each team was represented by top CEOs of Japan, and Akimoto was a member of the special team representing unique people like Doctor Nakamatsu, Japanese Thomas Edison who invented the floppy disc.

 

Below, my translation of the article:

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“Master of the group of super highly educated carpenters”
President, Heisei Co.
Hisao AKIMOTO (68 years old)

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“Japan will be desperate”

Heisei Co. is a unique construction company consisting of top university graduates working as a carpenter. Predicting shortage of carpenters and construction workers when he started the company almost 30 years ago, the company built a unique business model of hiring  carpenters and construction workers in-house, to improve their working conditions and wages. Genius of the industry daringly forecasts the future of Japan, 2017 and beyond.

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I’ve been waiting for you! The annual forecast topic, right? You used to interview me every year. (Note: “Daring forecast by unique CEOs” was an annual series featured between 2011 till 2014.) I’ve been waiting for this interview every year since then.

I made number of correct forecast, didn’t I? (Note: Akimoto made number of predictions including “Shortage of carpenters in 2013”) Let’s start!

For 2017, orders for residential houses will decrease, because the number of empty houses are increasing, and new houses are becoming more durable. That is why people remodel their houses instead of building a new house. At my company, the percentage of remodeling has increased to 20 to 30 percent of our total turnover.

Preserving buildings for sustainable society is very important, but number of carpenters who can remodel is very scarce.

We can’t just add number of carpenters, because there can be suspicious people who might steal household goods while remodeling their house. In that sense, we have cross-trained workers who can paint, do the plumbing etc. all by himself, so we are OK.

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Division of labor leads to wider income inequality.

The big picture is that the income inequality will worsen globally after 2017. Today, it is increasingly outsourcing and division of labor. The more division of labor means wider income gap between professions, and very few winners.

It means even young people can become a winner in the world of income inequality. In such a world, losing in the tournament means end to their career, lot of people will lose their motivation, and eventually quit thinking for themselves.

For such people to survive, we have to further divide labor in our society. Consequently, there will be more losers.

In the end, major swing over will come. Confusion. Self-destruction.

I think Mr Trump becoming US president is part of the trend.

Our cross-trained workers are fine, but in the future, there will be a lot of people who can’t do any work at the age of 50. Remember there are 30 more years till average lifetime expires. Cost for those people will become a burden of our society.

We are in trouble.

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Akimoto’s forecast:
1. Orders for residential houses will decrease severely.
2. Demand for carpenters who can remodel will be strong, but the number will be very scarce.
3. Anyway, we are in trouble.

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