When Japanese companies pursue global expansion, it is essential to articulate a clear and coherent rationale for “why they enter overseas markets.” Explanations based solely on experience or intuition are insufficient to secure stakeholder confidence or enhance corporate value. What is required instead is the cultivation of “research capability” as an intangible asset that substantiates strategic decisions. Such capability functions as a critical managerial resource for establishing credibility and trust in international markets.

Historically, Japan’s agri-food industry has developed through highly integrated systems that consistently manage the entire process from production to distribution, supported by advanced technological expertise. Today, however, improvements in production efficiency alone are no longer sufficient to sustain competitive advantage. Rather, the creation of “new added value” capable of redefining market value has become the principal driver of corporate growth. HSS has already initiated efforts to generate such value through the use of drones, data utilization, and other innovative approaches. Nevertheless, across Japan as a whole, structural challenges—including labor shortages and inefficiencies in production and distribution systems—remain unresolved.

The agri-food sector constitutes the industrial foundation of Washoku, a globally recognized cultural asset, and therefore carries significant potential for Japan’s international value creation. Rice, in particular, should not be regarded merely as the staple food of Japanese cuisine; it also possesses the potential to be positioned globally as a healthy and sustainable food resource within contemporary food cultures. As a core element supporting Washoku, rice represents an important medium through which Japan can communicate cultural and economic value to the world.

To deliver Japanese food culture globally, it is indispensable to adopt a “research and development-oriented international strategy” that scientifically analyzes overseas market structures and consumer behavior while transforming Japan’s cultural resources into new business models. Such an approach enables the creation of a reciprocal cycle connecting Japan and the global community, thereby establishing an “internationally scalable Japanese-style agri-food model.”

As exemplified by Toraya Bunko, through which Toraya

 transformed research and cultural preservation into enduring brand assets, research serves as a mechanism for converting corporate experience into accumulated data and transferable knowledge. In this sense, research functions as a form of knowledge management that preserves intangible assets for future generations and constitutes a core approach to sustaining long-term competitiveness.

Ultimately, it is people who create culture and value. Amid demographic decline and accelerating globalization, the systematic cultivation of human resources capable of carrying corporate vision into the future has become an essential managerial imperative. Preserving Japanese food culture while simultaneously generating new value through international integration requires institutional frameworks that advance both human resource development and cultural succession in parallel. To ensure that corporate history and identity endure over the next millennium, organizations must adopt new strategic models centered on research capability.

The Hanyu Agri-Food Business Institute is not merely a research center. It is a project aimed at constructing a new corporate model that integrates “academic scholarship, international expansion, food culture succession, and next-generation human resource development.” The project seeks to establish a next-generation model grounded in “creation and succession through research,” thereby building an evidence-based and resilient managerial foundation alongside a data-driven human resource strategy for a new era of agri-food business.

Director, Sosuke HANYU