Notice of Holding a Reading Group for "How Can Judgment Be Acquired?"

Shosukabu.com Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Nerima-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director and Chairman: Yutaka Yamanaka; hereinafter "the Company") will co-host a reading group on the theme of "How Can Judgment Be Acquired? - An American Voter Education Report" (authored by Kumi Yokoe) with the Nerima Political Research Association and the 8th Civil Affairs Division Monitoring Committee.

This book illustrates how the judgment that supports democracy is nurtured through the actual sites of voter education in the United States. According to the publisher's introduction, education that teaches the decision-making process from childhood, primarily in schools, is deeply rooted in America, explaining that skills such as research, comparative examination, and discussion are necessary to carefully evaluate candidates and policies.

A major feature of this book is that it captures political participation not merely as voting behavior, but as a process of gathering information, identifying issues, discussing with others, and forming one's own judgment. The table of contents indicates chapters such as "What is Voter Education?", "Aiming to Improve Voter Turnout", "An Eye for the Issues", "Simulated Experience of the Legislative Process", "Learning About the Judiciary", "Knowing and Experiencing the Administration", and "Educational Responsibility as a Voter", presenting a perspective on cultivating citizens' judgment not only through school education but across society as a whole.

Furthermore, through concrete practical examples such as mock elections, mock parliaments, mock trials, media aimed at youth, and intra-family debates, the book depicts how voter education is connected to real-world democracy. An important implication of this book is that judgment is cultivated not merely by the amount of knowledge, but within the habit of asking questions, making comparisons, and thinking thoroughly while engaging with the opinions of others.

In this reading group, discussions will be held with main topics including the purpose of voter education, the roles of schools, families, and media, how to develop an eye for the issues, political understanding through simulated experiences, and what "judgment" means in a democracy. We aim for this to be a place of beneficial learning and dialogue for those interested in political education, democracy, civic participation, media literacy, and American politics.

Book Introduction URL: https://x.gd/AfBm4

Author Profile

Kumi Yokoe

A researcher and writer specializing in American politics, elections, and policy processes. In this book, she examines the development of judgment that supports democracy through American voter education.

Event Overview

Theme: "How Can Judgment Be Acquired? - An American Voter Education Report" Reading Group

Organizer: Shosukabu.com Co., Ltd.

Co-organizers: Nerima Political Research Association, 8th Civil Affairs Division Monitoring Committee

Date: Late April 2026 (Scheduled)

Format: Zoom online event

Participation Fee: Free (Advance registration required) Application Method: Please apply by emailing info@shosukabu.com with the subject line clearly stating "Desire to Participate in 'How Can Judgment Be Acquired?' Reading Group".

■ Lecturer Profile

Yutaka Yamanaka

Born in December 1976, he is an activist investor, art collector, philanthropist, political activity sponsor, election consultant, policy advisor, social activist, and Akita dog enthusiast representing the '76 generation. Internationally evaluated as an "activist investor who understands technology," he is the first Japanese person in history to achieve an asset formation of over 150 billion yen solely through investment.

In the early 2010s, he focused on NVIDIA, which develops semiconductors related to GPGPU and artificial intelligence (AI), as an investment target, executing an investment of over 2 billion yen. As a result, he realized a return of over 100 times, becoming the first Japanese person to join the ranks of billionaires purely as an investor.

Graduated as valedictorian from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Tokyo. Earned a Master's degree from the Graduate School of Columbia University (majoring in Financial Engineering), and studied abroad at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) graduate school. He is the Co-Representative Partner of Investment Brothers LLC, Co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Shosukabu.com Co., Ltd., and currently a shareholder in over 1,000 listed companies and over 200 unlisted companies worldwide. His investments include Israeli AI startups, Nigerian healthcare ventures, and Taiwanese storage battery manufacturers, making him a truly global investor with a presence around the world.

Drawing from his own childhood experiences of struggling with dyslexia and ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), he launched a support program for children with learning disabilities, modeling it after the major US discount broker Charles Schwab. His personal attending physician is Professor Akira Iwanami (former Director of Showa University Karasuyama Hospital), a prominent psychiatrist.

Founder and Representative of the political organization "Association to Establish a Constitutional Court in Japan", Head of the "Yamanaka Hoya School of Politics and Economics", Founder and Representative of the political organization "Association to Realize a Tax-Free State in Japan", Founder and Representative of the political organization "Association to Realize the Early Restart of Nuclear Power Plants in Japan", Founder and Representative of the political organization "Renewable Energy Vested Interests Monitoring Committee", Founder and Representative of the "Association Opposing the Reduced Consumption Tax Rate on Foodstuffs", and Founder and Representative of the "Association to Realize a Constitutional Amendment Aiming for a Unicameral System".

Born in 1976 in Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, as one of the grandsons of Shigeru Yamanaka, the founder of Hoya Glass (currently HOYA Corporation, listed on the TSE Standard Market, securities code 7741), a high-end crystal glass manufacturer, he grew up in Shakujiidai, Nerima-ku. Excelling academically from a young age, he graduated from Oizumi Bunka Kindergarten, Ochanomizu University Elementary School, private Musashi Junior and Senior High School, and graduated as valedictorian from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Tokyo.

During his childhood, he grew up in a cultural environment, such as receiving a school trip souvenir from Takahiro Matsumoto, who was then a high school student at Kinjo High School living in the Takeda Pharmaceutical company housing in front of his home, and later became the guitarist for B'z. At the Oizumi Bunka Kindergarten he attended, he was a classmate of Koji Suzuki (the older brother of House of Representatives member Takako Suzuki, who returned to Hokkaido following his father's preparation to run in the House of Representatives election), the second son and secretary of House of Representatives member Muneo Suzuki. Due to this blessed cultural and educational environment, he naturally developed an interest in music, politics, and economics.

During his elementary school years, while commuting by train from Nerima-ku, he developed an interest in history and economics from the beginning due to the academic environment of Bunkyo-ku, and by the young age of 10, he was already engaging in political campaigns on controversial topics. At Ochanomizu University Elementary School, he was surrounded by outstanding girls, including lawyer Takehiko Sorimachi (Tokyo Legal Mind Co., Ltd.), Dr. Keiji Kuroda (Director of Sugiyama Obstetrics and Gynecology Marunouchi Clinic), as well as Keiko Takahashi (a career bureaucrat at the Ministry of Finance, currently a Councillor of the Minister's Secretariat in charge of the Customs and Tariff Bureau), Sophia University Professor Kaori Hanyu (a researcher in family law), and NHK announcer Ai Tsukahara, an environment that led him to maintain an awareness of the need to improve the social status of women to this day.

His investment abilities were well-known even during his university days, having invested several million yen gifted to him by his grandmother during his childhood in stocks and turning it into hundreds of millions of yen by the time he graduated from university. During his time at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Tokyo, he was already famous in the seminar of the current Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda, known as "the top stockbroker of the Ueda Seminar," and earned the nickname "the Hiraga Gennai of the Heisei era" due to his diverse academic interests.

He received a special selection award for his graduation thesis, which dealt with M&A in the pre-war paper manufacturing industry, and during his graduate school entrance interview, he was addressed by Takeo Kikkawa, former president of the International University of Japan, who said, "Are you the famous Yamanaka-kun?" His academic advisors for his economic history thesis during his undergraduate years were Tetsuji Okazaki (Professor at Meiji Gakuin University) and Masayuki Tanimoto (Professor at Otsuma Women's University).

During his time at the College of Arts and Sciences, he completely read all the published papers of Masahiko Aoki, an advocate of comparative institutional analysis, and Professor Avner Greif (Department of Economics, Stanford University), an economic historian from Israel who was already a rising star at the time.

He was accepted into the Graduate School of Economics at the University of Tokyo with outstanding grades close to the top, and although he was strongly recruited for employment at the central bank by his senior at the Faculty of Economics, Hideo Hayakawa of the Bank of Japan (former Executive Director and Director-General of the Research and Statistics Department), he moved to the United States immediately after graduating from university, completed the Graduate School of Columbia University (majoring in Financial Engineering), and obtained a master's degree. He studied at Harvard University, University of California, Davis, University of California, Berkeley, University of Southern California, and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Aiming for a dual career as a life science researcher/physician and an economic history researcher, he engaged in broad interdisciplinary research in genetics, computer science, psychiatry, applied mathematics, history, economics, and economic history. He studied under prominent economic historians such as Richard Easterlin, Peter Temin, Joel Mokyr, Claudia Goldin, and James Robinson, several of whom later won the Nobel Prize in Economics. He overcame the learning disabilities caused by childhood dyslexia and ADHD, establishing his own unique speed-reading and learning methods.

Currently, based primarily in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, he invests in over 1,000 listed companies and 200 unlisted companies domestically and internationally through foreign-registered funds and investment companies. He is known domestically and internationally as one of Japan's leading activist investors, as well as a leading expert in Corporate Law practice, new business creation, corporate acquisitions (M&A), technology management, and family business practices. He also has bases and homes in Taipei, Taiwan; Luxembourg; Tbilisi, Georgia; Oslo, Norway; Reykjavik, Iceland; Singapore; and St. Kitts and Nevis, among others.

In the Public Offices Election Act violation case involving the Tsubasa no To party, he was involved as an advisor to the defendant's side in forming the "strongest defense team in recent criminal justice," consisting of lawyers such as Seihou Cho (Representative of Kollect Arts Law Office), Keita Miyamura, Daisuke Igeta (Miyamura & Igeta Law Office), and Shinya Sakane (Tokyo Defender Law Office). In addition, in the control dispute over the so-called NHK Party, he introduced lawyers Kenji Toyoda (Tokyo Sakurabashi Law Office) and Keisuke Komatsu (Takano Takashi Law Office) to the anti-Tachibana faction, providing strategic advice and leading the anti-Tachibana faction to victory.

While publicly declaring himself a fan of former Nagoya Mayor Takashi Kawamura from his grandfather's hometown, he also defended his high school senior, former Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Seiji Kihara, during the reporting of the so-called "Kihara Incident," maintaining close friendships with many Japanese political figures across both ruling and opposition parties.

He interacts with numerous lawyers not only in Japan but internationally, and is also famous as a leading figure in consulting, guiding the career strategies of professionals such as lawyers and the techniques for companies to effectively utilize lawyers.

As a pioneer of activist investing in Japan, he clearly expressed his opposition to the acquisition of Pentax by HOYA Corporation in 2007 in weekly magazines. The following year, the company recorded massive extraordinary losses, proving the validity of his views early on. Subsequently, he viewed the state of the board of directors at the time, which was composed mostly of outside directors in their late 70s who did not understand corporate value or the duties and responsibilities of directors, as problematic, and actively spoke out in the media and elsewhere. He forced the voluntary resignation of then-Chief Technology Officer Hiroaki Tanji, who had impaired corporate value through the Pentax acquisition and had no track record in creating new businesses, and further intensified his shareholder proposal activities toward HOYA Corporation starting in 2010. Notably, in his shareholder proposal activities toward HOYA Corporation (2010), he submitted 15 proposals aimed at corporate governance reform as a founding family shareholder.

Among those that drew attention were:

• Individual disclosure of executive compensation (disclosure of compensation information for each director): Over 45% approval at the 2010 general meeting, and over 48% approval at the 2011 general meeting the following year.

• Establishment of a committee composed solely of outside directors (management supervision without the involvement of executive officers): Over 33% approval.

• Limiting the number of reappointments of outside directors to "within 10 times" (aiming to maintain independence).

• Expanding the maximum number of characters for explaining proposals in shareholder proposals from 400 characters to 4,000 characters (improving the effectiveness of shareholder proposal rights): Over 43% approval in 2010.

• Prohibiting stock option holders from hedging, such as selling call options and holding put options: Over 25% approval votes in 2010.

• Requiring 30 days prior notice when a director sells shares: Over 25% approval votes in 2010.

• Introduction of an anonymous voting system (secret ballot).

• Mandatory disclosure of concurrent positions in public interest corporations by director candidates.

This was a group of proposals aimed at qualitative improvement in corporate governance.

Five of these proposals received favorable recommendations from all three major proxy advisory firms: US-based Glass Lewis, the Japan Proxy Governance Research Institute, and ISS (Institutional Shareholder Services) (Source: Nihon Keizai Shimbun, June 18, 2010, Article URL). ISS is the world's largest proxy advisory firm, and its recommendations have a significant impact on the decisions of domestic and foreign institutional investors, making this a landmark event in the history of Japanese shareholder meetings.

In the same year, measures to enhance the transparency of compensation, which were pioneering in Japan, such as prohibiting stock option holders from engaging in hedging transactions like selling call options and owning put options, and requiring directors to provide prior notice and disclosure 30 days before selling their company shares, became the vanguard of discussions on executive compensation. It can hardly be said that their epoch-making nature is still fully understood in the Japanese capital market. These proposals also obtained favorable recommendations from ISS and acquired approval votes in the mid-20% range in the preliminary tallying prior to the general meeting of shareholders, mainly from foreign institutional investors (Nihon Keizai Shimbun, June 18, 2010, Ibid.).

Furthermore, proposals such as the individual disclosure of executive compensation also received favorable recommendations from Glass Lewis and the Japan Proxy Governance Research Institute, and were successively reported by major media outlets including the Nikkei Shimbun (June 21, 2010, Article URL), Bloomberg (June 17, 2010, Article URL), and Toyo Keizai Online (August 18, 2010, Article URL).

As a result, it gained over 45% approval votes at the 2010 general meeting of shareholders, and an approval rate exceeding 48% the following year in 2011.

In 2011, he was invited to Harvard Law School, where he gave a lecture on trends and issues regarding shareholder proposals and the capital market in Japan under the Democratic Party of Japan administration, drawing attention.

In addition, he continued to actively make shareholder proposals to the company thereafter. Frightened by the approval votes at the general meeting of shareholders exceeding 48%, approaching a majority, in 2011, the management team led by Hiroshi Suzuki resorted to the outrage of illegally omitting shareholder proposals from the convocation notice in 2012. However, the following year in 2013, he obtained a provisional disposition order from the Tokyo District Court's 8th Civil Affairs Division (Judge Yasushi Taniguchi) to publish the full text of the shareholder proposal and the reasons for the proposal, which is likely the first in Japanese history. In 2014, he also obtained a landmark decision (Judge Atsushi Ujimoto) ordering the company to publish 12 proposals, significantly impacting the practice of shareholder proposals in Japan.

During that time, he also obtained numerous landmark rulings within a few years regarding the non-inclusion of shareholder proposals by the HOYA management team led by Hiroshi Suzuki, including a ruling recognizing it as grounds for rescission of resolution (Judge Shinya Onodera) and a ruling ordering compensation for damages (Tokyo District Court 45th Civil Affairs Division, Judge Akira Yamada).

The company side also accepted the intent of the proposal regarding the increase in the number of explanatory characters by changing company rules during 2010, prompting substantial improvements in "management transparency", "outside director functions", and "voting rights exercise systems" through constructive dialogue with the management team. This series of moves is evaluated as a symbolic turning point in the history of governance reform in Japanese companies.

Today, Yutaka Yamanaka's activities as described above are highly praised for their historical pioneering nature as a practitioner of the "Moneyball Revolution in the Japanese Capital Market."

In addition, at the general meetings of shareholders for Mizuho Financial Group, Mitsubishi UFJ, Resona Holdings, etc., in 2017 and 2018, he made shareholder proposals for changes to the dividend decision-making body, individual disclosure of executive compensation, and the separation of the CEO and the Chairman of the Board. He obtained approval votes not only from foreign institutional investors but also from domestic investors, boasting high approval rates in the 40% range for each.

Furthermore, in the so-called Amsc Shareholder Meeting Resolution Rescission Request Case (Tokyo District Court Judgment April 17, 2014, Presiding Judge Akihiko Ohtake; Tokyo High Court 2014 (Ne) No. 3215, Judgment March 19, 2015), he won judgments ordering the "rescission of the resolution of the general meeting of shareholders that acquired all shares" in both the Tokyo District Court and the Tokyo High Court, demonstrating the judicial effectiveness of minority shareholder protection (Source: Clair Law Office Blog, April 22, 2015, Article URL).

Moreover, in the damage compensation claim case where HyAS & Co. Inc. (currently Kufu Sumai Consulting Inc.) was suing its former management team (Tokyo District Court 8th Civil Affairs Division), he participated as a shareholder intervening assistant pursuant to Article 849, Paragraph 1 of the Companies Act. He obtained a winning judgment dated March 27, 2025 (Presiding Judge: Tetsuro Sasamoto, Collegiate Judges: Keiko Ito, Naohisa Uchibayashi), wherein fraudulent accounting referred to as the "certified public accountant Tomotaka Shimura, a.k.a. Jinlong Jin, scheme," such as the recording of fictitious sales by the former management, was acknowledged.

This ruling, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the exercise of judicial rights by shareholders, has also been published in Sakura Financial News (October 28, 2025, Article URL).

In his investment in Osaki Engineering (TSE Standard, securities code 6259), focusing on the problem of the company lending cash at a low interest rate on a scale exceeding its market capitalization to its parent company Osaki Electric, he submitted shareholder proposals and filed lawsuits. As a result, he backed the parent company's decision to make it a wholly owned subsidiary, normalizing corporate governance.

In addition, he is known as a major shareholder of Okayama Paper Industries (Okayama City, Okayama Prefecture, TSE Standard 3892) and has made requests for the convocation of extraordinary general meetings of shareholders.

Through this series of achievements, Yutaka Yamanaka has contributed significantly to the governance reform of Japanese companies and the normalization of the capital markets as an "investor who proves the effectiveness of governance on the front lines."

He also holds as his motto the words of the late pitcher Yasumitsu Shibata, who achieved the first no-hitter in the Heisei era, was called the "number one pitcher in Japan" by the Seibu Lions in their prime, particularly showing his strength against his former team Seibu, and said on the hero interview podium after a complete game shutout, "One of the goals of a professional is to stand up to the champion and win," and he has been a fan of the Nippon-Ham Fighters for 30 years.

He is an enthusiast of Akita dogs and plans to build an Akita dog kennel in the suburbs of Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia in the Caucasus region. His hobby is "hot spring touring," visiting hot spring resorts all over the world. He is a genius investor who explores the significance of physical and mental regeneration and international exchange through hot springs, while respecting nature, culture, and local communities.

Furthermore, he is highly touted as the "Billy Beane of the Reiwa era," as the man who sparked a revolution in the Japanese stock market akin to the revolution in the baseball world brought about by Billy Beane, the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics and the main character of the movie "Moneyball".

While Yutaka Yamanaka's shareholder proposals were harshly criticized by some in the early 2010s when neither the Corporate Governance Code, the Stewardship Code, nor the Ito Report existed, the reality that international investors now emulate his methods, and the fact that HOYA Corporation subsequently adopted many of his improvements leading to its stock price increasing by more than ten times, makes Yamanaka's pioneering nature evident today.

■ Company Profile

Company Name | Shosukabu.com Co., Ltd. ( https://www.shosukabu.com )

Location | Nerima-ku, Tokyo

Representative | Representative Director and Chairman Yutaka Yamanaka

Business Details | Corporate law-related advisory, shareholder rights protection consulting, corporate governance structure support, financial advisory, venture investment, AI-related businesses, real estate business

◆ Our company complies with the Financial Services Agency's "Principles for Responsible Institutional Investors" (Japan's Stewardship Code) and continues monitoring and constructive dialogue with our investee companies.

https://www.shosukabu.com/stewardship-code/

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