The other day, at our Stratus Partner Day 2021, breaststroke at the Barcelna Olympics I had the opportunity to talk with Kyoko Iwasaki, a gold medalist. Partner companies who participated in the event remotely on the day may have had the opportunity to see it. Before the actual conversation, I delayed several questions by e-mail, and on the day, I gave an opportunity to meet while chatting before rehearsals and recording. The age is very different, and they were completely different from the environment and experience they lived in, but having lived in California, USA was something in common. Mr. Iwasaki seems to have stayed at Mission Viejo for about a year in coach training. I lived in Cupertino, a 30-minute drive south of San Francisco, for two years.
Mr. Iwasaki said that there was a big difference in the way children are coaching in Japan and the United States. In Japan, in order to improve the competition time of children, it seems that they want to improve the way children swim and there will be more coaching to correct them. On the other hand, U.S. coaches seem to focus on complimenting their children for their good and giving them a sense of accomplishment. In such an environment, children seem to be proactive in making positive remarks. I also told them about my experience. When work is successful in the U.S., your boss and colleagues blatantly praise the results. “Good Job!” In addition, employees are prepared to clearly communicate their level of business achievement and future growth opportunities and challenges. In an easy-to-understand way, it’s a culture that praises and appeals. During the chat, he told me that I think this appealing culture or ability to communicate clearly will be important in Japan in the future.
Now, I was preparing two questions for the conversation. The first is why do japan traditionally have excellent breaststroke players? There was a scene of the Los Angeles Olympics in “Itaten” of nhk taiga drama in 2020, but 200M Mr. Maehata won a silver medal in the breaststroke. He won gold at the next Berlin Olympics. After that, I checked, and Mr. Iwasaki won the gold medal in the same event in Barcelona. At the Rio 2012 Olympics, Mr. Kondo won a gold medal in the same event. In the men’s race, Tsuruta won 200M gold in Amsterdam and Los Angeles. Mr. Taguchi won 100M gold in Munich. Mr. Kitajima won 100M and 200M in a row with Athens and Beijing. In addition, Yamaguchi and Watanabe have recently set a world record for men’s 200M.
Mr. Iwasaki’s answer was, “Breaststroke has a lot of resistance, and I think it’s a big thing that requires technical skills.” Compared to other power-based swimmers, breaststroke has a lot of ingenuity in how to reduce water resistance, and it is suitable for Japanese athletes. The second question is, “Japanese athletes are prominently active in individual medleys at the recent Olympics, is there any background to this?” It means. In fact, at this year’s Tokyo Olympics, Mr. Ohashi won the women’s individual medley with double crowns. In the men’s race, Hagino won gold in Rio de Janeiro and Seto won bronze. Both of them have also reached the finals at the Tokyo Olympics. Mr. Iwasaki’s answer was pretty specific. “Ohashi is a big Japanese player, but he lacked stamina, and I think the result was that he thoroughly strengthened that part. Hagino and Seto worked to make every swimming method above average. By doing so, I think that I was able to acquire the competitive ability to compete against overseas players with comprehensive strength without any weak events.
I understand that it is very difficult to compete at the Olympic level in a sport with many competitors from all over the world, such as swimming. It was interesting that the two ways to win were to make use of the japanese personality of being able to pursue technology and to face each other with comprehensive strength by eliminating their weak points. It’s somewhat contradictory direction of individuality and overall strength, but in short, I think there is no single way to win.
In the computer industry, there is also a strategy of doing business in any field and competing with comprehensive strength, such as medley competitions. There are also vendors with a strategy of competing with comprehensive strength without any weak events in the cloud, data center, edge, or client PC. Stratus Technology’s mission is to contribute to customer digital transformation in the field of edge computing. What’s more, it’s assumed to differentiate itself with high availability technologies, including non disruptive. In that sense, it can be said that it is a player of the specialty event.
Well, I think this will be the last blog of this year. Once again, thank you very much for your help in 2021. It was a year of great headwinds in the Corona Disaster, but thanks to you, we were able to maintain our performance close to the year-to-date plan. However, since the end of the fiscal year is February next year, you will be sprinting for a little over two months. In 2022, as a player in specialized events, we would like to further sharpen our skills and build a track record in the field of edge computing. I hope you all have a good year.
