My contribution to a board
I would bring an engineer's account of what a company's physical assets can and cannot do on a bad day. Boards usually see asset risk as a line in a register, rated for likelihood and impact. They rarely see the access road that closes in January, the backup battery sized for eight hours or the engineer who retires next spring and knows the site better than anyone. In my work I have learnt to turn those facts into a short statement a board can act on: which customers keep a service, for how long and at what cost. I would ask for the same statement from management at a company whose pipes, tracks or depots sit in difficult places. I would also bring experience of renewing equipment while revenue falls, which means separating renewals that cannot wait from those that can be shared, extended or retired. I expect to learn far more than I contribute about finance, audit and capital markets in my first term, and I would say so to the chair.
Capacity and preferences
- Time available
- 22 days per year
- Current directorships
- 0
- Sectors
- Regional gas and water services · Railways and bus operators · Logistics and infrastructure contractors
- Company type
- Listed Japanese company, or a large unlisted regional company, maintaining field assets with no broadcast operations and no material dealings with Kazaminato
- Company stage
- Renewing ageing field equipment while its technical workforce shrinks
The seat I am pursuing
I am seeking one outside directorship at a Japanese company whose service depends on assets in difficult terrain: a regional gas or water business, a railway or bus operator, a logistics company or an infrastructure contractor. I would like to join a risk, business continuity or sustainability discussion, and I would not ask to chair a committee in my first term. I am not looking for a seat chosen to add a technical title or to change the composition of a board's skills table without a real question behind it. I would want to know what the board expects an engineer to examine and whether management welcomes that examination. Japan's Corporate Governance Code encourages boards to include independent outside directors with relevant experience; I would leave it to the company and its advisers to decide whether my background meets its own criteria for the seat.
Judgement in practice
01Saying what will not be protected
When I extended backup power at twelve priority sites, I also had to tell the board that the smaller relay stations would go dark after about eight hours without mains power. It would have been easy to present the investment without that sentence. A board cannot accept a risk it has not been shown. As a director I would ask management, whenever it proposes a resilience investment, which customers remain outside it and what those customers will experience. I would not expect every risk to be removed; I would expect the remaining exposure to be stated plainly and agreed by the board, not discovered during the next storm.
02Testing a saving over the life of the asset
Moving fourteen spur feeds to leased circuits saved capital but added annual fees, and over ten years the two approaches cost almost the same. I told the board that the real reason for the change was the size of the team that would maintain the links. A board reviewing a renewal should see the whole-life cost, including power, fees and staff time, and a plain explanation of why the method is changing. As a director I would ask that question of any project presented as a saving, and I would ask what the company is relying on another party to do when the asset fails.
03Checking the ground behind the diagram
Our two carriers' route maps suggested separate paths, but the cables shared poles for 3.2 kilometres, and a fallen tree took a relay station off air for 47 minutes. The lesson for a board is modest but important: assurance about resilience should include evidence that someone has looked at the physical arrangement, not only the contract. I would ask management how it verifies a supplier's claim of diversity or redundancy, and whether that check has been repeated since the last change.
My first year on a board
Before my first board meeting I would ask the chair which questions the board finds hardest to answer about its assets, and I would read the last two years of risk and incident papers with that list beside me. With management's agreement, I would visit the sites that the company itself considers most exposed, preferably in the season when they are hardest to reach, and talk to the people who maintain them. I would ask the audit and supervisory function how incidents reach the board and how quickly. In those first six months I would speak rarely and listen a great deal. Every board works from a shared understanding that a new outside director needs time to acquire, and I have never sat at that table. I would ask a long-serving director to tell me plainly when a question of mine is useful and when it repeats work the board has already done. At the end of the year I would ask the chair for a candid review.
Conflicts and their management
My position as an executive of Kazaminato limits the seats I can accept. We lease circuits from regional carriers, buy transmitters and playout systems from a small number of makers, share relay sites and inspections with other broadcasters, depend on municipalities for winter access and sell advertising to many regional companies. I would not join another broadcaster, a carrier or equipment maker we deal with, or any company whose decisions would affect our shared sites. For other seats, I would give the prospective company a list of our main counterparties and our larger advertisers, and ask its secretariat to compare it with its own. I would need my president's written consent, and I would tell our board of any appointment. If a matter later arose that touched Kazaminato, I would declare it and leave the discussion. If that happened often, I would resign the seat rather than serve as a director who regularly cannot take part.
My independence statement
Today I have no shareholdings, advisory roles or family connections with any company I would consider. That could change with a particular seat. Kazaminato leases circuits, buys equipment, shares sites and sells advertising, so any of those counterparties could compromise my position. I would list them for the prospective company and accept its own assessment against the exchange's criteria for independent officers.
Committee contribution
Chair and member readiness| Capacity | Committees |
|---|
| Ready to join | Risk and business continuity · Sustainability and infrastructure investment |
|---|
Board and committee exposure
Presented to the Board or a committee
Kazaminato Broadcasting
Board of directors
June 2016–present
Presents network renewal plans, capital requests and major incident reviews, several times a year since 2022; earlier presentations as general manager. Not a director.
Reported to a committee
Kazaminato Broadcasting
Audit and supervisory board members
June 2022–present
Reports on broadcast outages, their causes and corrective actions, including the January 2026 relay outage.
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
The IICA Independent Directors' Databank is an Indian register for people seeking independent seats on Indian boards. It has no role in Japanese appointments, so I have not registered, and this entry records nothing more than that.
- In 2025 I completed a twelve-session programme for prospective outside directors covering directors' duties under the Companies Act of Japan, internal control and the Corporate Governance Code.
- Since 2016 I have presented renewal and incident papers to Kazaminato's board, and since 2022 I have reported outages to its audit and supervisory board members.