Hear from Eitaro Ogawa, the representative. Why does “Nippon Art & Culture Salon” have to be now?

――Please tell us about your motive for establishing Nippon Art & Culture Salon. Why did literary critic Ogawa dare to launch such a business?

I am originally a literary person and a person of thought. My job to take the time to ask the world by writing books that are difficult and do not sell well, and it is the most fun to study in my room. I have neither financial nor management capacity.
Nevertheless, I had a strong conviction that it was a must-have project in Japan today, so I do a big overdoing myself and started this cultural project.
Japan has originally formed a glorious history with political and economic leaders who have one of the world’s largest cultural assets and have known the strengths of culture well since ancient times.

Culture was not a luxury accessory to the nation and economy or a play for some hobbyist people, but a source of national power and the foundation of long-term economic growth.
However, leaders in various fields in Japan forget true value of Japan’s maximum strength of culture after Heisei era and have lost the ideal way which seems to be the Japanese and national power at the same time by the reform in the near term which lacks a long-term discernment and the economic supremacy principle.
I am convinced that the inseparable relationship between the country’s disregard for culture and the decline from the Heisei era to the present is inseparable.
I want to give a greatest strengths in culture, and to create a comprehensive platform and a free open place – that is my dream of betting on a Nippon Art & Culture Salon.

――What do you think you want to do by creating a place?

Nippon Art & Culture Salon was established as a place to revitalize the virtuous cycle system of culture and patrons based on the recognition that “culture is power”.
I would like to demonstrate the message that “culture is power” and “culture is a growth industry.” As a result, I would like to fundamentally rebuild Japan, which has lost its spine and drifts.
Nippon Art & Culture Salon has the pillars of its activities in the following three.

1. Provide opportunities for talented people
2. Rebirth of patron culture
3. Emotional education for children and young people

While organically associating these three pillars, we are planning various projects to make Japan’s cultural power an asset shared by the people and to strongly disseminate them to the world.
I think my original role is not to manage the business entity, but to be the ideological foundation of cultural business.
The foundation of cultural projects must be based on <ideas>. It is a thoroughly trained thought that is not a fine-sounding words, not an empty slogan. My idea is that a cultural project with substance cannot be established without a deep idea of what culture is for humankind and what is the core of Japanese culture.
The reason for starting the salon from ‘Kojiki’ project is that it wanted to clarify the character of cultural movement as thought.
We look forward to the wide range of participation with hearts who agrees and sympathizes with the purpose.