Lessons from 100 Issues of UNI-SIGHT

Hello, everyone. I am the UNIVA CAPITAL Group’s Chief Branding Officer. My name is Shosei Asakura, and this is the 100th issue of our Group’s in-house magazine UNI-SIGHT. I am delighted that our NAKAMA have had the opportunity to read one hundred issues of UNI-SIGHT and must say a heartfelt “Thank you!” to those who have read every issue.

UNI-SIGHT began as a proposal from Group CEO Shuji Inaba. UNIVA CAPITAL is a diversified group involved in a variety of businesses. Companies involved in different businesses rarely communicated with those in other businesses. But synergies are impossible without communication. That is why we needed to get to know each other better. It was from this thought, that we needed to become a real group, that our Group magazine UNI-SIGHT was born. Because the UNIVA CAPITAL Group is a global group of companies, it was absolutely natural for UNI-SIGHT to be published in three languages, Japanese, Chinese, and English.

That said, publication in three languages means three times the number of pages on the website, thus three times as much work to do to produce them. Juan Zheng, UNI-SIGHT’s editor-in-chief is obsessive about the quality of both content and design. As a result, the annual print edition that combines the monthly issues in one volume has won the Grand Prix (2017, special division) in Japan’s premiere in-house magazine contest, organized by Wis Works, Inc. Also receiving awards for quality content that year were some of the biggest names in Japanese business, including Hitachi, Yahoo!, Recruit, and Asahi Beer.

UNI-SIGHT has published 100 issues. When the first issue was published eight years ago in January, 2014, what were you doing?

- Working a part-time job while pursuing your dream?
- Building a career at another company?
- Quit your job to go home and devote yourself to raising your children?
- Still a student studying or just having fun?

Each of us was an actor in our own drama, but none of us imagined that eight years later we would be working for the UNIVA CAPITAL Group. Or that we would be NAKAMA, members of the same group. Then came COVID, war…the speed of change is unbelievably fast. No one knows what the future will be. We live in an age of discontinuity.

I never imagined that UNI-SIGHT would publish its 100th issue. But now I cannot help recognizing the continuity to which each and every issue has contributed. As I carefully review them one-by-one, that is a feeling that I always encounter. I see wisdom distilled by experience and the effort to produce something better than before, to offer readers, if only a little, a change of perspective. What will the world be like eight years from now, when No. 200 is published? What will the UNIVA CAPITAL Group become? What will become of you, and me?

A vague unease will still be pervasive. I can think of nothing else. All that remains is to find satisfaction in not running away, not avoiding trouble, not being discouraged, continuing to do each task in a way that we find satisfying. To think that today will be the same as the past is foolish. But if we look just a bit ahead and accept what we see before us, little by little the results of our work will accumulate. That is valuable. That is what I have learned from UNI-SIGHT, that in a time of discontinuity, we must work to create continuity.

It is because it feels this way that I don’t worry about an uncertain future. It’s OK not knowing what lies ahead.

UNIVA CAPITAL Group Chief branding Officer
UNIVA Corporation Director
Shosei Asakura