Announcement of Reading Circle for "Life with Bribes: Post-Market Economy Kazakhstan"

Shosukabu.com Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Nerima-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director and Chairman: Yutaka Yamanaka; hereinafter "the Company") will hold a reading circle on the theme of "Life with Bribes: Post-Market Economy Kazakhstan" (authored by Natsuko Oka), in co-sponsorship with the Nerima Political Research Association and the Civil Affairs 8th Division Monitoring Committee.

This book explores the society of Kazakhstan, which gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union and transitioned from a planned economy to a market economy, through the lens of "bribery." How did people's lives, work, and relationships change amidst major shifts in national systems? While the country has achieved economic development backed by abundant resources and is seen as a model student among emerging nations, the book vividly illustrates the reality of bribery permeating every aspect of daily life, including policing, education, healthcare, and business activities.

A key feature of this book is its approach to bribery not as mere crime or moral failing, but as a phenomenon within the societal structure and people's life strategies. It examines how "connections" (kone), which existed in Kazakh society even before independence, were utilized and transformed within the market economy. In a society with unstable systems and unfair rules, people may have no choice but to rely on informal relationships and monetary exchanges to survive.

Furthermore, the significance of reading this book lies in its potential to serve as a catalyst for contemplating the relationship between national and societal trust, and between formal systems and informal rules, rather than viewing it as a peculiar problem of a distant country. Did market liberalization free people, or did it create new disparities and instability? In a society rife with bribery, who benefits and who is harmed? This reading circle will discuss key points such as what happened in post-market economy Kazakhstan, how "connections" and "bribery" function, how to consider the gap between systemic reforms and people's lives, and what we can learn from this society.

Book URL: https://x.gd/ShzKh

Author Profile

Natsuko Oka

Born in 1968. Completed her Master's program at the Graduate School of Intercultural Studies, University of Tokyo. Obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Leeds, UK. She is a researcher specializing in the society and culture of Central Asia, engaged in research at the Institute of Developing Economies. She explores the relationship between systemic changes and people's lives from a perspective rooted in local society.

Event Overview

Theme: Reading Circle on "Life with Bribes: Post-Market Economy Kazakhstan"

Organizer: Shosukabu.com Co., Ltd.

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

Date: Late July 2026 (scheduled)

Format: Zoom Online Event

Participation Fee: Free (pre-registration required)

How to Apply: Please send an email to [email protected] with the subject line "Application for 'Life with Bribes' Reading Circle."

[Contact for Inquiries]

Shosukabu.com Co., Ltd.

Department: Public Relations Desk, [email protected]

https://note.com/syousuukabu_koho

[Related Links]

Danjo Umiwake Dot Com: https://danjo-umiwake.com

CapitalJusticeLab: https://capital-justice-lab.com/

Investment Brothers: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2MG5joxYNn8&ra=m

Speaker Profile

Yutaka Yamanaka

An activist investor, art collector, philanthropist, political sponsor, election consultant, policy advisor, social activist, and Akita dog enthusiast, representing the '76 generation born in December 1976. Currently, as the largest shareholder of Kawano Mericlon Co., Ltd., he is passionately involved in smart agriculture investment activities across three locations: Japan, Tbilisi in Georgia, and Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

In particular, he has already commenced agricultural, hospital, and school management in the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi, in the Caucasus region, and is actively expanding his operations there. Notably, his innovative business model of providing affordable surrogacy and gender selection medical services to people worldwide, including Japanese nationals, is highly regarded.

He is recognized as an "activist investor who understands technology." In the early 2010s, he identified NVIDIA, a developer of GPGPU and AI-related semiconductors, as an investment target, executing an investment of over 2 billion yen, which ultimately yielded a return of more than 100 times, leading to his billionaire status.

Graduated as valedictorian from the Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo. Holds a Master's degree in Financial Engineering from Columbia University Graduate School and studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Graduate School. He is a co-representative partner of Investment Brothers LLC and a co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Shosukabu.com Co., Ltd., currently holding shares in over 1,000 listed companies and more than 200 unlisted companies worldwide.

Born in 1976 in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo, as one of the grandchildren of Shigeru Yamanaka, the founder of Hoyu Glass (now HOYA Corporation, listed on TOKYO PRO MARKET, securities code 7741), a high-end crystal glass manufacturer. He grew up in Shakujii-dai, Nerima Ward. From a young age, he excelled academically, graduating from Oizumi Bunka Kindergarten, Ochanomizu University Elementary School, Musashi Junior and Senior High School, and graduating as valedictorian from the Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo. Despite struggling with ADHD and dyslexia, he consistently maintained excellent academic performance.

In his childhood, he received souvenirs from a school trip from Takahiro Matsumoto, who lived in the Takeda Pharmaceutical Company dormitory across from his house and was then a high school student at Kinjo High School, and who would later become the guitarist for B'z. He was already active as a stock investor in the seminar of Kazuo Ueda, the current Governor of the Bank of Japan, earning the nicknames "the stockbroker of the Ueda seminar" and "the Heisei era's Gennai Hiraga" due to his diverse academic interests.

During his undergraduate studies, he read all the published papers of Masahiko Aoki, a proponent of comparative institutional analysis, and Professor Avner Greif, an economic historian from Israel (Faculty of Economics, Stanford University), who was already a rising star in economic history.

As a pioneer of activist investing in Japan, he clearly expressed his opposition to HOYA Corporation's acquisition of Pentax in 2007 in a weekly magazine. The following year, his views were proven correct when the company recorded a massive special loss. Subsequently, he took issue with the board of directors at the time, which was predominantly composed of individuals in their late seventies who lacked understanding of corporate value and director liability, and actively spoke out in the media. He was involved in damaging the corporate value through the Pentax acquisition and the departure of the then Chief Technology Officer, Hiroaki Tanji, and from 2010 onwards, he actively engaged in shareholder proposal activities towards HOYA Corporation. Notably, in the 2010 shareholder proposal activities for HOYA Corporation, as a founding family shareholder, he submitted 15 proposals aimed at corporate governance reform.

Individual disclosure of executive compensation (disclosure of remuneration per director): Over 45% approval in the 2010 general meeting, and over 48% in the following year's 2011 general meeting.

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

Limitation on the number of reappointments for outside directors to "within 10 times" (to maintain independence).

Expansion of the maximum character count for proposal explanations in shareholder proposals from 400 to 4,000 characters (to enhance the effectiveness of shareholder proposal rights): Over 43% approval in 2010.

Prohibition of hedging activities by stock option holders, such as selling call options and holding put options: Over 25% approval in 2010.

Requirement for prior notice 30 days in advance when directors sell shares: Over 25% approval in 2010.

Introduction of a secret ballot system (secret voting).

Disclosure obligation for concurrent positions of director candidates in public interest corporations.

Regarding proposals aimed at qualitatively improving corporate governance, five proposals received recommendations for approval from all three major proxy advisory firms: Glass Lewis, the Japan Proxy Governance Research Institute, and ISS (Institutional Shareholder Services) (Source: Nikkei Shimbun, June 18, 2010, article URL). ISS is the world's largest proxy advisory firm, and its recommendations significantly influence the decisions of institutional investors both domestically and internationally, marking a groundbreaking event in the history of Japanese shareholder meetings.

In the same year, measures to enhance compensation transparency, such as prohibiting hedging transactions by stock option holders (selling call options and holding put options) and requiring prior notice and disclosure 30 days in advance when directors sell their own shares, were ahead of their time in the discussion of executive compensation and their groundbreaking nature is still not fully appreciated in the Japanese capital market. These proposals also received approval recommendations from ISS, and garnered mid-20% approval votes from shareholders, mainly foreign institutional investors, in preliminary counts before the general meeting (Nikkei Shimbun, June 18, 2010, ibid.).

Furthermore, proposals such as individual disclosure of executive compensation received approval recommendations from Glass Lewis and the Japan Proxy Governance Research Institute, and were successively reported by major media outlets such as 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, the 2010 general meeting received over 45% of the votes, and the following year, 2011, achieved an approval rate of over 48%.

In 2011, he was invited to Harvard Law School to give a lecture on shareholder proposals, capital market trends, and key issues in Japan under the Democratic Party administration, attracting significant attention.

He also continued to actively submit shareholder proposals to the company. In 2012, the management, led by Hiroshi Suzuki, fearing the over 48% approval rate at the general meeting in 2011, took the drastic step of illegally omitting shareholder proposals. However, in the following year, 2013, he obtained a provisional disposition order from the Civil Affairs Division 8 of the Tokyo District Court (Judge Yasushi Taniguchi) to include the full text of the shareholder proposal and its explanation. In 2014, he obtained a similar groundbreaking decision (Judge Atsushi Ujimoto) ordering the company to include 12 proposals, significantly impacting the practical aspects of shareholder proposals in Japan.

During this period, he also obtained numerous groundbreaking judgments in lawsuits related to shareholder proposals, achieving several landmark rulings over several years.

The company also accepted the spirit of the proposal to increase explanation character limits by amending its own regulations within 2010, and through constructive dialogue with management, he promoted substantial improvements in "management transparency," "outside director functions," and "voting rights exercise systems." This series of actions is regarded as a symbolic turning point in the history of governance reform in Japanese companies.

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

Additionally, at the shareholder meetings of Mizuho Financial Group, Mitsubishi UFJ, and Resona Holdings in 2017 and 2018, he submitted shareholder proposals such as changes to dividend decision-making bodies, individual disclosure of executive compensation, and separation of CEO and Chairman of the Board roles. These proposals received votes not only from foreign institutional investors but also from domestic investors, achieving high approval rates in the 40% range.

Furthermore, in the case of the Amuse shareholder meeting resolution cancellation claim (Tokyo District Court, April 17, 2014, Presiding Judge Akihiko Otake; Tokyo High Court, Case No. 2014 (Ne) 3215, March 19, 2015), he won judgments from both the Tokyo District Court and the Tokyo High Court ordering the "cancellation of the resolution for the acquisition of all shares," demonstrating the legal effectiveness of minority shareholder protection (Source: Clair Law Office Blog, April 22, 2015, article URL).

In the damages claim lawsuit filed by Hyas & Co., Inc. (now Kufu Sumai Consulting Co., Ltd.) against its former management (Tokyo District Court, Civil Division 8), he participated as a shareholder auxiliary litigant under Article 849, Paragraph 1 of the Companies Act. On March 27, 2025, he obtained a favorable judgment (Presiding Judge Tetsuro Sasamoto, Panel Judges Keiko Ito and Naohisa Uchibayashi), where the court found certain accounting treatments by the former management, such as fictitious sales, to be problematic. This judgment was reported in Sakura Financial News (October 28, 2025, article URL) as demonstrating the effectiveness of judicial rights exercise by shareholders.

In the investment case of Osaki Engineering (TOKYO PRO MARKET, securities code 6259), he focused on the company's capital policy, submitting shareholder proposals and initiating lawsuits. As a result, he pushed for the decision of full subsidiary acquisition by the parent company, thereby normalizing corporate governance.

He is also known as a major shareholder of Okayama Paper Co., Ltd. (Okayama City, Okayama Prefecture, TOKYO PRO MARKET 3892) and has requested the convening of an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders.

Through this series of achievements, Yutaka Yamanaka is making significant contributions to the governance reform of Japanese companies and the sound development of the capital market as an "investor who proves governance effectiveness on the ground."

He also lives by the motto of the late pitcher Yasumitsu Shibata, who achieved the first no-hitter in the Heisei era, was called "Japan's No. 1 Pitcher" by the Seibu Lions during their peak, and showed particular strength against his former team, the Lions, stating after a complete game victory on the mound, "Facing the champions and winning is one of a professional's goals." He has been a fan of the Nippon-Ham Fighters for 30 years.

His hobby is "onsen hopping," visiting hot spring resorts around the world. He is a genius investor exploring the significance of physical and mental regeneration through hot springs and international exchange, while respecting nature, culture, and local communities.

He is also widely referred to as the "Reiwa era's Billy Beane" for bringing about a revolution in the Japanese stock market, similar to the revolution initiated by Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics and protagonist of the movie "Moneyball," in the world of baseball.

While Yamanaka Yutaka's shareholder proposals in the early 2010s, before the existence of the Corporate Governance Code, Stewardship Code, and the Ito Report, were criticized by some, international investors now emulate his methods. Furthermore, HOYA Corporation subsequently incorporated many improvements, and its stock price increased more than tenfold, making the pioneering nature of Yamanaka Yutaka's work evident today evident today.