午夜剧场

When I was a student, I was passionate about theater and was a member of a theater company called Studio Life for a time. However, I found theater to be extremely difficult, both as an art form and as a way to make a living, so I switched to economics in my fourth year of university. For me, the appeal of economics lies in its highly structured and manipulable nature. I see this as the polar opposite of theater, which is inherently uncontrollable. My research themes involve the existence problem of value judgment criteria that satisfy certain ethical requirements and the design possibility problem of institutions that meet certain practical requirements, for which I use an analytical method called the axiomatic approach. This method uses elementary mathematics to rigorously formulate and logically analyze often-ambiguous topics concerning ethics and institutions within an economic model. While the research themes themselves are interesting, I am strongly drawn to the freedom of the axiomatic approach used to address them.

I am an expert in my own field, and within that field, I can find even a terrible paper to be somewhat interesting. This is like a true coffee lover being able to drink bad instant coffee, or an alcoholic drinking mirin. "Interestingness" is a matter of relationship; even if something is not well-made, you can surprisingly find it interesting if your ability to be interested is high. So, if you find something uninteresting, you should consider the possibility that it's not the fault of the thing itself, but rather a result of your own low ability to be interested. If that's the case, you might be able to change that relationship. The world is both your surroundings and your perception itself. I hope you find many things to be interesting.

(Interview conducted in December 2011)