Mike Thorpe (1992 Daiwa Scholar)

The Effect of A Daiwa Scholarship

I joined the Daiwa Scholarship program as part of the second year of Daiwa Scholars in 1982 having spent the previous 4 years as a design engineer at Nissan in the UK. After finishing the Daiwa Scholarship I decided to stay in Japan and I am still here today.

After graduating from the language school I joined Alcoa, a US aluminium company, in Tokyo as a business development manager. For the next 5 years I helped to develop a variety of businesses for that company by working with Alcoa’s Japanese partner Kobe Steel as well as through activities that Alcoa carried out independently of our partner.

2 years ago I joined Nihon Parametric Technology KK, a US software company providing products to manufacturing industries as a Mechanical CAD Products Manager. Since I joined I have been part of a team that shows Japanese customers how they can benefit from using NPT’s products.

Being lucky enough to be awarded a Daiwa Scholarship has definitely significantly helped me in being able to carry out these jobs. The ability to not only speak in Japanese but also to be comfortable enough to be able to hold meetings in the language helps me every day to manage others and deal with customers. It opens doors that otherwise remain closed for those foreigners who are sent to Japan as ex-pats. Given the nature of Japanese society this has allowed me to interact in a much more meaningful way with the people around me and although I am never likely to be regarded as Japanese, my acceptance by my colleagues is a very large plus I think.

What Daiwa has been kind enough to give me was the key to unlocking all these experiences, i.e. the resources to allow you to learn a language that is otherwise too difficult to learn for others who do not have the time or the financial resources available.

It is a hugely significant gift.

Being immersed in a foreign culture for so long also can provide many mind broadening experiences. I have had the opportunity to meet many, many Japanese as well as travel throughout Japan and Asia with my work. Perhaps more unusually, I have also been able to switch career paths. I started out my career as an engineer but am now working in a Technical Marketing department, responsible for looking at manufacturing companies processes and how the introduction of our software products can help them in their daily business – a role which is more of a marketing/ business role than an engineering one. The opportunity to be able to switch career paths was definitely largely helped by the fact that I could differentiate myself from other candidates as a Japanese speaker.

Living in Japan undoubtedly broadens the mind also in that you are constantly exposed to a variety of nationalities. The World can appear to be a very small place when viewed from Japan - partly given the great curiosity that the locals have for the way people from other countries live and work.

The Japanese language is undoubtedly a hard language to learn and a significant amount of time and effort (in short, commitment) is required to be able to get any satisfaction from having learned it. However, having once done this, it seems clear to me that this is really an incredible door-opener. This leads to all sorts of job opportunities that would otherwise not be available simply through your ability to be able to communicate with any type of customer (albeit somewhat imperfectly sometimes!)

In setting up their foundation, Daiwa has allowed people like myself to live lives that would have been impossible to do otherwise. The opportunities that are open to you as a result of learning another language, are only limited by your own creativity. Learning another European language (assuming you are from the West) may not be easy but it is practical to learn by yourself. To this day I do not believe that, for most people, it is possible to learn an Asian language to the extent that they can work and truly live in it.

It is this barrier that Daiwa has very kindly broken down for me. After that, the real, longer term benefits of what a scholarship can give you are only limited by you!

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