●Where are you from? Please tell us about your childhood.
I was born in Hitachi City, Ibaraki Prefecture. My family had been running a hotel for generations, and the top floor of the hotel was my parents’ house. So, when I woke up in the morning and went down to the lobby with my school bag, everyone greeted me with “Good morning, Kanako!”.

●Have your parents always been in the hotel business?
It all started with my great-grandmother and I’m now the fourth generation working in the hotel business! Many office workers would come to the hotel for dinner or for meetings and they would often yell out to me “Hey! Fourth generation!”

●What about your time at school?
I was interested in what others wanted from me, so before I knew it, I was in the center of the class circle and was nicknamed “Captain” (laughs). I was more comfortable being a mediator for everyone rather than being myself.

●After graduating high school, did you go to university to study hotel management?
I couldn’t find a university where I could study hotel management professionally, so I decided to study at a vocational school called “Nihon Hotel School” in Nakano, Tokyo.

●What was your life in Tokyo?
I would study from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and then go straight to the hotel to work from 6:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. without a break. And then I would go home to my 40-year-old lodging apartment. In my second year, I joined the school’s study abroad program and decided to study in Melbourne, Australia for a year.

●Was it your first time abroad?
When I was in high school, I went to Oklahoma for a month. It was a homestay program awarded to the top 14 students and I just barely made the cut. That experience was a highlight of my life.

●What happened?
Maybe it was because I was the least academic amongst the 14 students, but I ended up living with a family that was clearly from a different background than the other 13 host families. The house was in the middle of nowhere, in the complete wilderness; so I had little contact with friends.

●What was life like for you there?
I called the family member closest in age to me “Sister” and we got to live together. I remember feeling firsthand that the world through her eyes was completely different from that of the other host families and that was eye-opening for me.

●How did you feel about your experience?
It was hard to be separated from my friends and I often thought ‘why only me?’. Before I returned to Japan, my host-sister and I had a fight. I think I attacked her as I was feeling so lonely being the only one living away from the other students in my group, so it was hard for me.

●It must have been a sensitive time for you. Do you think it made you scared to go abroad again?
No, I began to think that I needed to go abroad again to grow from the experience.

●So you decided to go to Melbourne?
Yes. I was there as a homestay student and did work experience at the Marriott Hotel (*1) while attending school.

※1 Luxury hotel in Melbourne’s central theater district

●How was it, compared to your parents’ hotel?
Before the Marriott Hotel, I worked part-time at a high-end hotel in Japan, where the manager gave me a hard time and the chef threw potatoes at me. But that was the norm back then. It was totally different from the image I had of hotels when I came to Tokyo, and I felt sad to think that I might hate hotels.

●Did you get a job at a hotel after that?
I felt that I had done my bit at the hotel, so I went to work at a ryokan (a traditional Japanese inn). In a large hotel, you’re limited by what you can do because everything is compartmentalized. From the doorman who welcomes guests to the bellboy, from the front desk staff to the restaurant staff… it’s like a short-distance relay run, constantly passing the baton to your teammates. The teamwork was fun, but at the time I didn’t really feel a sense of accomplishment or satisfaction from making the guests happy.

●In what ways are ryokans different from hotels?
Ryokans are more like a long-distance run; the attendant is in charge of everything from check-in through to check-out. I had been working in hotels for a long time, but I had always dreamed of becoming the owner of a ryokan, so I decided to go for it. It was a luxury ryokan in Izu and cost about 100,000 yen per night. It was your typical ryokan, spread out horizontally across several buildings and connected to one main building.

●Did you feel comfortable working in the inn despite the busy schedule?
I did, but I still quit after a year and a half….. I originally joined the company because I wanted to, but in my second month, the company was sold and there was an announcement that the president would be changing the next day. The managers all admired the previous president and so, began to leave, one after another. At that time, I had only been with the company for less than three months. So I felt left behind and was given more and more responsibility in the company.

●It sounds like you were really unlucky!
To increase profits under the new system, I had to do a lot of media appearances, and the phone would not stop ringing. I would wake up at 5:00 a.m., put on a kimono, and run around the whole day attending to things, only to come back home around 2:00 a.m., wake up at 5:00 a.m., and do the whole thing all over again. I was getting less and less sleep, and one day I fell asleep at the wheel. It was a good thing I stopped just short of the cliff, but I decided to change my life after that. My parents told me that they were worried about me and that I should come home. I decided to return to Ibaraki. The family business was also in a bit of trouble after the Great East Japan Earthquake, so it was a good time to go back.

●Life is difficult sometimes… Did you live in your parents’ house after you came back?
There were people who had to flee just hours after the earthquake, the Self-Defense Forces told us that we couldn’t stay here any longer. I spent a few months in my family’s hotel with the evacuees, who had left everything behind to come and live with us. I thought a lot about the future during that time.

●Did that time make you feel anxious about your career path and working in hotels?
I thought many times that I would never work in a hotel again. Once I began to put some distance between myself and hotels, I began to think that I would like to work abroad again, to meet new people to improve my English skills.

●So, you went abroad again?
Yes, I did. After meeting a woman who runs an NPO, I became interested in developing countries and decided to travel to Cambodia in 2014. Due to the sad history of Cambodia, there is very little study of art or music. The history of Pol Pot and the slaughter of intellectuals had a long-lasting effect. I think art is absolutely necessary to study in order to transmit the culture of a country.

●What exactly was the structure of your work?
We were holding a design contest for Cambodian women. If a company found a design that they liked, they would use it as a commercial design, and a portion of the profits generated would be returned directly to the women. My role was to incorporate part of this initiative and turn it into a profitable business.

●Who was it that you went with to Cambodia?
I went with a woman who had won a prize in a social business contest organized by Muhammad Yunus (*2). Mr. Yunus advised her to create and commercialize a business separate from NPOs, and so she invited me to help her with her venture.

※2 Muhammad Yunus
Bangladeshi economist. He founded the Grameen Bank and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

●You were very active with your work!
Initially, we tried to develop and sell products with Cambodian women’s designs at the forefront, but it didn’t really meet the local needs and so it failed. Instead of focusing on design, we turned our attention to the various food items and handicrafts that exist in Cambodia. We rebranded them with the help of the locals and figured out different ways to curate and sell them. The sales increased tenfold, and over the next five years, we opened four new stores.

●And the discomfort you once felt in the U.S. and being abroad, did that slowly start to disappear?
That’s right! That story was something I kept in my heart, but the experience of the host-sister in America and the new experience of working with the Cambodian people overlapped, and this time I was determined to make it work. I wanted to be proud of my identity as something I was born with, and I lived in Cambodia as if I were just like one of them, like a local. When I finally felt that, it was like I had been rewarded.

●What was it that finally made you feel like you had completed that goal?
I felt that these women were able to regain their pride in their country, and I saw that the number of women who felt this way was increasing. I felt that I had accomplished a lot by developing human resources, creating jobs, and most importantly, creating a culture. Once I had done that, I decided to move back home.

●And you slowly started thinking about hotels again?
Having worked as a producer for five years in Cambodia, I began to think that I could be involved in hotels again, but I wanted to approach it from a different angle. Not only working on the frontline but looking at other ways to work in the industry.

●Is there anything from your experience in Cambodia that you felt you could carry over to hotels?
I believe that the people and climate of a country or a city create a unique place to stay. I was interested in creating a place based on the individuality of a place, rather than standing on the stage of an already established hotel> That’s when I met Mr. Oka from InSitu (*3) and he connected me with K5. I began working as a project manager preparing the hotel prior to its opening.

※3 InSitu
Based in Tokyo and Singapore, the InSitu team take an integrated approach; planning, developing, and operating hotels internationally. In Japan, the team is in charge of the planning, development, and operation of K5 in Nihonbashi Kabutocho and SOIL SETODA in Setoda, Onomichi.

●I think that a hotel guest’s needs differ over time. Is there anything, at this moment in our lives, that you want them to experience at K5?
I feel that there is a flat relationship between guests and staff and that both parties work together alongside the city. K5 is not trying to be a luxury service where we cater to guest’s every demand, but rather I want to create a situation where the city and the hotel, and the hotel and the city, respond to each other. We also want our staff to be energetic, and for them to be happy, and if we can achieve that, our guests in turn will also be happy.

●It’s kind of similar to the image you had of hotels when you were a kid carrying your school bag around the hotel.
True! Although I have often wondered about the meaning and significance of “taking over,” a business. I have come to believe that the roots of my family lie in the fact that we do not simply inherit the boxes and the business that exist in one place, but rather we provide the town with a service that is needed. Perhaps my habit of being the ‘mediator’ has not changed that much at all.

●No matter where you go, if the situation is the same it just feels boring.
I don’t want people to feel like they receive this cookie-cutter-style service. I want them to feel that what they experience here, they can’t experience anywhere else. I want to create a new hotel experience here in Kabuto-cho that goes beyond “staying overnight,” and I think that’s very important.

● I think that’s also an important stance to take in response to Corona.
We’re in a situation where there are no more foreign visitors and there’s a shrinking population in Japan. It would be pretty silly to say that the box must be a hotel. If the function of the hotel is to fulfill the needs of the city, then it should respond to those needs. To create a city is to create a culture that is not visible to the eye, and I would be happy if hotels were an element of that culture.

●Culture is something that belongs to everyone and also belongs to no one.
Culture is linked to a place, so we need to think about how we capture the invisible distances whilst still providing services for all generations. We need to think about how we pass the culture onwards and how to balance this act carefully.

●What do you enjoy most about working at K5?
That moment a member of my team says something with substance to a guest and that guest is moved by those words, I feel my spirits get lifted. We are building this city together and moments like these shine a spotlight on each guest and each team member and it makes the hotel itself shine brightly. When those things happen, it makes me feel like a stage director.

●What do you expect to happen with hotels in the future?
I would like to encourage people to look at the new possibilities of hotels, to think of working in a hotel as a way to create a city. I want to create the best team possible, so that my talented colleagues who left the field will be inspired to come back and join us. A hotel is a fun place to be.