Takafumi Horie, an ex-Livedoor CEO who is in Jail since June 9 this year in violation of the Securities and Exchange Law, aka Horienmon, was announced to start a new manga series on fortnightly mahjong (wikipedia) comic magazine Kindai Mahjong [J].

There are two mahjong-only comic magazines in Japan. People playing mahjong is decreasing, but that shows how it is still popular.

The December 1st issue forenotice above features this new series "Horie Senki K24S Episode1"(Horie's War K24S) with most of its space. The ad has phrases like "The biggest impact on this year!!!!", "New Series from jail now (-now is a popular Twitter jargon in Japanese)", "In year 1991, Horiemon first got on mahjong when he moved up to Tokyo", etc.

So this comic will be a story which young Horie, who entered the nation's top university, The University of Tokyo, plays mahjong. Besides his many business essay books, he already wrote two novels, which are fiction but strongly models him and around.

After he left the company, the Livedoor was broken into a stock-holding company Livedoor Holdings, which was already disbanded, and the portal company Livedoor is going to be merged into NHN Japan next January.

He still keeps influences to many people by Twitter(@takapon_jp [J])( and a paid newsletter, both are updated via his agents.

See Also:

ex-Livedoor CEO Takafumi Horie’s Last Nude! Before Imprisonment

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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NHN Japan and its subsidiaries Naver Japan and Livedoor announced [J] today that it would merge three companies into one, new NHN Japan on January 1, 2012.

According to ComScore, the whole NHN Japan group is getting 43.08 million unique users' visit monthly. The group has been enhancing its smartphone support, and the total number of applications download reached 17 million times.

Korea-originated NHN Japan bought Livedoor by $67 million in April 2010, is expected to generate multiplier effect. As we reported last month, the three companies planned to move their office to a newly constructed office building Shibuya Hikarie in Shibuya, Tokyo.

Social game network Hangame business will be managed by Game Division, led by the CEO Akira Morikawa. The head of Web Service Division, which will handle current Naver Japan and Livedoor portals, will be Takeshi Idezawa, the current Livedoor president. Livedoor's data center business will be remained to Livedoor, which will be renamed with "Data Hotel K.K."

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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Takafumi Horie, ex-Livedoor CEO, who had challenged several Japanese traditional companies and thought as one of Japanese IT-industry icon, who recently got rejected his appeal of innocent by supreme court, unveiled on his personal blog that the day of imprisonment is today, around 13:00 June 20, 2011 [J]. He is planned to be in jail over 2 years.

As he bespoke, he is broadcasting his today's activities from his home to jail "as far as possible" on his Horiemon Channel from 11:30 on a popular video stream service Nico Nico Namahousou(=live).

It is only available for the channel's paid member, who pays 1,000 yen per month.

On the blog notice, he revealed that he will keep his paid newsletter, which is subscribed over 10,000 people, twitter and blog via his staff, magazine and book writing and his rocket company management in jail.

[Update]

There are two channels provided, one is for paid member with closer cam and the other is for free, which is similar as other TV news reports.

Horie appeared with 2-channel founder Hiroyuki Nishimura. He wore this T-shirt which protest how his size of "fraud" is smaller than other Japanese companies similar cases, which did not cause any imprisonment.

He also sported his new hairstyle, Mohawk cut.

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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The Japanese business world lit abuzz yesterday as it was announced that the former head Livedoor, Takafumi Horie, had his appeal rejected by the Japanese Supreme Court, thereby finalizing his conviction for accounting fraud issued 4 years ago. Takafumi Horie, or Horiemon as he is popularly known for his resemblance to the manga character Doraemon, was involved in a securities fraud and money laundering investigation in 2006 that sent Livedoor stock into an unprecedented tailspin. He was later arrested by Tokyo public prosecutors, for falsely reporting 5 billion yen ($43 million) in pre-tax income in 2004 to hide real losses of 310 million yen. When four Livedoor executives admitted guilt and became prosecution witnesses, the case centered around the extent to which Horiemon was complicit with the executives as well as his awareness of the accounting fraud that was taking place. In 2007 he was handed his 2.5 year prison sentence for "overseeing a network of decoy investment funds established for the purpose of evading the law" and to "manipulate Livedoor's accounting" but was later released on a 300 million yen bail.

As opposed to many public Japanese business scandals, usually involving the tearful admittance of guilt by executives, Horiemon retained his innocence throughout the prosecution. Further, the Horiemon drama is of immense interest to the public. Horiemon became known for his unconventional entrepreneurship and vocal criticisms of the Japanese business environment and system as he rose to fame in 2004-2005. He has gained respect and the following of many younger Japanese people who could relate to his different style of business.

Since his bail in 2007, Horiemon has maintained a very high public profile not only through his incredible social media following but by authoring his new book "Horiemon's Cosmology", which was just recently published, as well as his popular Ameblo blog. After his appeal was rejected, Horiemon tweeted "Rejected...." to his 694,000 Twitter followers he had gained over the past years. It was no wonder that when his prison fate had been publicly announced, trending topics related to Horiemon topped Japan's recently added trending lists.

It can be expected Horiemon will remain a point of immense public fascination who despite his conviction still remains one of the few symbols of rebellion against a stagnant, stringent business culture.

Tags: Japan, News by Dominic K. Gallello
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Japanese sports newspaper Nikkan Sports reported [J] on December 4th, Saturday morning that Tokyo Yakult Swallows, one of 12 professional baseball team in Japan's top league Nippon Professional Baseball(NPB), is planning to sell itself to web service company CyberAgent (Asiajin), which runs Ameba blog, Pigu(Japan)/Pico(US), etc.

Yakult, a beverage company who owns and has been managing the Swallows for 41 years, issued a denial statement [J] that they do not think sell-out with any companies on the same day. CyberAgent CEO Susumu Fujita also denied by saying "There were no contact from Yakult, so we never planned.", also telling "We must admit that our current annual operating profits, around 10 billion yen, is too small to have a NPB baseball team. It is too early." with showing interest to the idea itself.

Fujita himself posted a photo of the Nikkan Sports reporting the rumor over TwitterTwitter.

No other mainstream media followed this Nikkan Sport's "scoop", so both saying there were no talk is likely to be truth.

How much having baseball team means in Japan

Historically, 12 owner seats of NPB are thought as one of the most effective promotion method for Japanese companies. In NPB, different from U.S. major league and many other professional sports leagues like football, basketball, hockey, teams can have company or brand name, such like Yakult Swallows. And that name are used everywhere when baseball game results are reported, on newspaper and TV. Even on public broadcasting NHK, who strictly avoid to tell companies name in their programs, call the team names (= company names) every day on each news. FYI, Japan Football Association, which formed professional league later, learned from West so the soccer teams are not allowed to have company names. As baseball is the most popular sports, having a team has massive publicity power. Imagine if St. Louis Cardinals were called Budweiser Cardinals, how could that have changed the sports and advertising business?

Owners of the teams have been changing, reflects each era's major industry, as keeping a team requires a lot of money and huge demand on publicity to all Japanese. After the war, majority of the owner companies were railway companies and newspaper companies. Later in 60's-70's, more food companies bought teams. Around 90's, a leasing company and a super market chain store joined.

It is in 2005 when some IT companies got on the bandwagon. Softbank purchased Hawks. Rakuten and Livedoor competed, Rakuten won and owned Golden Eagles. Those stories were reported also in English at that time. (Business Week) I could say that it really spread Rakuten's name to the people who do not use the web much.

Although this Nikkan Sports' overeager "schoop" is not supposed to be true by many readers, and it seems there were no deep discussion Yakult and CyberAgent, it is unknown that there was not a speck of talk, nor attempt to contact from either side.

CyberAgent is fairly big among Japanese web companies (see Netindex ranking to see their market value, it is bigger than Mixi). If web/software companies will lead the baseball owner business in near future, like 1/3 teams were owned by railway companies in 1950's, they are one possible player.

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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