As part of Kyoto 2.0, an international business gathering that brings together entrepreneurs and executives from around the world, Drifter’s CEO Taro Ishida was invited to deliver a lecture at Shimogamo Shrine, one of Japan’s most historically significant Shinto sites.
The Question Behind the Invitation
The central challenge behind the invitation was a deceptively simple one:
How can the idea of “beginner’s mind” be shared among participants with vastly different cultural, religious, and professional backgrounds?
Many attendees were entrepreneurs and business leaders from outside Japan, with varying degrees of familiarity with Japanese culture or spirituality.
The task was not to rely on specialized knowledge, but to convey Japanese aesthetics and values in a way that could be understood — and felt — without prior assumptions.
Gagaku as a Framework for Thinking
In the lecture, Ishida used Gagaku as a point of entry to explore how Japanese culture has historically understood its relationship with nature, time, and forces beyond human control.
Rather than presenting this as cultural explanation, these ideas were reframed as aspects of beginner’s mind:
a way of remaining open, attentive, and responsive in situations where complete understanding is impossible — a mindset equally relevant to leadership, decision-making, and building organizations.
The lecture ran for approximately 50 minutes and was followed by a live performance by the Heian Gagaku Association.
This allowed participants to experience, through sound, what had been discussed in words — turning abstract concepts into shared sensation.
The session was conducted with simultaneous interpretation, and the structure is adaptable for delivery directly in English.
Response and Ongoing Dialogue
The response from international participants was strong.
Many commented that they had encountered an entirely new form of aesthetics, and that the ideas presented could be applied to team-building, leadership, and decision-making.
Rather than ending with the lecture itself, the session naturally opened into further dialogue.
Participants expressed interest in continuing to explore these themes beyond a single event.
Following this lecture, Shimogamo Shrine has also approached Ishida regarding potential ongoing involvement in future concerts and cultural projects, and discussions are currently underway.
Designing Shared Experience Across Cultures
At Drifter, we do not aim to simply explain complex ideas.
Our focus is on designing spaces where people from different cultures and positions can share understanding at the level of experience.
This project demonstrates how thought, structure, and live performance can be integrated to create lecture experiences that resonate in global contexts — and highlights Ishida’s role as a rare speaker who can connect Japanese cultural foundations with contemporary international discourse.
