Kazuaki Miyamoto

Executive Vice President and Representative Director

Born in Matsuyama City, Ehime Prefecture in 1973. He was born to a mother who owned a women’s clothing store and a father who was an expert in the computer/communication network field, which was still rare at the time. Because both parents were working, he grew up as a grandmother’s child. She was brought up by her grandmother, who took her on pilgrimages to 88 temples in Shikoku, and at the age of 3, she began to recite the Heart Sutra. Around the same time, he had a long dream from the age of three to his old age. When he woke up from the dream, he realized that he was only 3 years old.

After hearing at a well-wisher’s meeting among grandmothers that the junior high school in his school district was rough, he began to say he wanted to go to another junior high school, and started attending the school from the fifth grade. He entered Aiko Gakuen, a local integrated junior and senior high school.

During his junior high school years, he obtained his own word processor machine (NEC Bungo mini7) and spent his free time working on his word processor. In high school, his father taught him that he could communicate by connecting his word processor machine to a modem, and he became addicted to “PC communication. This led him to interact with adults in the community, and he also did volunteer work such as making Braille maps of the local shopping district.

In 1992, he entered the University of Tokyo’s first class of science. He had been interested in writing since before he took the entrance examination, and in his junior year he switched to the Department of Language and Culture (Japanese Literature) in the Faculty of Letters. He also wanted to try his hand at writing screenplays, so he joined a student theater troupe. He was so enthusiastic that he stayed in school for one year. However, he still did not have enough credits after one year, and his family stopped sending him money when he decided to stay on for a second year.

In 1997, when he was looking for his first part-time job to make ends meet, he found a flyer in the computer room of his university looking for a part-time computer tutor for “Group Horizon,” the predecessor of HENNGE. He met the members of Horizon. He began to hang out in the apartment that also served as the office, and found it interesting to discuss the possibilities of the Internet with Ogura and the other members, so he joined Horizon while still in school. When the company became a joint-stock corporation that same year, he was appointed as Representative Director and Vice President.

After joining the company, he was in charge of creating software interfaces, armed with the knowledge of user interface (UI) he gained at the picture book school he attended while in college. He was responsible for taking the rugged technology brought in by engineers and incorporating it into software that was actually “usable. Later, he worked in the business division of an e-mail delivery system and the customer success division.

For better or worse, he is not very good at getting angry at subordinates, and has never been angry at a subordinate in his entire life.