Institute / Research Cases / QS-RC-006
Hiroshi Mikitani
The destiny of Hiroshi Mikitani is built so that everything from the founding of Rakuten to the national championship fits within a twenty-year blank in the flow of fortune, and the mobile gamble is placed after it closes. The founder of Rakuten. We read his destiny and the phases of his time against the corporate history from the founding to the mobile business, and the course of published net income.
At a Glance
The case
- Subject
- Hiroshi Mikitani (三木谷浩史) — Founder of Rakuten
- Period analysed
- 1965–2026
- Three pillars
- Day 甲子 / Month 己卯 / Year 乙巳
- Void branches
- 戌亥 (Dog–Boar)
- Void decades
- The twenty years 1997–2017
- The company (incorporated 7 Feb 1997)
- Day 庚辰 · void branches 申酉 (Monkey–Rooster)
- Destiny area
- 1.16 The area of the triangle formed by the three pillars on the sixty-cycle circle (maximum 1.30)
- Format
- PDF, 11 pages — written in Japanese
- Price
- ¥50,000 including tax
Research Brief
What the case shows
- From the launch of Rakuten Ichiba in May 1997 through the listing, the entry into professional baseball, the national championship and the move into MVNO, everything lies within the twenty-year void (1997–2017).
- The first void years after the twenty-year void closed are 2018 and 2019 (戊戌 and 己亥), and the MNO service began in October 2019.
- The company's void (申酉) and the founder's void (戌亥) sit side by side, coming round alternately in sets of four years.
Questions
The questions the report answers
- How does the way the twenty-year void was spent show itself after it closes?
- How do the three pillars of the founder and of the company intersect?
- Where on the timeline does the next four-year set (2028–2031) sit?
Public Record
The record, year by year
Selected events from the public record. Analysis and judgement are given in the report itself.
| 1965 | 乙巳 | 11 Mar — Born in Kobe, Hyogo |
| 1988 | 戊辰 | Graduates from the Faculty of Commerce, Hitotsubashi University, and joins the Industrial Bank of Japan |
| 1993 | 癸酉 | Earns an MBA from Harvard University |
| 1995 | 甲戌 (天) | Jan — His home city of Kobe is struck by the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake |
| 1995 | 乙亥 (天) | Nov — Leaves the Industrial Bank of Japan and founds the Crimson Group |
| 1997 | 丁丑 | 7 Feb — MDM, Inc. is incorporated. 1 May — Rakuten Ichiba opens with 13 shops |
| 2000 | 庚辰 (天) | 19 Apr — Lists on the over-the-counter market (JASDAQ) |
| 2004 | 甲申 (天) | 2 Nov — Entry of the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles is approved |
| 2005 | 乙酉 (天) | 13 Oct — Acquires 15.46% of TBS shares and proposes a business integration |
| 2007 | 丁亥 (天天) | Aug — Makes Fusion Communications a subsidiary |
| 2012 | 壬辰 (天) | 4 Oct — Launches Rakuten Broadband LTE, a consumer mobile service |
| 2013 | 癸巳 (天) | 3 Nov — The Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles win the Japan Series. 3 Dec — Moves to the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange |
| 2014 | 甲午 (天) | 29 Oct — Launches service under the Rakuten Mobile brand |
| 2017 | 丁酉 | 14 Dec — The board resolves to enter the mobile network operator (MNO) business |
| 2019 | 己亥 (天) | 1 Oct — Rakuten Mobile launches its MNO service |
| 2021 | 辛丑 | 1 Apr — Changes its name to Rakuten Group, Inc. |
| 2023 | 癸卯 | 21 Apr — Rakuten Bank lists on the TSE Prime Market |
| 2026 | 丙午 | 10 Aug — Second-quarter results show a quarterly profit of ¥7.7 billion, the first quarterly profit since 2020 |
Year pillars change at Risshun, in early February. (天) = void year or void decade.
Contents
14 pages
- Destiny profile and chart
- Yin and yang charts
- Void and the timeline
- Ten-year phases
- Timeline chart
- Public record
- The lineage of the mobile business
- Checking the answer
- The individual and the company
- Windows that come in turn
- Conclusion
Purchase
Order this Research Case
¥50,000incl. tax · PDF · Japanese
Email the case number QS-RC-006. We reply with an invoice; the PDF follows once payment is confirmed.
Analysis supervised by FAITH (Makoto Tokunaga) — MSc Economics, University of Warwick · CICP · Shugakuin Saii