Mr. Minoru Inaoka Managing Director Administration and External Relations Division Ito-Yokado Co., Ltd.

Minoru Inaoka is Managing Director of Ito-Yokado Co., Ltd. which is one of the oldest chain-stores with the highest profitability in Japan since May, 2001.

As one of the 13 Managing Directors, he is responsible for corporate social responsibility, crisis management, safety management, legal matters, stock operation, and shareholders’ meetings of each of the companies within the Ito-Yokado Group. Furthermore, he is one of the Directors in charge of environmental issues and corporate ethics and his responsibility spreads across and above the Group companies.

Ito-Yokado Group operates its Ito-Yokado chain stores throughout Japan and in China, in addition to the 9,000 Seven-Eleven convenience stores in Japan. Ito-Yokado holds 72% of the shares of Seven-Eleven Inc.,(U.S.A.) and the responsibility to operate all the Seven-Eleven stores world-wide. The operation of Ito-Yokado extends further, into a number of superstores, department stores, and chain restaurants.

Before joining Ito-Yokado in May, 1984, he was active in the news media world. He worked for one of the leading national newspapers, the Mainichi Shimbun Co., Ltd., as a journalist in the Regional, City, Political Section. More specifically, he spent more than half of his carrier as a political reporter, which took him to rounds at the Prime Minister’s Residence, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Liberal Democratic Party Headquarters. He has, therefore, continuously watched structural changes within the Japanese society through his long-time observation of the process of Japanese policy-making, the transitions of the Japanese party politics, and changes in Japanese foreign policy.

He studied law and politics in the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo, graduating in 1969. He was born in August, 1945 in the western part of Japan, in Okayama Prefecture, where his parents’ ancestors had for many generations found their abode. He spent his boyhood days in a very quiet city of Takarazuka, in the suburbs of Osaka.

He is one of the co-authors of a book written on such topics as the “Lockheed Incident”, a Japanese political scandal, and corporate law.

His hobby is History of Art. He has special love for the history of old ceramics and jade of the East.