Japan Investor Interface began with my interest in Japanese small-cap companies.
I used to write about Japanese stocks on social media, and overseas investors who read my posts began contacting me. Some wanted to speak directly with the companies I was writing about. For smaller companies, particularly those with little or no analyst coverage, arranging those conversations was not always easy.
So I started contacting companies, arranging meetings and interpreting them.
I still remember my first meeting with an overseas investor. I was nervous, trying to catch every word and get the numbers right. Even converting Japanese financial figures into billions of yen took concentration.
As I interpreted more meetings, I became more comfortable with the language of investor relations. I also began to understand what investors were trying to work out from their questions. They would ask about segment margins, product sales, prices or volumes because they were trying to understand where the business was heading and form their own expectations for earnings.
That understanding made it easier to follow the conversation. I became more familiar with why an investor would follow up on a particular answer, or return to the same subject from a different angle.
As more investors approached me, this gradually became a business, and I founded Japan Investor Interface in 2023.
I have now interpreted more than 300 meetings with overseas investors. JII also translates earnings calls, IR materials and corporate disclosures into English. Both parts of the work have the same purpose: helping information pass clearly between Japanese companies and overseas investors.
For me, an interpreter's role is not to add judgment to the conversation. My job is to understand what each person means and convey it accurately.
I learned the importance of this through a mistake. In one meeting, an investor had become frustrated with the company's answers, and I allowed some of that frustration to come through in my own voice. The management team noticed.
Since then, I have been careful to keep my own tone out of the discussion. Even when a meeting becomes tense, I try to convey the question fully without adding my own emotion. Both sides need to trust that I am representing what they say fairly.
Today, JII arranges and interprets meetings between Japanese companies and overseas investors and provides English-language translation of IR materials and corporate disclosures.
The aim is simple: to make it easier for investors to ask the questions they want answered, and for Japanese companies to explain their businesses clearly.
A good meeting should leave both sides understanding each other better than they did before.
Teddy Okuyama
Representative Director
Japan Investor Interface Co., Ltd.