Originally published on April 17, 2018.
This chapter discusses the shrewd business strategy behind Masayoshi Son’s anti-nuclear and renewable-energy advocacy, focusing on the reality that solar panels were procured not from Japanese firms but from South Korean companies.
It critically portrays how, even under the banner of post-disaster reconstruction, the benefits did not return to domestic industry and instead flowed to Korean-affiliated companies.

2019-04-16
As my readers know, at the time I predicted that Son would never buy solar panels from Japanese companies, and that he would buy them from China or South Korea.
Here again, my prediction proved to be 100 percent correct.

This is a chapter I published on 2018-04-17 under the title:
“At the time, I predicted that Son would never buy solar panels from Japanese companies, but would buy them from China or South Korea.”
What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Behind these seemingly contradictory remarks, one can discern Mr. Son’s shrewd business strategy.
In the same article, Kazuki Fujisawa, a financial trader who discusses energy issues online and has many followers, pointed out:
“SoftBank has begun moving its data servers, which consume enormous amounts of electricity, to South Korea, and from that one can see Mr. Son’s true aim.”
“By shutting down nuclear power, electricity prices in Japan will rise sharply.
Mr. Son is pressing Prime Minister Kan to promote a bill for the full purchase of solar-generated electricity, thereby trying to raise electricity prices even further.
And then he shifts his own facilities to South Korea, where electricity is cheap.
He buys electricity cheaply in South Korea, while securing subsidies for natural energy in Japan.
It is a very clever way of doing things.”
The solar power business and South Korean companies.
In developing its solar power business, SoftBank purchased large quantities of solar panels from South Korea.
Hanwha SolarOne, which handles the solar cell business of the South Korean conglomerate Hanwha Group, announced on the 3rd that it had been selected by SB Energy, SoftBank’s natural-energy business company, as a supplier of solar cell modules.
It was to supply 5,600 kilowatts’ worth of solar cell modules to two solar power plants that SB Energy was constructing in Tokushima Prefecture.
SB Energy planned to complete by July two power stations, each with an output of 2,800 kilowatts, at the Tokushima Airport waterfront site and the Akaishi district of Komatsushima Port.
If this was truly about post-disaster reconstruction, then it should have purchased from domestic companies.
If, after all, the beneficiaries of reconstruction projects are South Korean companies, then the positive effect on the domestic market is reduced.
Yet not only in the solar power business developed by SoftBank, but in the promotion of the natural-energy business more broadly, the result was to bring benefits to Korean-affiliated companies.
The electricity purchase price, which at the time was described as exceptionally high even by global standards, had the effect of encouraging Korean-affiliated companies to enter the solar power business.
As my readers know, at the time I predicted that Son would never buy solar panels from Japanese companies, and that he would buy them from China or South Korea.
Here again, my prediction proved to be 100 percent correct.
To be continued.