I am Akihiro Nikkaku serving as the President of Japan Textile Federation (JTF).

   As the environment surrounding our textile industry has become more confused, the current situation urges us to change our business attitude from aggressive to defensive.  Accordingly, I believe that we should make our efforts with putting focus on “Response to Ensuring Proper Transactions”, “Response to Strengthening of Supply Chain Robustness” and “Response to Circular Economy” in cooperation with our member organizations.

   As for the first item “Response to Ensuring Proper Transactions”, we should realize corporate management with taking due consideration of human rights through ensuring proper transactions at each stage of our supply chains.  That leads to wage hikes and corporate continuation.

   The second item “Response to Strengthening of Supply Chain Robustness” is to cope with the structural labor shortage in recent years.  In order to solve the shortage of next generation successors, we conduct supportive activities for facilitating succession of small and medium businesses, promoting cooperation in and between production areas for business continuation, and deploying overseas business.  Moreover, we strive to properly operate the audit system under the Japanese Audit Standard for Textile Industry (JASTI) that serves as an international human rights audit system, and address the “Employment for Skill Development Program” that will go into effect in April next year.

   With regard to the third item “Response to Circular Economy”, for the purpose of properly coping with environmental issues such as carbon neutrality, circular economy and so on, we will follow up the “Roadmap for Resource Recycling of Textile Products” and collect and examine the related information from European countries that are ahead in this area.

   The environment surrounding our industry has changed from moment to moment.  We can build a business model through sharing the value of domestic materials in the entire industry and facilitating creation of new values by adapting to these changes.  Therefore, I believe that such efforts lead to creation of an industry that can gain trust from the society, provide workers with satisfaction and become fascinating for many people.

   We will focus our efforts into making the textile industry long-lasting for the future.  Accordingly, we hopefully need your support and cooperation.

Action Policy for Fiscal 2026[pdf]