Spring, summer, autumn and winter and spring

This year China lost Jin Yong, the United States lost Stan Lee, and Japan lost Asari Keita. These masters, who gave spiritual comfort to the general public, departed one after another.

Keita Asari, founder of Four Seasons Theatre, Asia's largest musical theatre performance group, is both an artist and an entrepreneur. From 1953, when he was still in college, he founded a theater troupe and stood tall, accompanying the Japanese people through spring, summer, autumn, winter and spring.

The reason why I want to write about him is that when I read Wang Xiangqian's "The Miracle of Art and Management: Asari Keita and His Four Seasons Troupe", I was particularly impressed by one of his moves, and I felt that it would be better to have such a warm atmosphere in China's current business environment.

We know that in general, when the economy is sluggish, people's material needs will tighten, and spiritual and cultural needs will expand. When it is more difficult to buy a car or a house, people will turn to relatively cheap consumption. Cultural consumption can not only meet the spiritual needs, but also do not exceed people's ability to bear, it may become a large-scale demand. One Nobel laureate economist said he liked to live in a recessionary country because it took much longer to eat lunch and performed well in art and theater. The problem is that such a country is in a market that does not allow him to play his expertise.

According to the operating income data of cultural and related industry enterprises above designated size in the first three quarters of 2018 by the National Bureau of Statistics, China's cultural industry, represented by cultural enterprises above designated size, continued to grow at a rapid rate of 9.9%, leading the growth rate of GDP of 6.7%.

Speaking of Japan, in 2008, the price of consumer goods centered on crude oil rose, resulting in an overall increase in related prices. The burden of people's lives has increased dramatically, and it has even caused a huge panic in the economy. Just two weeks before the international financial crisis broke out, on September 1, 2008, Japan's Asahi Shimbun published a large full-page advertisement for the Four Seasons Theater Company's comprehensive reduction in ticket prices. The overall environment at that time was that many companies either reduced employee wages or raised product prices in order to cope with the crisis. Originally, cultural enterprises are counter-cyclical, and when the economy is sluggish, it will grow, and there is no need to worry about the source of customers, but Asato Keita said, "Reducing ticket prices is my wish for 10 years." This "wish" means that the Four Seasons Theater Company will reduce its revenue by 1 billion yen per year.

Asatoshi Keita said: As a company, there is a possibility of a deficit at any time. Deficits are not terrible, depending on why. For more than 40 years, the operation of the Four Seasons Theater Company has been very stable, and the profits have been quite savings. This reduction in ticket prices will lead to the loss of some profits, and there may even be a deficit, but the more such a period, the more we must put the interests of the audience first, which is the best choice for the way of doing business.

Is it like a fire in winter? I think that burning the fire in the winter is where the pattern of entrepreneurs lies. Burning the fire in winter can also warm everyone the most.

In fact, he also firmly believes that "as long as good goods are sold at conscientious prices, they will definitely attract a new customer base." Sure enough, the price cut reduced the box office revenue of the Four Seasons Theater Company by 15%, but the ticket sales rate increased by 5%. From the beginning, the four seasons troupe was not highly priced, and their pricing was based on 1/20 of the monthly salary of college graduates in the first year.

When everyone feels cold, someone has to warm people. The following year, Keita Asari won the "Economic Figure Award" sponsored by the famous Japanese publication "Economic Circles".

Watching the current situation of China's economy, in 6 months, 2.02 million job advertisements disappeared, and some media said that in 2018, perhaps the first decline in total employment in 58 years will be greeted. Such an environment really needs collective warmth. It is not to save the poor and the emergency, not to persuade donations, to let the rich do charity and perform social responsibilities, but the whole society naturally exudes a warm and righteous atmosphere to touch the hearts of the general public. Entrepreneurs like Keita Asahi can give the public a kind of support, more than a spiritual support.

In itself, shaping one's life into a constant temperature and indestructible social image is also a great cultivation.

Unlike the domestic showbiz circle, it is all a collapse of people. Now the news is who has cheated on it again, taken drugs again, evaded taxes and evaded taxes... Then the emotional person stirs up negative emotions, and the rational person is full of criticism and anger. But I always feel that something is missing, yes, less warmth, sunshine-like warmth, which is a necessary strength for wintering!

Another impressive trait of Asari Keita is that he is a believer in communism, and his inner philosophy is that everyone can enjoy the interests equally and realize communism. Asari Keitai joined the Japanese Communist Party at a young age and read through the Selected Works of Mao Zedong. Because of this, he was able to send drama to all corners of Japan. He knew that "the countryside surrounds the city" and knew that he wanted to "break the pattern of culture concentrated in one place in Tokyo and send the emotions of drama to the whole country."

He has the courage to break through the boat, but also has opportunities and luck. The Four Seasons Theater Company was founded in 1953 as a student at the French Literature Department at Keio University in Japan, leading ten university students. The first decade of the beginning was difficult. It wasn't until he was part-time as the manager of nichiren theater that he invited the Broadway musical "West End Story" to perform, which was the first time that a Broadway musical was staged in Japan, and it was a great success, which brought great shock to Asari Keita. In the same year, Hiroshi Nishi, the general manager of Japan Life (an insurance company giant) (a theater lover and popularizer), wanted to promote drama to children and let the Four Seasons Theater Company produce it. Beginning in the 1970s, the Four Seasons Theatre Company officially entered the era of musical theater performances. The real opportunity for the development of the Four Seasons Theater Company was in 1982 when Keita Asatoshi met the musical "Cat" in London, and he wanted to build a cat theater for a long-term performance, saying, "If it fails, the Four Seasons Theater Company will be dissolved, and I will sell my personal assets and distribute them to the members of the troupe." ”

The technical director of the Four Seasons Theater Company proposed that "if a tent theater is built, it can continue to perform for at least one year according to Japanese regulations", which makes long-term performances economically viable and other operational. On October 20, 1983, the Cat Theater was completed. On October 1, the show tickets for the show were pre-sold on November 11, and 35,000 tickets sold out in one day. In one year, "Cats" was performed 474 times in Shinjuku, Tokyo, with more than 481,000 audiences, which is a miracle in the history of Japanese theater performances.

1982 was the gateway to Japan's emergence as a mature society. In the same year, Disneyland opened and Nintendo consoles went on sale, and people's yearning for entertainment was stronger than ever. The Musical Theater Feast of the Four Seasons Theatre Company also came into being, and it has been out of control since "Cats". In 1986, Asari Keita introduced "Phantom of the Opera House", and for the first time, he rented a theater for a long time and performed for 6 months at the Nissei Theater. In 1998, Keita Asatoshi realized the indefinite long-term performance of "The Lion King". "The Lion King" only premiered on Broadway in 1997, and a year later, Asari introduced it to Japan and became an overseas premiere, and the speed was amazing.

He insisted on doing one thing well, and that was musicals. Musicals are always full of positive energy, preaching endless life, happiness, courage, dreams, love and hope, the joy and emotion of life. For example, the French musical "The Man Who Passed Through the Wall" sang at the end of the curtain with "Life is so wonderful!" Life is supreme". For example, the line in the children's drama, "No matter what era and what kind of encounter, don't forget to smile, I hope you can become a person with a rich heart." "Let's stare at each other, let's talk to each other, we're together, trying to live on". Everywhere shouted "Long live life"!

Drama reflects the antagonism between man and the power beyond man, and the role of drama is to clarify its roots, discover the value of life, and give people the courage to take on life. In addition, Asari Keita's attitude towards failure is also very positive, they have introduced more than a hundred musicals, of course, there are some unsuccessful. In the face of failure, he always felt that it was a holistic and meaningful work.

This troupe has accompanied the Japanese people for decades. Its box office revenue is one-sixth of the size of Japan's entire performance market, it is the most representative and richest troupe in Japan, and it is also the only troupe in Japan that implements a long-term performance system, and also performs regular regular performances, and is one of the few performance groups in the world that has two performance systems in parallel. The rise of the Four Seasons Troupe is known as the "Myth of the Four Seasons", and its secrets are three: first, the localization and long-term performance of musicals; second, national performances and corporate operations; and third, let the audience get the greatest touch. The Japanese government allocates 1.6 billion yen a year to support theater business, and the four seasons do not ask the state for a penny, and pay the state a corporate tax of 2 billion yen every year.

Japan is a relatively average society, which is reflected in the equalization of social education level, income equalization, and information sharing. Such social characteristics also allowed the Four Seasons Theater Company to form a national influence and realize Keita Asato's desire for theatrical equality. He is also good at working with people, and unrelated industries, based on understanding and consensus, which is known as "heterochromatic cooperation", and over the years, the Four Seasons Theater Company has cooperated with various large enterprises across borders.

The Four Seasons Theater Troupe is a good reflection of the Japanese national character, and the innate dedication and seriousness of the Japanese people are vividly exerted. They pioneered the "theater within a theater", and everywhere they went, they quickly dismantled all the equipment of the original theater, just like implanting a assembled theater into an empty "box". Going to the countryside, to remote places, this "caravan" tour, for the next show to use conveniently, each box has a clear label on it. The "Travel Performance Manual", one volume per play, details the area to be reached each year of the play, the address of the theater and the name and address of the hotel where the staff and the actors stay, and the content is specific to the route and time of the day, which was booked and carefully planned a year ago. When a new actor enters the crew, the costume department can quickly determine which of the existing costumes need to be redone and which can be slightly fine-tuned if the actor takes on the role, based on the data in the existing computer, and then calculate the cost of the actor's replacement. The props department also tries to buy cheap materials, handmade or solicited from the surroundings.

The Four Seasons Theater Company has a saying that describes the path of acting, called "it looks like heaven, but it is like hell". To be able to persevere requires strong inner strength. Of course, the young actors of the Four Seasons Theater Company earn much more than the average company employee. A combination of an artist and an entrepreneur who arranges everything properly.

There is a Japanese idiom "ichigo-ichie" (ichigo-ichie), which is derived from the tea ceremony. "One period" means "a lifetime", the whole sentence is to say that the host serves tea, the guests drink tea, the attitude should be cherished as if there is only one opportunity in a lifetime, and it is necessary to treat and receive it with absolute sincerity. Human life is so short, you don't know how many seasons you can live, in short, you live yourself as a stable "work" and cherish the only chance in this life.

Spring, summer, autumn and winter are spring, and wintering needs such warm atmosphere and energy people. If there is warmth in business, this warmth is more.