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The story
On November 2, GMO Internet Group held its first press conference since the unauthorized access incident came to light, with president Masatoshi Kumagai (63) apologizing for the leak of customer information and the resulting financial damage. The press conference included a moment where he appeared to tear up, and his remark — “I’ll stake my life on turning this industry into a tool for smiles” — drew particular attention. On 5ch’s Entertainment & Sports News+ board, reactions split hard between posters who said they “didn’t feel a shred of sincerity” in the press conference and others who defended it as “sincere.” Many also compared the moment to past infamous tearful press conferences — assemblyman Nonomura (known for his own viral meltdown press conference) and the president of Yamaichi Securities (remembered for the brokerage’s tearful 1997 collapse announcement) — making how to interpret the press conference itself the thread’s central debate.
Nov 2, 2026, 18:42
President Masatoshi Kumagai: “I’ll stake my life on turning this industry into a tool for smiles”
On November 2, GMO Internet Group held its first press conference in Tokyo since the unauthorized access incident occurred. President Masatoshi Kumagai (63) of the group attended and apologized for the leak of customer information and the resulting financial damage.
Source: zakzak.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
It's all for the customers' smiles
Amazing
And now, please enjoy
"Hourglass of Life"
Make a list of people who say stuff like that and sell it to tokuryu crews or ore-ore scammers (tokuryu = loosely organized anonymous crime gangs; ore-ore sagi = "it's me, it's me" phone scams targeting the elderly) — high hit rate, they'd be thrilled
Not for me
Just like an hourglass
Once the sand runs out, someone always comes along and turns it over again"
Maybe don't chew out your subordinates in the middle of a press conference though
Guess nobody around him gives him honest feedback, poor guy
but when a man cries in public it just always looks fake
Maria Tani and Nozomi Sasaki (another talent who appears in GMO's ads) are probably the biggest victims here
Kumagai's management failure has done lasting damage to their image as talents
Saw an account claiming to be an ex-GMO employee posting stuff like "the president's so cool after all" — reeked of a toxic workplace ("black company") trying to do damage control
Seems like there was no other way for him to get through it
I get that every so often some uneducated guy gets lucky and strikes it rich, but it always ends up like this in the end
There are idiots who went to school too, you know
That's the sensible take
Should just file him under "guy who's a pain to deal with" and leave it there
https://dol.ismcdn.jp/mwimgs/b/8/-/img_b861863c2950c7102810602112e45dfb343894.jpg
Background and Points of Debate
Following the unauthorized access incident, GMO held its first press conference on November 2, 2026, addressing the leak of customer information and the resulting financial damage. What got the thread talking was the tears shown by president Masatoshi Kumagai, but the specifics of the hacking method, the scope of the damage, and the circumstances around engineers reportedly having warned of the risk beforehand were not discussed in concrete detail in this particular thread. Opinion split over how to read the moment — whether the tears and the phrase “a tool for smiles” conveyed genuine sincerity, or looked like a performance to get through the situation — and notably, many commenters compared it to past “tearful press conferences,” such as those of assemblyman Nonomura and the Yamaichi Securities president. Rather than an assessment of the press conference’s actual substance, it’s the visual impact of the tears that spread first and is now being treated as a meme or buzzword candidate — something readers should keep separate from the actual question of whether GMO’s response to the damage was adequate.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Entertainment & Sports News+) thread “[Hourglass of Life] GMO President Masatoshi Kumagai’s “Tearful Press Conference” Divides Opinion — “A Textbook Bad Press Conference,” “I Feel His Sincerity,” Even Calls of “Buzzword of the Year Candidate” [Ailuropoda melanoleuca★].”
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