Key Answer: 90% of Social Problems Can Be Solved by Business (사회문제의 90%는 비즈니스로 해결할 수 있다) is a new Korean-language business book by Taguchi Kazunari (다구치 가즈나리), founder of the Japanese social-venture group Borderless Japan, published by MYSC (엠와이소셜컴퍼니) on August 1, 2026. It argues that poverty, food waste, refugee unemployment, and rural decline are not charity problems but design flaws in how business itself is built, and it lays out the "gratitude circulation" (은혜 순환) system that let Borderless Japan launch roughly 48 social businesses across 15 countries without taking a single yen of outside investment. No English edition has been announced as of this writing, and the English title used here is an unofficial working translation.
Why Does a Business Book Argue That Business Causes Social Problems?
The book opens with an uncomfortable claim: many of the social problems we now try to fix with charity and government subsidy were originally created, or at least worsened, by ordinary business logic. When a company optimizes purely for efficiency and profit, someone tends to get left behind — a farmer paid below cost, a refugee who cannot get hired, a rural town too small to be profitable to serve. Taguchi's response is not to reject capitalism but to "redesign" business itself, building companies whose founding purpose is solving a specific social problem rather than retrofitting charity onto an existing profit model.
What Is Borderless Japan, and What Has It Actually Built?
Borderless Japan is the group Taguchi founded at age 25 after a university trip exposed him to child malnutrition in a developing country. According to the book and its publisher's summary, the group now runs about 48 social businesses in 15 countries, covering problems as varied as fair-trade herbal tea sourcing in Myanmar, leather-goods training for artisans in Bangladesh, refugee employment, food-loss reduction, and revitalizing idle farmland in Japan. In fiscal 2025, the group reported combined revenue of roughly 10.5 billion yen (about 100 billion won, or roughly 75 million USD) — entirely without accepting outside investment capital, a detail the book returns to repeatedly as proof that a mission-first company does not have to stay small or unprofitable.
How Does the "Gratitude Circulation" System Actually Work?
The book's most concrete contribution for readers is its description of a repeatable internal system rather than a one-off success story. Under "gratitude circulation" (은혜 순환), any surplus profit a Borderless-affiliated company earns beyond what it needs for its own growth flows into a shared pool. That pool then funds new three-person founding teams with a grant of about 10 million yen (roughly 95 million won) to launch their own social business — no bank loan, no equity dilution, no personal guarantee required. The book also documents two structural rules meant to keep the group mission-driven as it scales: dividends to shareholders may never exceed the amount originally invested, and no executive's compensation can exceed seven times that of the lowest-paid employee at the company.
Who Is Taguchi Kazunari?
Taguchi Kazunari (다구치 가즈나리), born in 1980 in Fukuoka, Japan, left Waseda University as a sophomore to study at the University of Washington after watching footage of malnourished children in a developing country. He worked briefly at the company now known as the Misumi Group before founding Borderless Japan at 25. The book does not present his path as an unbroken success story: it includes a candid account of Corvet, a children's clothing brand under the group that shut down after accumulating roughly 300 million yen (about 2.8 billion won) in losses, which Taguchi uses as a teaching example for aspiring founders about when and how to end a failing venture responsibly.
How Does This Fit Into Korea's Own Social Enterprise Landscape?
For readers outside Japan and Korea, it helps to know why a Korean publisher picked up this particular Japanese business book. South Korea has run its own government-backed "certified social enterprise" (사회적기업 인증제도) system since 2007 through the Korea Social Enterprise Promotion Agency, alongside a large network of "preliminary social enterprises" (예비사회적기업) that receive early-stage government support before graduating to full certification. That system leans on public subsidy and certification bureaucracy. Borderless Japan's model is presented as an alternative: a privately funded, peer-to-peer capital pool built entirely from the group's own retained profit, with no government grant and no outside investor in the mix. Korean readers in the social-venture and impact-investing space — a scene that has grown quickly around Seoul in the past decade — are a natural audience for a book that offers a working, revenue-positive counter-model to the subsidy-dependent approach.
What Kind of Reader Is This Book For?
This is not a light inspirational read about "doing good while doing well." It is closer to an operating manual, built around the book's five-part structure: the system that keeps generating new social businesses, the origin story of how that system came to exist, a step-by-step method for designing a "social concept" before ever touching a business model, what actually determines success once a venture launches, and a closing case for why individual small actions still matter at scale. Readers who want spreadsheets and case-by-case tactics for identifying a genuine social problem, validating it through at least ten stakeholder interviews, and then building a business model around fixed constraints will get the most out of it.
Book Information
- Title (Korean): 사회문제의 90%는 비즈니스로 해결할 수 있다
- Title (English, unofficial): 90% of Social Problems Can Be Solved by Business
- Author: Taguchi Kazunari (다구치 가즈나리)
- Translator: Kim Hye-won (김혜원)
- Publisher: MYSC (엠와이소셜컴퍼니)
- Published: August 1, 2026
- Pages: 268
- ISBN13: 9791196788896
- English edition: Not confirmed as of this writing
Reading-Note Questions
- Which local problem in your own city gets ignored specifically because it is not profitable to solve?
- Could a "gratitude circulation" style pool work without a founder as personally mission-driven as Taguchi, or does the system depend on his individual culture-setting?
- Where is the line between a legitimate no-equity, no-loan growth model and a group simply large enough to self-fund without needing to prove itself to outside investors?
- How would South Korea's certified social enterprise system need to change to support something like this without government subsidy?
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Borderless Japan?
Borderless Japan is a Japan-based group of social businesses founded by Taguchi Kazunari in his mid-twenties. It now operates roughly 48 businesses in 15 countries addressing problems such as poverty, refugee employment, food loss, and rural decline, funded through a shared internal profit pool rather than outside investors.
Who is Taguchi Kazunari?
Taguchi Kazunari (다구치 가즈나리) is a Japanese social entrepreneur, born in 1980 in Fukuoka, who founded Borderless Japan at age 25 after being moved by footage of child malnutrition in a developing country during his university years.
Has this book been translated into English?
No English edition has been announced as of this writing. The English title used in this article is an unofficial working translation of the Korean title, made for search and reading convenience only.
What does "gratitude circulation" (은혜 순환) mean in this book?
It is Borderless Japan's internal funding system: surplus profit from established businesses in the group flows into a shared pool, which is then used to fund new founding teams without loans, equity investment, or personal guarantees.
Did Borderless Japan ever fail at anything?
Yes. The book discusses Corvet, a children's clothing business under the group that was shut down after accumulating around 300 million yen in losses, and uses it as a case study in disciplined venture termination.
Is this a memoir or a practical how-to book?
Both. Roughly half the book documents Borderless Japan's origin story and internal systems, while the other half is a step-by-step framework for designing a "social concept," validating it through stakeholder interviews, and building a business model around it.
Where can I find more information about the book?
The publisher's product page, including the table of contents and an author profile, is available on YES24, one of Korea's largest online bookstores.
Personal Thoughts
What stands out about this book compared to most "social impact" business writing is how unglamorous it is willing to be. There is no glossy call to "do good" as a branding exercise; instead there are yen figures for how much a failed clothing line cost, a rule capping executive pay at seven times the lowest salary, and a description of founders checking their bank balance daily while building a business from a blank sheet of paper. For a reader trying to evaluate whether "no external investment" is a genuinely repeatable model or a claim that only works once a group is already large enough to be its own bank, the book leaves that tension visible rather than resolved — which, honestly, feels more trustworthy than if it had claimed otherwise.
Final Note
90% of Social Problems Can Be Solved by Business is a useful read for anyone in Korea's growing social-venture and impact-investing scene who wants a concrete alternative model to government-subsidized social enterprise certification, even without an English edition yet. Full bibliographic details, the table of contents, and the publisher's own description are available on the original YES24 product listing linked below.
