Nobuo Ishibashi was born in 1921 in Yoshino District, Nara Prefecture, a village surrounded by mountains of more than 3,000 feet in height. As a youth, Nobuo was noted for his perseverance and never-say-die attitude. During World War II he was seriously wounded and later interned in a Siberian prison camp as a prisoner of war. After returning to Japan, he found that his home village and the surrounding hillsides had been devastated by the war as well as by a major typhoon. On seeing this, he resolved to build homes whose structural framework employed robust steel pipes rather than the traditional wooden beams and columns. This was the start of the "industrialization of construction" for which Daiwa House would later become famous. Mr. Ishibashi founded the Company in 1955, and spurred on by his determination to build the things that society really needed, he initiated one "revolution" after another. First, he took a major step toward revolutionizing construction methods with his concept of steel-frame structures. This was followed by a revolution in housing construction that would make owning one's own home more affordable for the average family. Finally, he hit upon the concept of putting a more truly fulfilling lifestyle within the grasp of the average person through his "lifestyle revolution," in the course of which Daiwa House expanded its operations into a diverse range of new fields. Nobuo Ishibashi passed away in 2003 at the age of 81. Throughout his life he preached his dream of contributing to the creation of a healthier and more fulfilling society, and at the Daiwa House Group today, we continue to maintain his dream at the core of our corporate raison d'être.