You might remember this article after having seen the recent
Nintendo Indie World video on NCL's YouTube channel.
The NCL employees mentioned in the OP of this thread Soejima and Seong-sa (Boku) run Nintendo Indie World and it is their initiative to get Japanese consumers to value the indie brand. You might be confused due to the thread title but read the interview again in the OP and you'll see that they still want indies to be valued and become popular with consumers like overseas but avoiding the risk of devaluing it.
You could see what they look like in the article of the OP here.
Or, you can see this recent pic where Nintendo has a booth at BitSummit
These are the games they are exhibiting.
Guy on the far left is Boku.
Guy on the far right is Soejima.
Yoshida from Sony is in the middle, they're at BitSummit which is happening currently. Sony and Nintendo attend BitSummit every year along with other publishers.