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This paper postulates that a willingness to interact with strangers and consider dubious information, rather than relying on trusted information sources and certain knowledge, is perhaps the most important prerequisite for innovation and breakthrough knowledge generation within a society or group. This idea builds upon the observation that creative ideas are "often the result of the assemblage of different perspectives and approaches people are exposed to via social interactions." (Baer, 2010, p 592) When the suspicions and doubts inherent in these different perspectives are prematurely pruned, known facts and low-risk understanding replace innovation and breakthrough KM activity. This is a problem that plagues Japan today. An aversion to interactions with people outside of a small in-group impedes knowledge sharing in Japan, and now manifests itself through "KM anxieties" as an obstacle to innovation, economic competitiveness, and understanding of the outside world. KM anxieties are not unique to the Japanese, but they are perhaps more prevalent due to Japanese reluctance to establish or explore what Granovetter (1973) called "weak ties." This situation largely exists due to confidence issues involved in dealing with strangers and unverified knowledge, and could be rectified if software agents were used to establish acceptable trust situations with previously unknown actors and information. With these ideas in mind, this paper considers three main themes. The first theme, addressed in section two of this paper, explores the importance of weak ties for knowledge sharing. In section three we examine the reasons for the pervasive condition of limited trust situations in Japanese society. We then probe the need and role for software agents in mitigating the trust problem in section four. It is expected that these discussions will contribute to the extant literature on and our understanding of the importance of weak ties in KM, the future role of software agents in facilitating communications and interaction between strangers, and the means by which Japan may once again engage the world in KM activities and regain its innovative edge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]