Project Proposal · 2026
A festival where people, titles set aside, meet other ways of living.
Living options, as a festival.
Community project
- Student network
- 47prefectures
- Community
- 2,000+people
- Eventual scale
- 10,000
We are growing this as a community effort, from a proposal written in June 2026. The figures on this page are targets in that proposal.
The unease of a single correct life
When job hunting opens in March, campuses across Japan fill with recruiting suits at once. One path: a large company, then stability, then happiness.
The problem is not ability or motivation. There are far too few chances to learn what ways of living even exist. People who started an NPO in a rural town, turned a closed school into an inn, or stage a festival of light with bamboo — practitioners of unconventional and rich lives are all over Japan, and almost no path is designed for students to reach them.
Too few meetings, and no translator
People called community nurses step outside clinical walls, settle into a place, and connect the people there. Programs such as the Susanoo experience are joining myth and local culture. Those places exist. What does not exist is a translator that connects urban students to them. DAO Matsuri implements that translator as a festival.
Encounter
- 01
Students in the city
- 02
The festival translates
- 03
Practitioners in the regions
Beside a careers event
Careers events compared with DAO Matsuri
Purpose
A typical careers eventHiring and company PR
DAO祭Showing other ways of living
The student's place
A typical careers eventAssessed as a candidate
DAO祭Joins as a maker and co-creator
What counts
A typical careers eventTest scores, TOEIC, internships
DAO祭Curiosity, action, crossing borders
Content
A typical careers eventCompany briefings, mock interviews
DAO祭Practitioners' own accounts, fieldwork
Center of gravity
A typical careers eventTokyo and large companies
DAO祭Regions and many ways of working
What follows
A typical careers eventApplication edits, selection prep
DAO祭A path into the field, and a community that continues
Why “DAO”
A festival of diversity that does not hand out labels.
The core of a DAO — a decentralized autonomous organization — is horizontality and crossing borders. DAO Matsuri uses the word outside a technology pitch. It is a way of being: everyone who comes brings something, and together they make the festival itself. Students from Tokyo, practitioners from the regions, people at local governments — each on equal footing, each bringing something interesting.
Mission
01
Widen the choices
Design the meeting between students and people living interesting lives that are not widely known. Do not let it end with one encounter — design an ongoing path into the field and the community.
02
Make the people who carry it
Students hold their own booths, bring projects, and work with people in the region. Taking part is designed to be both personal growth and a contribution.
03
Build an ecosystem
With the festival as the axis, design a circulation of people, money and projects, and grow a network between regions and the city.
Who it is for
Who DAO Matsuri is for, and how they take part
Participants
WhoStudents and young workers, 18–27, who want to do something and do not yet know what
HowExperience, conversation, a path into the field
Speakers
WhoCreators, founders, NPO leaders and researchers with their own work in a region
HowTalks and content
Regional partners
WhoLocal governments, NPOs, farms and old houses working on ambitious town-making
HowA place for fieldwork, and the experience itself
Sponsors
WhoCompanies interested in young talent, regional revival and the SDGs
HowFunding and co-production
Why a festival, now
Regions are losing population, growing older, and watching industries thin out, while Tokyo keeps gathering information, opportunity and capital. Paradoxically, it is young people in Tokyo who describe a feeling of suffocation. Too many choices to choose, comparison sharp enough to undo confidence, exhaustion from keeping pace. Those voices are increasing.
Generation Z grew up watching the “lost decades,” and weighs meaning and connection above material plenty. What they are looking for is not an answer but a place to ask again. DAO Matsuri makes that questioning possible in the form of a festival.
Dates are not set. The proposal sketches stages toward a festival of ten thousand.
- 01
Step 0
Into the field
As a community effort, we start by joining the field.
- Target: 20+ participants
- SNS reach 10,000+
- 02
Step 1
An online gathering
A 90-minute Zoom webinar and 30 minutes of questions on Discord. A bamboo-light director, community practitioners, and former members of the regional revitalization corps speak, opening “interesting ways of living” to the whole country.
- Target: 200–500 people
- 03
Step 2
A hundred people, in person
An in-person experiment: student booths (10–20 teams), a shared-language workshop with badges, and fieldwork.
- 5+ regional partners
- 04
Step 3
A festival of diversity, ten thousand strong
Five parts: a main stage, regional booths, a student zone, food, and experiences. Alongside that, we are aiming for an ap bank-style circulation of funds and the founding of a general incorporated association.
- 10,000+ participants
- 30+ regional partners
A festival that funds the next one
DAO Matsuri aims for a circulating fund: event revenue returns to social projects in the regions, and repayment becomes the money for the next event. The reference is ap bank, started by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Takeshi Kobayashi and Kazutoshi Sakurai.
- 01
Event revenue
Fees and sponsorship
- 02
The association
The body that runs it
- 03
Into regional work
Low-interest loans and investment
- 04
Repayment
Toward the next event
How students become the carriers
Student booths
Student teams exhibit and present their own projects and research, with mentoring and a subsidy.
Bounty-style tasks
Running tasks go on an open board with points, and participants take what they will.
A path into regional projects
A desk for continuing into fieldwork and the making of bamboo light.
Sponsorship as an exchange
Field partner
Regional companies and governments
They offer a fieldwork place and an experience. In return: joint communication under the DAO Matsuri name, and a matching of people.
Content partner
Labs and NPOs
They offer workshops, talks and work. In return: a reach into Generation Z, and a public view of what they do.
Fund partner
Startups and operating companies
Funding of ¥300,000–¥1,000,000. In return: a chance to meet people, a booth, and a place in the report.
What we value most at DAO Matsuri is the account of a quiet practitioner who does not appear in the media.
01
Speak, or offer work
Founders, NPO leaders, farmers, artists, researchers, and former members of the regional revitalization corps, working outside the capital. Format, length and theme are designed together. Please write first.
02
Offer a place
For local officers who want students to come and have no entrance. Offer the place as a field, and the mechanism that connects students nationwide comes with it.
03
Sponsor
The amount does not matter. Sponsorship with a stated intention — “please use it for this” — is welcome. A menu of field, content and fund partnerships is in preparation.
04
Co-host, or help run it
Students and young workers who want to be on the making side. We are recruiting a team to run the online event: design, communications, social, hosting, documentation. From two to four hours a week.
05
A university seminar
Faculty considering credit for joining DAO Matsuri, as a class or as fieldwork. We are aiming for partnerships with seminars in social enterprise, regional sociology and town-making, including a curriculum designed together.
Take part
If you want to move with us, or just to hear more, use the contact form on this site, or write to info@gugenlab.com.