Gugen, Inc.

Project Proposal · 2026

A festival where people, titles set aside, meet other ways of living.

Preparing

How to take partContact
Student network
47prefectures
Community
2,000+people
Eventual scale
10,000
Online #01, a target
2026.07

This is the proposal as written in June 2026. The figures and dates below are targets in that document, not a confirmed schedule. In July 2026 we decided not to turn it into a product of its own, and to keep it as a community effort.

01

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. In practice, about 60% of people in their twenties feel they have not found what they want to do, and roughly 30% leave their first job within three years of graduation.

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

  1. 01

    Students in the city

  2. 02

    The festival translates

  3. 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

02

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.

03

The proposal draws four stages, from where things stood in June 2026 to a festival of ten thousand.

  1. 01

    Step 0 · underway in 2026

    Into the bamboo-light field

    Making bamboo light, repairing an old house, and co-planning an AI art festival in Kotohira, Kagawa. Chikao Ikeda (CHIKAKEN), based in Kumamoto and staging events that reach about a million people a month, works with a national student network of about 2,000.

    • Target: 20+ participants
    • SNS reach 10,000+
    Stage 1
  2. 02

    Step 1 · July 2026 (target)

    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
    • “I want to go to the field” 60%+
    Stage 2
  3. 03

    Step 2 · autumn–winter 2026

    A hundred people, in person

    An in-person experiment: student booths (10–20 teams), a shared-language workshop with badges, and fieldwork. Candidate venues are Higashikawa in Hokkaido, or a hub in Tokyo.

    • Satisfaction 4.0/5.0+
    • 5+ regional partners
    Stage 3
  4. 04

    Step 3 · 2027

    A festival of diversity, ten thousand strong

    Five parts: a main stage, regional booths, a student zone, food, and experiences. Alongside it, the proposal draws an AP Bank-style circulation of funds and the founding of a general incorporated association.

    • 10,000+ participants
    • 30+ regional partners
    Stage 4

Worldview

“Bamboo is a material that connects people, a place, and nature.”

Chikao Ikeda (CHIKAKEN)
04

As the June 2026 proposal describes them: underway.

Bamboo light × the student community

A student community with a campus network in all 47 prefectures (about 2,000 people) is working with bamboo-light director Chikao Ikeda (CHIKAKEN). CHIKAKEN staged the 2023 Kumamoto Castle illumination (over 500,000 visitors) and regional festivals across Kyushu, at a scale of about a million people a month, and the proposal says that work resonates with DAO Matsuri. From June 2026 a concrete project opened in Kotohira, Kagawa: a workshop to repair an old house, a night event of bamboo light, and an AI art festival with art students. Together they are making an immersive installation that visualizes a place’s memory with AI and sets it beside bamboo light.

A network of places

There is a word, tekiso: a place whose population is sparse, and whose connections between people are dense. Higashikawa in Hokkaido (in-migration rising), Haramura in Nagano (an experiment in farming and technology), and Tsuru in Yamanashi (a young community around share-house culture) are exploring a partnership as candidate fields. The proposal also names 20 June 2026: joining Move Fest at EX Theater Roppongi, to build a crosswise network with communities and practitioners who share the aim.

Universities and labs

The proposal is exploring, with a town-making lab at Hosei University, whether DAO Matsuri fieldwork could count as course credit. With social-innovation seminars at Rikkyo and Waseda, it treats “joining the festival” as a site of learning — one of the ways it means to be distinct.

05

A festival that funds the next one

DAO Matsuri adopts 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, led by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Takeshi Kobayashi. A general association gathered the proceeds of a music festival, lent at low interest to sustainable businesses, and used the repayments to support the next round of work — a circulation kept up for more than twenty years.

  1. 01

    Event revenue

    Fees and sponsorship

  2. 02

    The association

    The body that runs it

  3. 03

    Into regional work

    Low-interest loans and investment

  4. 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.

06

The proposal says the most valuable thing at DAO Matsuri is the account of a quiet practitioner who does not appear in the media.

  1. 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. The proposal asks them to write first.

  2. 02

    Offer a place

    For local officers who want students to come and have no entrance. Offer the place as a field, and the proposal says the mechanism that connects students nationwide comes with it.

  3. 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.

  4. 04

    Co-host, or help run it

    Students and young workers who want to be on the making side. The proposal is recruiting a team to run the July online event: design, communications, social, hosting, documentation. From two to four hours a week.

  5. 05

    A university seminar

    Faculty considering credit for joining DAO Matsuri, as a class or as fieldwork. The proposal intends to build partnerships with seminars in social enterprise, regional sociology and town-making, including a curriculum designed together.

Dates written in the proposal

  1. 20 June 2026

    Move Fest, EX Theater Roppongi

    Networking with communities and practitioners who share the aim, and a search for speakers and partners.

  2. July 2026 (a target)

    Online event #01

    An online talk with four or five practitioners. Target attendance 200–500. At the time of the proposal, speakers and communications partners were being sought.

  3. Autumn–winter 2026

    In person, about a hundred people

    Student booths, a shared-language workshop, and fieldwork. The proposal says the place is still being arranged.

  4. 2027

    The festival of diversity, ten thousand

    Together with founding the association, the proposal schedules a full-scale festival.

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.

Contactinfo@gugenlab.com

The proposal document (June 2026)

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