Project Proposal · 2026
DAO Matsuri
A festival where people, titles set aside, meet other ways of living.
Preparing
- 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.
Background
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
- 01
Students in the city
- 02
The festival translates
- 03
Practitioners in the regions
Beside a careers event
| Item | A typical careers event | DAO祭 |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Hiring and company PR | Showing other ways of living |
| The student's place | Assessed as a candidate | Joins as a maker and co-creator |
| What counts | Test scores, TOEIC, internships | Curiosity, action, crossing borders |
| Content | Company briefings, mock interviews | Practitioners' own accounts, fieldwork |
| Center of gravity | Tokyo and large companies | Regions and many ways of working |
| What follows | Application edits, selection prep | A path into the field, and a community that continues |
What DAO Matsuri is
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
| Role | Who | How |
|---|---|---|
| Participants | Students and young workers, 18–27, who want to do something and do not yet know what | Experience, conversation, a path into the field |
| Speakers | Creators, founders, NPO leaders and researchers with their own work in a region | Talks and content |
| Regional partners | Local governments, NPOs, farms and old houses working on ambitious town-making | A place for fieldwork, and the experience itself |
| Sponsors | Companies interested in young talent, regional revival and the SDGs | Funding 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.
Roadmap
The proposal draws four stages, from where things stood in June 2026 to a festival of ten thousand.
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+
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%+
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
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
“Bamboo is a material that connects people, a place, and nature.”
Projects underway
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.
Ecosystem
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.
- 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.
How to take part
The proposal says the most valuable thing 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. The proposal asks them to 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 proposal says 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. The proposal is recruiting a team to run the July 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. 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
20 June 2026
Move Fest, EX Theater Roppongi
Networking with communities and practitioners who share the aim, and a search for speakers and partners.
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.
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.
2027
The festival of diversity, ten thousand
Together with founding the association, the proposal schedules a full-scale festival.
Join
Make the festival with us.
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.