IDEAS FOR GOODIn downtown Kamaishi City, in Japan’s northeastern Iwate Prefecture, I asked a taxi driver to take me to Nakamise Street. “Nakamise Street?” he says. “It’s just a shuttered shopping strip.”
“The place used to bustle with life,” he added.
It was just as he said: shuttered shopfronts stretching as far as I could see. In its heyday, more than four decades ago, this spot used to be so crowded with tourists to the nearby Daikannon Temple that you couldn’t walk here without bumping into someone.
Now three men are taking the first steps to bring this street back to life.
“We want to make a place where tourists and Kamaishi locals can meet and bring back the energy that Nakamise Street once had.”
These are the words from the founders of the company “sofo“, who are set to open a café in Nakamise Street in June. Their crowdfunding project recently topped its target by 9%, which garnered 4.40 million yen from 443 supporters. We spoke to them about their plans for the project and their affection for the street.
Sofo cafe as the trigger to revitalize Nakamise Street
Sofo is a limited company involved in town creation. It utilizes vacant homes and shops in shopping streets to renovate and breathe new life into old towns.
Sofo was established in December 2018. Its representative, Hayato Kamiwaki, used to work for one of Tokyo’s leading real estate development companies. Joint representative Tatsuya Miyazaki is an architect who moved to Kamaishi City to aid its recovery from the massive tsunami of 2001. The natural disaster took more than 1,000 lives from this city and destroyed thousands more buildings in low-lying areas. Keisuke Horikoshi is involved in town renovation work other than Kamaishi City too, including Minami-soma City in Fukushima Prefecture and downtown Tokyo’s Ikebukuro Honmachi.
The company is now set to open the sofo café in Nakamise Street.
On the second floor of the building where sofo café is being built is the lodging house “Azumaya” and the co-working space “co-ba kamaishi marudai”. Currently, out of more than 20 stores in the street, only one other is open – a restaurant.
“We want our café to trigger an increase in desire to open stores in Nakamise Street. I believe that will help boost the value of the area,” says Kamiwaki.
Taking up the challenge of the here and now
Before coming to Kamaishi, Kamiwaki worked the employee life in Tokyo, but didn’t feel comfortable with it. In seeking a way to work that was more expressive of himself, he discovered an entrepreneurial-style collaborative group that was working on regional revitalization. That led him to the Nakamise shopping street project.
Co-founder Miyazaki launched the Kamaishi Daikannon Nakamise Renovation Project when he looking to work on a project within Kamaishi. He applied his own DIY handiwork to open co-ba kamaishi marudai in Nakamise Street in 2018.
Together, the two described a history and a street-scape unique to Kamaishi. And how, even though the shops have closed, the owners still live in the buildings and the street retains the warmth of the people and their everyday lives.
Miyazaki laughs, “They probably could have built it straight, but the way that Nakamise Street is slightly bent makes me love it.”
Kamiwaki talks about his motivation for the project, “It started with meeting Miyazaki, Horikoshi and Azumaya who runs the lodging house on Nakamise Street. These people have such affection for Nakamise Street. Then there is the good timing and the uniqueness of Nakamise Street. It was also an opportunity to use my experience in town planning from my previous real estate job. All these factors came together and I thought that here, now was what I had to do.” Thus, sofo was born.
Sofo Cafe’s concept: “The first place you go × the place you always go”
The founders wants sofo cafe to be a place where tourists to Kamaishi and locals could meet. The concept became “the first place you go × the place you always go.”
In typical sightseeing, visitors noted tourist spots and stopped for some good food – but just that gives them little opportunity to get to know the locals.
“We want to make a cafe where visitors would head to Kamaishi first. This way, they can meet locals and learn from them information that only they have. The first time you visit a place, you don’t know where you should head first, right? So meeting the locals will be valuable in tourism here on in,” says Miyazaki.
Setting sofo cafe as the focal point for locals
There is a reason why they chose to make a cafe. Kamiwaki learnt that the most important thing is how much people move. This is from his experience of town creation in his previous job in real estate development.
It’s not the buildings that make a shopping street or a town, but the people. And to increase the number of people, it is not just attracting tourists. It is really about whether locals have a place to go or not on a daily basis.
Furthermore, if they made a pub, non-drinkers wouldn’t come. And because people live in the street, they couldn’t make a place that would create unwelcome noise at night. A cafe was also the best choice to maximize both the number of patrons and the length of their stay.
During his university days, Kamiwaki worked at Starbucks. In 2010, he became the youngest person to become an region coffee master – out of just 11 in the whole of Japan. He will leverage that experience at sofo café, where he plans to hold workshops and events that draw upon his coffee expertise.
The men are working on a menu for the cafe unique to Kamaishi. It will include the town’s famed Kasshi persimmons and dishes made by local homemakers. Local high school students also gave excited feedback that they want tapioca drinks to be sold in the cafe. sofo is also considering a shared kitchen to help make it easier for others to open a shop in Nakamise Street too.
Locals’ support shifts from words to actions
“When I moved to Kamaishi from Tokyo, my income dropped to about one third, so, to be honest, about once every two months I get anxious. I have a family, you see. But even if our plan doesn’t work, the experience of creating our own business is definitely a plus,” says Kamiwaki.
“What constitutes failure?” he wonders. Nakamise Street, which at one point had no shops open at all. Can’t get fewer stores than that. From the locals’ point of view, there is nothing to lose even if the project doesn’t get off the ground. Some of them had already decided that Nakamise Street had no future, and were doing their best to just ignore it. In that sense, the attempt to revive the shopping strip is an unexpected joy for many locals.
“Of course we understand that it will be very difficult. But right now, we are excited. If this Nakamise Street project is successful, I think it will affect other towns, too.” Miyazaki is nodding deeply as Kamiwaki says this, next to him.
In a welcome phenomenon, the response of the local people has gradually changed as the crowd funding reached its final stages. “Until now, the locals have said to us, ‘Give it your best,’ but recently they’ve started to say ‘I want to help’,” Miyazaki shares.
Creating a place where everyone can express themselves
When asked what kind of Nakamise Street they hope to create, Kamiwaki replies, “I want to make Nakamise Street a street that overflows with people’s hopes and ways of life. It is the accumulation of people’s dreams that creates a town and its culture, and gives it color. I want to make a place where people don’t say ‘the Italian restaurant,’ but instead say ‘the shop that Mr Tanaka runs.’ A place where the person’s name comes first – where everyone can express themselves.”
“I prefer a place that can’t be imagined,” says Miyazaki. “It should be a place where there are things that no one has imagined before. A place like that challenges mindsets that would usually oppose – that one would think ‘Is this kind of business even possible?’ I want to make it the kind of place where you would believe that impossible things can be achieved.”
Sofo’s inspiring and infectious optimism
Kamiwaki and Miyazaki explain their commitment: “The initial funding for this project is not an assistance payment, nor is it our own capital. We are carrying the hopes of more than 400 supporters, so we will definitely make it happen.”
Surely the founder’s determination is what drew the people and funds to this project. Meeting them for this interview, I found that they each have a fascinating strength. They attracts the people around them to support “because it’s Kamiwaki,” or “because Miyazaki is working so hard.”
And I have caught that bug, too. I find myself hoping that Nakamise Street will be a place of hope for Kamaishi City. So the next time I ask a taxi driver to take me there, hopefully he will smile to himself when he hears the destination.
This article was originally published on IDEAS FOR GOOD.
Translated by Kirsty Kawano.
