The representative has been in charge of design and product planning for a manufacturer, and has worked in Europe for some time. Here are his views on life and his thoughts as a representative.

Biography

  I was born in Tokyo in 1956. I was watching the 1964 Tokyo Olympics on a trendy Sony portable monochrome TV. I lived in a foreign style apartment building called Nakano Coop Broadway, which had a shopping district up to the fourth floor and a condominium on the sixth floor with a garden and swimming pool on the roof.   Before I moved to Broadway, I lived in a two-story mansion in a botanist's house off Ome Kaido, which had a garden full of fruit trees and other plants.  I have fond memories of my mother dyeing kimono stencils and drying plums to dry in the garden.  My mother often took me to museums and exhibitions in Tokyo, and I still love those places.

    When my father was transferred to the Kansai region, we moved to the Kansai region after junior high school.  At that time the World Exposition'70 was being held in Osaka, and I felt like I had a glimpse of the world.   I participated in the Kinki Track and Field Club's middle-distance race and the National Rugby Championship when I was in high school.  At university, I majored in design and studied under a professor who was a Japanese famous printmaker.  I was sent to Europe as a product planner for a manufacturer and spent 6 years in Europe, which changed the way I look at things.

   I lived in Hamburg, a port town in the north of Germany, and I was surprised to see that many of the employees who finished work at 5 o'clock in the morning spent half the day relaxing, playing golf, sailing, or taking a walk.  I think it was around that time that words like "affluence" were being discussed in Japan, but this was a country where people were really enjoying their lives.

    During my six years of living in Europe, I learned that people enjoy both work and play because they give him all.    The work was not always interesting and there were many difficult jobs due to differences in language and lifestyle, but I was able to enjoy my work and I have colleagues who are still my friends today.

Background and policy of i・farm’s establishment

  Ever since I was a child, I have loved living things, and my garden and house were filled with creatures from the mountains and the sea.  I also loved to make things, and I used to spend all day in my room making and breaking radios and models.  When I entered the workforce, I was at the center of manufacturing, so I decided to make something by myself as my life's work.  At the same time, I decided to make something for the benefit of the world.  Through an exchange with a friend in England, he agreed with his view of life that doing business for the purpose of benefiting others and giving back to society for the betterment of society would ultimately lead to his own personal growth, and this was the starting point of i・farm.   I started out as a caretaker of a rental farm, then rented farmland to grow vegetables using organic farming methods, and after meeting a natural farmer on Awaji Island, I took over the farmland and started i・farm in 2018.

    The basis of i・farm is to contribute to society by living an organic life (valuing ethical social interaction rather than profit and loss that cannot be divided digitally).  We rent or take over disused farmland and produce, process and sell organic vegetables and fruits to employ and revitalize the community.  Although i・farm is responsible for the core part of our business, it is impossible for us to do everything on our own, so we collaborate with other companies that specialize in this field and deliver organic life from our farms in Awaji Island (Japan), Hawaii (USA) and Sicily (Italy) across the border.

    Work for fun and play for fun.  Our goal is to create such a community culture that will generate a huge wave of change from region to city, from city to city, and from city to country itself.