(↑ Any way you look at it, this is just an old guy from the countryside surrounded by a couple of young up-and-comers! (ha ha))

Ever since we brought our in Kamiyama website to the public, we’ve had the tenth anniversary of the Kamiyama Artist in Residence among other things, and a lot of interesting people have visited us here in Kamiyama. It would be impossible to introduce them all, but I’ll start with these two.

The lovely couple in the title photo are Kosuke Bando (architect) and Mica Bando (musician). The two of them both studied at the Tokyo University of the Arts, and then Kosuke went on to study at Harvard University Graduate School of Design and Mica went to Berklee College of Music. They now live in New York. Incidentally, Kosuke was born and raised in Kokufu, here in Tokushima!

Their CVs read like the profiles of TV drama protagonists…

But let me tell you. The thing that really made me perk up my ears wasn’t their education. It was their attitudes as an architect and a musician towards working at resolving social problems. They’re so earnest, the very picture of “wholesome”-ness !

One of the things they are interested in is depopulation. The theme Kosuke’s thesis project at Tokyo University of the Arts was about how the building of the Nagasawa Dam had altered former Hongawa-mura in Kochi prefecture. When he was at Harvard, he went to visit the depopulated village of Rodina, Greece, which was badly damaged by fire. The villagers told him, “We just want to go back to the way it was before the fire.” and he proposed a project called Tower of Memory which carries the message “You mustn’t be afraid of change.”

Kosuke said that the things Green Valley is doing has a lot of overlap with his own ideas and thoughts, and he visited Kamiyama many times while he was in Japan. I’m so happy for that. I have a feeling we’ll be doing something together one day.

Let’s keep an eye on these two for now, traveling the world and doing many great things I’m sure.