Changing society from within a 15-minute walk InsightsEssays: Civil Society in Japan

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Posted on January 08, 2026

Japan NPO Center (JNPOC) has a news & commentary site called NPO CROSS that discusses the role of NPOs/NGOs and civil society as well as social issues in Japan and abroad. We post articles contributed by various stakeholders, including NPOs, foundations, corporations, and volunteer writers.
For this JNPOC’s English site, we select some translated articles from NPO CROSS to introduce to our English-speaking readers.

 

Changing society from within a 15-minute walk

Kenji Yoshida, Managing Director, Japan NPO Center

 

At the Japan NPO Center, we have been hosting a program since last year called “Tomo-civi” (short for Tomoni Shimin-shakai wo tsukuru Manabi no Community), a learning community dedicated to co-creating civil society. It consists of the “Tomo-civi NPO School,” which offers 18 sessions across six thematic courses, and the “Tomo-civi Himitsu (or Curiosity) Seminar,” where participants dive deep into themes of their own choosing. As the name suggests, our goal is to foster a genuine community for mutual learning.

Today, I would like to share a few keywords that personally resonated with me from our three-session course titled “Imagining the Future,” held this past October.

One of our guest NPOs, Creative Support LET’S, works to create “places of belonging” through art. In the field of disability care, certain repetitive or unique behaviors are often labeled as “problem behaviors” that need to be corrected. However, LET’S asks: “What if we view these actions as a form of expression and affirm them just as they are?”

This perspective gave birth to their project, “Hyōgen-miman,” (literally, “Less than Expression,”). The use of the comma in the Japanese title is intentional; it suggests that while these actions might not yet be considered “fine art” in the traditional sense, they represent an ongoing, open-ended process of human communication.

Based in downtown Hamamatsu City, LET’S operates right in the heart of the community. Midori Kubota, the director, says, “I believe people feel happy when there is someone within a 15-minute walk who can offer even a little bit of help.” She refers to this 15-minute radius as “Chimata”—a traditional Japanese word for the “crossroads” or “the streets” where private life meets the public sphere.

Through art activities scattered throughout this chimata, they aim to foster “casual acquaintances.” By sharing the same time and space, people with and without disabilities encounter one another until they become familiar faces. Even without a profound academic understanding of disabilities, these repeated, natural encounters increase the number of people who might look out for one another in times of need. It struck me as a beautifully organic approach.

The late Yasuo Harima — the founder of Tanpopo-no-ye (a pioneering organization at the intersection of art and social welfare) and an early Chairperson and long-time advisor of the Japan NPO Center — spoke at last year’s school, where he left us with these words: “Bring yourself to what is different, partner with what is different, and learn from what is different.” I feel that the activities of LET’S are a perfect embodiment of this philosophy—the true art of mixing different elements together.

The concept of the “15-minute walk radius” appeared as a common thread throughout our “Imagining the Future” sessions. While the phrase “changing society” can often feel distant or abstract, I realized that creating opportunities for dialogue within the actual physical boundaries of our daily lives is what truly leads to changing our neighborhoods and, ultimately, society as a whole.

 

Original text by Kenji Yoshida (JNPOC’s Managing Director) originally posted on October 30, 2025; translated by JNPOC.

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