Movement to Change Mindsets
and the Japanese
Educational System

Magical Dagashiya Tyrol-Do won the 2022 Good Design Grand Award. Tell us what motivated you to start this initiative.

I'd been running the atelier e.f.t. art school in Osaka, where the motto is "Learn how to live through creation." I wanted to be closer to nature, and moved to Ikoma City in Nara Prefecture, where I set up the second atelier e.f.t. location. There, we started offering an afterschool daycare service, and other efforts to try to bring out the creativity of the local children.

The turning point came when we heard that a children's cafeteria (place that provides free or cheap meals for children in poverty) in the Ikoma City community center had had to suspend operations due to COVID. I, along with Keiko Ishida, who works in social welfare, and the designer Daisuke Sakamoto, launched Magical Dagashiya Tyrol-Do in August 2021 as a way to keep the children’s cafeteria going, and to set up a hub where the community could support children who may be suffering from poverty or loneliness.
We reinvented the idea of what a children's cafeteria could be, and have set up various efforts aimed towards children and adults in the community. The magic capsule vending machine, for instance, is only available to those 18 years old or under, and gives children access to "tyrol tickets," a currency they can use in the cafeteria to buy dagashi (cheap Japanese candies and snacks), curry rice, and more. Adults, on the other hand, can buy snacks and meals to donate to the cause. This act of donation is called a "tyrol." At night, Magical Dagashiya Tyrol-Do turns into the Tyrol Bar, where adults can socialize and "tyrol" with fellow members of their community.

After that, you established TOKYO COFFEE, an initiative that gives parents of children who refuse to go to school a place to meet, and aims to reinvent our ideas about education. This particular initiative has been expanded to locations nationwide.

That's right. The name of the initiative is based on an anagram of the Japanese word "toko kyohi (school refusal)." The idea behind the initiative is that the problem isn't with the children refusing to go to school, but the lack of understanding from the adults around them.
When a child stops going to school, parents will generally see it as a problem with themselves, or with their school. But I think the actual problem is the way that education is provided nowadays, and the way that Japanese society and culture have embraced it. We wanted to work to change this mindset by offering worried parents and other adults who support this kind of thinking a place where they can learn from each other—all while having fun and feeling comfortable, like they’re with friends or relatives. I think if the parents are having fun, the kids are more likely to feel comfortable playing and having fun as well.

TOKYO COFFEE was established in the summer of 2022, which means that in less than a year the number of locations has grown to over 300 nationwide. The only thing you need to do to set up a location is to go through a video training session, and participate at least once in the real-life conference that’s held twice a year. Basically, the initiative is a way to create a system for people to share their feelings with one another, support one another, and have fun with one another. Our goal for now is to expand to 500 locations, but my hope is that the initiative takes on a life of its own, away from my hands and in the hands of various local communities.

Taking Back What Was Lost
Through Industrialization

You also set up the atelier e.f.t. Forest House MITERI in an old house in Ikoma City.

Forest House MITERI is a hub that we use to coordinate efforts by atelier e.f.t., TOKYO COFFEE, and more. We also host a festival there once a year, called the "New Sense (Style) Store." High school and university students are involved in all parts of the festival, from planning it to actually running it. The festival itself features stands displaying art, live performances of music, dance, and rakugo (traditional Japanese storytelling), and workshops. We get about 1,200 visitors per year, from both within the prefecture and outside of it, which I think has helped us bring more people into our initiatives in this area.

These initiatives are all based on my own experiences. e.f.t., for instance, was the name of an art team I set up in high school. My hometown is located in the mountains of Hyogo Prefecture, and even as a child, I'd felt constrained by the small rural community there. To combat this, I set up a team inspired by the Dadaism art movement. We'd paint huge murals for the school cultural festival. We got into guerilla art, and would paint a different picture than the draft we'd submitted beforehand—things like that [laughs]. I believed back then, and still do now, that what we need to change society is not fighting, but fun.
The "Yoshidada" part of my pseudonym is actually based on the word "Dadaism." I'm having fun running these initiatives, breaking down the walls that can exist between kids and adults, everyone calling me by my nickname, "Dada-san."

You also work as a creative director yourself, and it shows—all of your initiatives have been beautifully designed to create space for people to get involved.

It's true that the interaction has been designed in, but what we really want is for people not to realize that. It's my belief that design should be something that supports our lives without us even knowing, like the water cycle in nature.

atelier e.f.t., for instance, is an art school on the surface, but its real goal is for kids to learn how to live their lives in a meaningful way. In other words, art is just the means by which we're teaching them how to unleash their potential and live their lives. I personally believe that in the past 100 years since we've entered the modern era, Japanese society has replaced too many things with business and industry. I think the recent movement to question material wealth and rethink our daily lives may be a backlash to this overall trend.
All of the efforts I am a part of are, at their heart, a response to this particular issue.

How do you think technology could be used to regain some of the meaning and richness that have been lost from our lives?

I think the important thing is to remember that technology, including things like AI, are merely tools in our lives. Money, for instance, is one of the greatest inventions in human history. But we've gotten to a point now where money itself has become an authority, and has brought suffering into the lives of so many people. If many of the problems in modern society are based on people equating money with happiness, then the way to change that is not to change policies, but to change people's mindsets.
What's difficult is that human beings, in large numbers, become unstoppable. Like with the development of cities or the economy, it stops mattering if individuals want the change to happen or not. It doesn’t matter if they’re thinking, "No more." The change will occur regardless. I think that's the greatest issue we're facing.

I personally think the only thing we can do now to solve this, and this includes the problems we're facing societally, politically, and economically, is education. We need to change the mindset that people have in the deepest parts of themselves—what they feel they should cherish in their lives. We need to start telling kids that it's okay for them to carve their own path through life, live the way they want to live. It comes down, essentially, to what we understand happiness to be.

Changing a Small Community,
Changing Japan

Now, a question about the metaverse. What do you think of the tendency for people nowadays to seek support in the virtual world when they become wary of interacting with people in real life?

I think the important thing here, and this applies to things like gaming as well, is whether the person is "playing" or "being forced to play." In other words, whether they are enjoying themselves in an active sense. In TOKYO COFFEE as well, we’re actually thinking of creating a virtual space for kids who have been hospitalized or who are in extreme social withdrawal.
As an adult, of course it's natural to want your kid to be running around in nature. But think of it from the kid's perspective. When playing a video game, they are applauded for their achievements, and yet no one ever praises them in real life. Look at it from their perspective, and you come to see some of the issues we face in the real world. Right now the important question is how to design a balance between what should be done in real life, and what is better online—an example being, of course, the widespread use of online meetings during COVID.

I think the word "design" has made its way into a wide range of fields, because design has baked-in methods for reevaluating the core of many different systems, and methods for how to reinvent and recreate these systems as well.
Designers today seem to feel they can make more of an impact by creating things that lead to happiness, instead of just economic value, and I think the mindsets of young people today are headed in that same direction as well. That's the trend I see.

Finally, do you have a message for us here at Sony?

Speaking for myself personally, I think it's important to work on a small scale while keeping in mind the larger issue you're trying to solve. Your goal may be to transform Japanese society, but that can only be achieved through a collection of numerous smaller movements. That’s why I think the best way to do it is to take a small community and grow it bigger and bigger, the way we’ve done with TOKYO COFFEE.
But there are of course things that you're only able to do because you are a part of a large company. I would like for the profits that are earned through these large business structures to be channeled into culture and art that enrich people's hearts and minds. That’s my hope, and of course it would also be amazing if you were able to work with us somehow in our initiatives as well.

(Interview conducted in atelier e.f.t. Forest House MITERI on July 12, 2023)

Interviewer’s commentMiki Nagatani, Strategic Planner / Design Researcher,
Creative Center, Sony Group Corporation

Takashi Yoshidada continues to create new movements one after another, involving those around him with overwhelming passion and action. At the core of this is a warmth and kindness that desires to change society in a fun way and make it a comfortable place to live for various people. I was also impressed by his words that "Design should be something that supports our lives without us even knowing, like the water cycle in nature".
As the metaverse world expands, we hope our technology, both real and online, could evolve to be close to and support various communities.