A living lab
in regional Japan.
Where the local community becomes a place of learning for everyone.
What is Sasabase?
The whole
community is a campus.
Sasabase is a Showa-era house in the satoyama hills of Kawanishi, northern Hyogo — a living campus where learning, regional life, and local economy come together.
Philosophy
Everyone is a teacher. Everyone is a student.
At Sasabase, we reject the idea that learning flows in only one direction. The farmer knows things the entrepreneur does not. The child sees things the adult has long forgotten. When people of different generations and backgrounds share a space, knowledge moves in every direction at once.
Our role is to create the conditions for that exchange — through programs, activities, and the simple act of gathering around a meal or a rice field.
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Vision
A place where you can simply be.
What we are truly building is a place of belonging — an inclusive space where anyone can show up, at any stage of life, and find something meaningful.
- Learning across generations and backgrounds
- Open to everyone, regardless of circumstance
- Simply being here has value
Small, sustainable communities like this — gently connected to one another — are how we believe social change actually happens.
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Core principles
Learning & Local Design
Four ideas that shape everything we do at Sasabase.
Community as Curriculum
地域を教材にする
Agriculture, food, commerce, culture — the everyday life of a regional community is the richest possible learning material. By stepping outside the classroom and into the village, knowledge becomes grounded, embodied, and lasting.
Connecting Education & Economy
教育と経済をつなぐ
Learning outcomes that flow back into the local economy. In our 6th-Sector programs, participants experience farming, processing, and selling as a single continuous cycle — the same logic that connects a region's land to its livelihood.
Experiment, Document, Share
実験し、記録し、共有する
Sasabase does not hold the answers — it holds the questions. We try things, record what happens, and open our findings to the world. This commitment to honest experimentation is at the heart of what we do.
Everyone Belongs Here
多様な参加者をつなぐ
Children, parents, teachers, farmers, entrepreneurs, researchers — different people share the same space and create new connections. Sasabase is a place where unexpected meetings lead to unexpected learning.
A living laboratory
Education × Local Economy × Global
Local challenges cannot be solved locally alone. And global challenges cannot move without local action.
What we are building is a model where learning in a Japanese satoyama transforms how organisations develop people, expands what children believe is possible, and creates new economic forms for regional communities. Small experiments. Real change.
Education
Cultivating questions
Not handing out answers — building the capacity to sit with complexity. The regional community is the best classroom for that.
Local Economy
Turning life into value
Rebuilding satoyama agriculture, food, and culture as sustainable livelihoods. Creating economic flows that stay in the region.
Global
From Kawanishi to the world
Making local practice articulable and shareable across borders. Local depth generates global value — that's what we're proving.
Founder
Tomo Fujii
Founder & Learning Ecosystem Designer
Education connects us to the future. As I kept asking what learning really means, I discovered the possibility of connecting the knowledge that lives in local communities to viable economic activity.
Drawing on what I had observed from living abroad — a fresh appreciation for Japan's regional landscape — I returned to my home region in 2014.
Today I run Sasabase from a restored Showa-era house in Sasabe, the satoyama village where my family has lived for generations. Every program we run is an experiment in what learning and community can be.
— Corporate career
Worked across diverse teams on international projects. Repeatedly encountering mismatches in values and assumptions sparked a deep interest in how people learn and communicate.
— MBA & professional qualifications
Completed an overseas MBA alongside US CPA and CFP qualifications. Still felt a gap between formal learning and the practical ability to move things forward — which led to returning to study at 55.
— Return to Kawanishi
Returned to the ancestral family land in Sasabe, Kawanishi in 2014. Began collaborating with the city on community initiatives. Since 2020, has been running Sasabase from the former family Showa-era house.
Next step
Come and visit us.
Whether you want to attend a program, explore a collaboration, or simply see the place — reach out and we'll figure it out together.
A single conversation is a fine place to start.