The CiP Digital Special Zone: What We Want to Achieve

The CiP (Contents Innovation Program) is a plan to construct a digital and content zone in Takeshiba, Minato Ward, Tokyo. The third interview question was, "What do we want to achieve with the CiP?”

We want to make a creative space unlike any other in the world. We want to create a new Tokyo that has things that can be found nowhere else.

We want a production cycle involving R&D, human resource cultivation, business startup support, and business matching.

Nevertheless, it will not be a government-manufactured place of inorganic matter, nor a monetized space like Silicon Valley. It will rather be a place of flesh and blood, of music: a culture that condenses the dim haze of high spirits.

It will be an assembly area for the bold and ambitious, like the MIT Media Lab. It will accumulate production activity like that of Workshop Collection. It will have a business support environment that evokes the 500 Startups. It will have conventions like the Niconico Convention, the Comic Market Convention, mixed martial-arts rings, etc. Every new day will dawn on a city that unifies all such elements.

That place will have research education like the CKL of Seoul, wealth like the ECB of Frankfurt, a chaotic free spirit like that of Marché in Morocco, rising sea spray like the beaches of Barcelona, and ever-present music and dance like Caminito in Buenos Aires. 

Cool men and women will stride up and down the streets like in Via Montenapoleone in Milano, the government will be as sincere as that in Singapore, children will dash about as in Parc de la Villette in Paris, it will have exquisite food and spirits like Ponto-cho in Kyoto, and the west coast and Tokyo will blend like in Sanfransokyo of Big Hero 6. It will be a place overflowing with creativity.

Such is the national strategy special zone. It will have a treasured archive of past live performances and CMs “you can only see here.” Broadcasts that deviate from impartiality can be performed. Using IT equipment which must not be used outside will spark excitement.

In this place, open marathon conventions in the neighborhood will track athletes by a drone assigned to each one. These will reinforce the runner and give a constant image that spectators can follow on their smartphones. Superhumans will have physical enhancements influenced by special radio waves and earnestly throw themselves into sports training.

Schools will open ultra-gifted classes where prohibited devices are allowed. Autonomous robots will have charge of lunch serving and school cleaning duties. Children without licenses will be allowed to ride in air cars. Through the windows they will be able to see massive screens that disregard outdoor advertising regulations. A huge film festival will open over the surface of the sea. Life-sized Gundams will leap across the water.

We will bind Kyoto and Okinawa, and produce, edit, and distribute videos. With Keio University, the University of Tokyo, government research institutions, Stanford University, etc., we will create a collaborative research organization. We would also like for Oxford University, the National University of Singapore, and others to participate.

This small space will be tightly packed with a new kind of creative cultural fusion.

It’s definitely possible. And I think it cannot be done anywhere else.