CiP joins Tokyo Smart City.

 ■CiP joins Tokyo Smart City.

Broadcasting content out of the Tokyo Smart City Forum @ TOKYO PORTCITY TAKESHIBA.

I took the stage with Mr. Okada, president of Tokyu Land Corporation; Mr. Takumi, general manager at SoftBank;  Mr. Yonezu, a manager for Tokyo Prefecture; and professor Ishido of Keio University, et al.

I am reporting here on a presentation we made about the CiP pop & tech special zone.

CiP stands for Contents Innovation Program. The idea is to build up a content-driven zone over eight years.

Tokyo is the center of global pop culture, but there is no central place to disseminate it. The industry is disparate.

I was aware of the problem, too.

The government has also been discussing the issue from the vantage point of Cool Japan and IP and IT policies.

I thought we should do it.

Let's build it in Tokyo.

It's the best place in the world, both economically and culturally.

Richard Florida espoused the theory of the creative city. In terms of economic scale, the wider Tokyo area is the global top.

It ranked number one in the world in an Adobe survey of the most creative cities.

It has by far more Michelin restaurants than Paris.

It ranked number one in the world in Global Finance Magazine's survey of livable cities.

Tokyo Tower is nearby.

Though it was often destroyed by the characters below, it's still standing.

Mothra in 1961. King Ghidorah in '64. Garamon in '66.

Godzilla, for his part, restrained himself from destroying it until 2003. And yet, he, too, destroyed it.

Even though it may be destroyed, they keep right on building it. They destroyed it and rebuild it again. There's something wild about this.

We'll keep destroying and rebuilding.

Takeshiba, too, was destroyed and rebuilt.

Tokyo has an ocean nearby, after all. It's a capital with an ocean.

Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Ottawa, Beijing, and Moscow.

No permanent member of the G7 countries has an ocean by the capital.

Japan has made the ocean its capital, but it doesn't make good use of it.

So let's use the ocean.

That was one of the appeals of Takeshiba.

 

What is important at the same time is fusion with technology.

A big wave of AI and IoT is coming. A big wave of content is also coming.

This should be a national strategic special zone that combines pop and tech. The basic concept is to create a city that develops new content with technology, rather than using content that already exists.

A special zone for pop and tech.

That's the CiP pop & tech zone.

To simplify, the idea was to make a city like Hatsune Miku.

Hatsune Miku is a fusion of technology called vocaloid software and a pop character called Miku-chan, and has developed out of lots of people joining the Internet community to help her compose songs, perform, and dance.

That sort of city.

To start things off, we created 10 tenets for the CiP vision.

- Fusion of the Japanese version of Silicon Valley and Hollywood

- A base where cosplayers congregate and robots fly around

- Permanent organization for the creation of new industries

- International universities and kindergartens of the future

- Cohabitation between creators and entrepreneurs

- Dejima for the 21st century

- Industry-academia-government platform

And so on.

CiP has four core functionalities. 　

We have a cycle of research and development, human resource development, entrepreneurship support, business matching, and research on emerging themes. 　

A place where everything from research to business is carried out under one roof.

Universities and research institutes such as Keio University, the University of Tokyo, and RIKEN joined 50 industry groups and companies in the telecommunications, broadcasting, IT, entertainment, advertising, and other fields to promote town development.

A number of projects have been underway since before the opening of the city.

In terms of pop, the Artist Commons maintains a database of artists in fields like music.

Superhuman sports is about creating a new form of sports where everyone can become superhuman by integrating humans and machines.

The World Otaku Institute is the "head temple" for otaku researchers.

The tech team has been proceeding with a plan to fully implement advanced technology in Takeshiba.

There are eight axes: robots, drones, mobility, signage, public viewing, digital art, wireless power transfer, and data distribution.

Several hundreds of robots go about their work. Drone taxis fly about on the 5G grid. The world's first IoT broadcast that combines communication and broadcasting.

Robots, signage, data distribution, and the like have already been implemented and are underway as of the city opening.

We are seeing potential around drones and wireless power transfer.

There are no other examples in the world of smart buildings that are integrated to this degree.

We are also collaborating with SoftBank to deploy 5G, AI, and IoT solutions.

I want to laterally roll out this model throughout Japan and overseas.

A base for industry-academia collaboration will be set up on the 8th floor of this building.

In addition to Keio KMD using it as a satellite campus, iU, which I opened in April as president, will also have a satellite location here.

The NPO CANVAS, which has been doing activities to enhance children's creativity in the digital age, will also occupy the space.

The "Super Education Association," which promotes educational reform, is also based out of CiP. That project is already underway.

"Super E-Sports School" is a community of schools and researchers who are passionate about e-sports.

This is a "super entrepreneurship school" that matches schools that are keen on entrepreneurship with entrepreneurs and VCs.

We have also established a CiP fund and have already invested in four content companies.

A silent rock streaming event with no audience was held in this hall at the opening in September. Aerial drone footage was also taken. I believe this suggested a possible route for a post-COVID model.

Digital Minister Takuya Hirai, who took an eager interest, said he would like to make this a branch of the Digital Agency.

Designs are underway to facilitate collaboration.

I'd like to roll this out laterally.

We hope to proceed with the creation of a "pop tech archipelago" that connects all the sites being conceived in various places.

In Nagoya, the "Station Ai" concept, a huge entrepreneurship support facility led by Aichi Prefectural Governor Omura, is getting into gear. CiP is responsible for building that community.

We are also promoting partnerships with overseas cities such as Seoul, Barcelona, and Shanghai.

As a showcase, pop and tech events will be held to coincide with next year's Olympics.

We hope to make this a global event that exceeds overseas pop and tech events.

Its name is Change Tomorrow, or Chomorrow for short.

The fourth industrial revolution. Society 5.0.

Artificial intelligence and robots are taking away our jobs. But let's leave the work to them.

The "super-leisure society" is coming.

Japan's Meiji, Taisho, Showa, and Heisei periods serve as signposts in the development and denouement of Japan's early modern to modern era, while the Reiwa era represents us opening the curtain on a new epoch of civilization that the human race has not entered before.

That's what CiP is here for.

Yet things changed under COVID-19.

What shall we do post-COVID?

New approaches to centralization and diffusion. New combinations of real + virtual. A new sense of density. That's what we have to design.

And we have to create this new normal to be more attractive than it was before COVID-19.

This is another piece of "homework" CiP is tasked with.

The plague of the 14th century. The authority of the church declined, and it was the Renaissance that came in its wake. Art and science.

What is COVID-19 leading us to rebuild?

The building up of pop & tech special zones,

The design of a super-leisure society around AI and robots,

The creation of the new normal post-COVID,

And a new Renaissance.

Those are the key themes CiP must grapple with.

Hope you'll follow us and stay tuned.