How Japan Is Working Towards Creating a True Sharing Economy

Summary

When entrepreneurs Alisa Sanada and Megumi Kusunoki started Nagomi Visit, a nonprofit, volunteer-run platform, their motivation was neither profit nor fame. They wanted to offer people living in rural Japanese towns an opportunity to benefit from the large number of tourists visiting the country by creating a platform for local residents to share meals with visitors. This was part of their larger goal for people to form friendships through cultural exchange. When they launched the organization in 2011, the sharing economy had already begun revolutionizing numerous sectors in the U.S., Europe, and other parts of the world. But it hadn’t really taken off in Japan. That’s been changing. Today, Nagomi Visit has over 1,000 hosts all over Japan. Sanada and Kusunoki also launched a site in traditional Chinese this year that’s targeted at visitors from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Along with government-led efforts to create Sharing Cities, a strong push from the country’s massive cooperative sector, and the proliferation of nonprofits like Nagomi Visit, a genuine sharing economy could take root in the world’s third largest economy.