Who is NPO Sawauchi Hakuraku?
NPO Sawauchi Hakuraku is located at 2-56-1 Aza-Ohno, Sawauchi, Nisiwagamachi, Waga-gun, Iwate Prefecture.
Sada Izumikawa died in April 2012 and the house lost its owner. I, Misao Torii, who is the grand niece of Sada and had been involved with Sada for about 7 years as a guradian of adult, and my husband, Kiyoshi Torii, have deepened our feeling to make use of this house in some way to the people who live in the region every time we visited the house. Look at the photograph of the house when it was built. How atmospheric it is! It was build in 1881.

There was a proposal to break down the house and offer the gound for the use of welfare but we chose to utilize it as it was. Thus, we continuously talked about our thoughths to establish a non-profitable organization for the management of the house for the use of the people in the area, offering information from outside and place of communication. Now, as the repair is settled, we would like to borrow good ideas for its utilization from all of you.

Presently, many mountanous areas have ownerless houses and young people are setting out to cities. We would like to send a message of "activating mountenous areas" from Sawauchi, Iwate, even a small part of its activities.
Sawauchi is a place richly endouwed with nature and where time goes by slowly. It was once referred to as "Tibet of Japan" because of its remoteness but, now, it is only a distance of one hour from Kitakami-shi, Iwate Prefecture, and even closer from Yokote-shi, Akita Prefecture with the fulfillment of road networks. In the supermarket of Yudamachi, foods from both Pacific Ocean and Japan Sea are offered and vegetables and fruits are also abundant. Since 2014, the house has been used as a camp site of the Never-ending Internaltional Workcapmps Exchange (NICE) in cooperation with Chusankan Forum (representative: Prof. Shin-ichi Shogenji) and Ohno Community Farming Association (representative: Mr. Masakazu Takahashi).

---

Return