Miho Imada was born in Akitsu Town (today’s Higashihiroshima City) in Hiroshima Prefecture. After graduating from Meiji University, Imada worked at a major department store and a traditional arts group before returning to her hometown in 1994 to join Imada Sake Brewing. With a desire to produce sake unique to Akitsu and Hiroshima, she revived the native variety of sake rice called “Hattanso”, which had not been produced for more than a century. She has also proactively opened up overseas markets. The brewery’s Fukucho Hattanso Junmai Ginjo sake has garnered wide acclaim overseas, such as winning the highest Platinum Award at the Kura Master competition in France for two consecutive years, and the Gold Award at the international sake competition CINVE2021 in Spain. She was the only Japanese to be selected for the BBC’s “100 Women” in 2020.

Born in Mihara City in Hiroshima Prefecture, Yuya Ota moved to Tokyo to study at Meiji University. At the age of 25 he set up forC Inc., offering consulting services for regional development. Using his experience working with food-related businesses in Mihara City, and with a desire to solve the local issues by himself, he set up Setouchi Jozojo based on the “Wine and Wineries that Travels in Setouchi” concept in 2019. Through Setouchi Jozojo, he promotes the terroir (climate) of the Setouchi area both domestically and internationally by producing wine from various regions in Setouchi and pairing them with Setouchi cuisine. He is working to solve local issues such as agriculture and the inheritance of food culture.

Born in the UK, Paul Walsh joined the JET Program after graduating from university and worked as an English teacher in Oita Prefecture for three years. After that, he traveled around Asia and came to Hiroshima. While working as a lecturer at Hiroshima University of Economics, in 2000 he launched “GetHiroshima.com” to communicate the appeals of Hiroshima in English. Also, he published tourist information maps focusing on restaurants in Hiroshima City and the free magazine “Get Hiroshima”. Considering restaurants as key places to link tourists visiting Japan with Japanese, he particularly focuses on communicating information on food. In 2018, he established JizoHat. Today, he promotes the charms of the Hiroshima area and local news via his website and social media platforms, offers consulting services for inbound tourism, and engages in promotion projects for local governments.

In 2009, Michihiro Shirakami launched Japan in Motion, a regular TV program broadcasted in France, creating a centralized platform for promotion and sales channel development. Today he works as a producer on overseas development, helping to develop overseas markets for Hiroshima oysters and Japanese sake, as well as the overseas market development promotion projects of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Further, while implementing sales tests and conducting marketing surveys, he has also developed sales channels for Kyoto tea, fresh Wasabi from Azumino City in Nagano Prefecture, and processed food products from Hiroshima Prefecture in France, Monaco, Los Angeles, and Thailand. For his achievements, he has been awarded the Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications Award and was appointed as regional revitalization leader by the Cabinet Office. In the approximately four years since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, he has supported the development of sales channels for 225 processed food products and succeeded in many of them.

With a Ph.D in system engineering, Tomomi Nonaka specializes in production system engineering and service engineering. After graduating from the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies at Keio University, she worked in web marketing at a company, and completed the Master’s and Doctorate degrees at Keio University as an inaugural member of the Graduate School of System Design and Management. Later, she worked as a project assistant professor at the Kobe University Graduate School of System Informatics, assistant professor at the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, College of Science and Engineering, Aoyama Gakuin University, as well as in other positions before taking up her current role. In recent years, she has been engaged in research on system design of sustainable society and business, and that of human-machine co-creation service production considering employee satisfaction. She is also involved in such projects as the GAstroEdu Project for the co-creation of regional value that connects people and regions through the theme of food, system designing of food services through human-machine co-creation, Onomichi Setoda Lemon Project in Hiroshima Prefecture, Potato Adventure in Kutchan Town, Hokkaido, and Beef Adventure in Iwaizumi Town, Iwate Prefecture.

Born in Fukuoka Prefecture, Shujiro Kusumoto joined Recruit Cosmos after graduating from the School of Political Science and Economics at Waseda University. He then worked for Ohmae Kenichi Office in 1993 and established Cafe Company, Inc. in 2001. He positioned “Cafe (Community Access for Everyone)” as an essential infrastructure in the next generation to create communities with sensitivity and empathy between people. Through his company, he is engaged in restaurant planning and management, the production of commercial facilities, and regional revitalization. In 2021, he set up Good Eat Company, Inc. alongside NTT Docomo, with the vision of “connecting the thoughts, experiences, and techniques of those who love Japanese food to the future and disseminate them to the wider world”. He is also a current member of the Cool Japan Strategy Committee promoted by the Cabinet Office.

Born in Tochigi City in Tochigi Prefecture, Kenichi Watanabe graduated from Gakushuin University before joining KDDI and the Asahi Shimbun Company. He went on to study social media marketing and media strategy at the University of California San Diego and international business at the University of Washington. He returned to the Asahi Shimbun Company after returning to Japan, and worked on a collaborative project with the Japanese government. In 2008, he was then dispatched to the Office for the Promotion of Regional Revitalization at the Cabinet Secretariat. He established the regional production company Genki Japan in 2010, the public-private social production company XPJP in 2015, and a space design company Space SAGA in 2021. He currently develops a range of collaborative projects nationwide with governments, businesses, media outlets, and citizens across Japan. He also serves as a visiting professor at the Kyoto University of the Arts, a visiting professor at the Tohoku University of Art and Design, and a researcher at the Graduate School of System Design and Management at Keio University. One of his hobbies is playing lacrosse.