Vision
A society where people enjoy living things, daily life, and the life of the Earth.
NATIONAL VISION / MISSION / PHILOSOPHY
Toward Japan as a biodiversity monitoring nation.
Turning the joy of nature into local records and pride.
Photographing street trees. Walking through parks. Meeting people through observation events. Small records like these can deepen attachment to place, connect people with local land, and build data that supports biodiversity. ikimon exists to implement that cycle in society.
CORE MESSAGE
The more people record nearby nature, the more interesting communities become, and the stronger Japan’s nature becomes as a national asset.
What matters to us is not putting grand ideals first, but increasing good everyday relationships with nearby nature. Enjoyment becomes attachment, attachment connects people and places, and those connections can grow into records society can use.
Mission
Expand opportunities to encounter, enjoy, and grow fond of nature.
Turn that connection into continuous records, healthier lives, deeper local attachment, and a more sustainable future.
READING / WHY NOW
Japan has the conditions to turn nature into a next-generation asset.
Japan has a surface area of about 378,000 square kilometers. Counting the 193 UN member states and 2 observer states gives a reference set of 195 countries, and Japan sits in the low 60s by area. In a country-and-territory area comparison, Japan ranks 61st.
It is not a giant country by area. Yet its long archipelago concentrates climates from subarctic to subtropical, mountains, rivers, coasts, satoyama landscapes, and urban green spaces into a limited land area.
The Japanese archipelago is also recognized as a global biodiversity hotspot with a high level of endemism. Japan’s advantage is not sheer size, but dense diversity, uniqueness, and everyday accessibility.
Walkable streets, managed parks, schools, libraries, museums, shopping streets, shrines, temples, and corporate green spaces can all become entrances to observation. When observation walks and multi-site rallies are added, nature becomes a tourism resource, an educational resource, and a way to meet local people.
Land
About 378,000 km² / 61st
Japan ranks 61st in a country-and-territory area comparison, yet concentrates diverse climate and landforms.
Endemism
About one quarter
Roughly one quarter of Japan’s vertebrate species are endemic.
Everyday nature
Trees, parks, water
Monitoring can begin next to daily life, not only in remote wilderness.
What the world now needs is not just more data, but meaningful monitoring.
BioMonWeek 2026 highlighted key challenges for biodiversity monitoring: data that can inform policy, standardized and reproducible methods, clear purposes, collective efforts, and careful use of new technologies.
Excellent tools and services are increasing. But collecting data alone does not change society. Monitoring needs repeated observation, local understanding, and pathways into education, tourism, business, public policy, and conservation.
In simple terms, the monitoring we need is this:
- 1 Record the same places over time in comparable ways.
- 2 Create entry points where local people can participate, not only experts.
- 3 Keep photos, location, season, species names, and environmental change in verifiable forms.
- 4 Connect records to local learning, conservation, tourism, business, and public decisions.
Social implementation cannot happen through the web alone.
Biodiversity monitoring requires people who walk the land, guide others, connect facilities, and interpret records.
Observation events let children meet trusted adults in the community, and let adults speak about the nature of their own town. Walk rallies can connect parks, shops, schools, museums, corporate sites, and public facilities into one experience.
Connecting land, nature, people, and data with persistence is what moves Japan toward becoming a biodiversity monitoring nation.
ikimon realizes this with the support of AI and the participation of people.
AI can help organize species candidates, review records, generate reports, and reveal local changes. But the main actor is the person who walks, notices, enjoys, and records. ikimon is a platform for growing local attachment and globally useful biodiversity data from the same everyday experience.
Philosophy
Before we speak of protection, we create an entrance people can enjoy.
We believe our relationship with nature begins not with obligation, but with Enjoy Life.
People naturally want to care for what they have come to love.
Connection with nature supports mind and body, changes how we see where we live, and nurtures attachment.
That accumulation creates local vitality, strengthens sustainability, and ultimately supports biodiversity.
ikimon aims to help citizens, companies, and communities record, learn from, and use biodiversity as an everyday experience.
That is why we speak of nature first as something people can encounter, feel, and enjoy, before framing it only as something to protect.
Origin Story
Where this way of thinking began
I flipped over a stepping stone by the front door, and found an earwig underneath.
In Iwanai, Hokkaido, my first hometown, I spent my early childhood surrounded by the sea, mountains, and rivers. Places close at hand, like the garden or the ski slope, became the stage for my first encounters with living things.
I would turn over the stone pavers by the entrance to catch earwigs. In autumn, I chased migratory locusts on the ski slope. Small encounters like that were enough to make the world feel endlessly fascinating.
Almost none of those moments remain as photographs. That is why I want to create experiences where discoveries can be recorded and revisited again and again.
Not only untouched wilderness, but also nearby places shaped by human hands can become entrances to nature. That lived feeling sits at the root of IKIMON Inc.’s Vision, Mission, and Philosophy.
THE CYCLE WE BELIEVE IN
The cycle ikimon believes in
Enjoying nature does not end as leisure. Encountering, getting familiar with, and recording the living world gradually changes both the person and the place. ikimon wants to increase that flow in daily life and connect it to citizen participation and biodiversity action by companies and communities.
Enjoy nature
Encountering, feeling, and recording nature becomes the entry point.
Become healthier
Mind and body gain more room to breathe and recover.
Love where you live
The resolution of everyday places increases, and attachment grows.
Strengthen the community
More people get involved, and local vitality and sustainability rise.
Support the future
That momentum ultimately contributes to biodiversity.
Would you like to make Enjoy Life a shared social experience?
We want to turn the enjoyment of nature into continuous records, healthier lives, and stronger local communities. If that direction resonates with you, we would like to talk.
Contact UsIKIMON Inc. / Hamamatsu, Shizuoka