Theme: Relay your story

This year’s theme is “Relay your story.”
Each of us has our own “thoughts,” which are embedded in things like culture or history, relationships between master and pupil who have traditional skills, fellows who share the same vision for a sport or job, family ties between parents and children, or brothers and sisters, friendships and so on. Everything is connected through thoughts. There are numerous stories worth spreading as those stories are handed down. What kinds of ideas were born at the moment the stories began or when the stories were passed on?

PORTO
Chuo-ku South 1 West 22 1-1
Sapporo, Hokkaidô, 064-0801
Japan

Bruce Gutlove

Mr. Bruce Gutlove was born in New York in1961. While in State University of New York, he took a course on wines, then he got interested in wines and founded a wine club. He tasted a wide variety of wines, gradually deepening his interest. In 1985, he enrolled in the UC Davis, which had the most authoritative viticulture and enology department in the US. He started learning enology in earnest and determined to become a wine maker. After graduation, he worked at famous wineries in California, learning and training to make wines in practice. In 1989, he was called into the COCO FARM & WINERY in Ashikaga, Tochigi as a consultant, and he moved to Japan. COCO produced world-class wines 100% from grapes grown in Japan. While working for COCO FARM & WINERY, he increased desire to make own wines. In 2009, he established his winery, “10R” in Iwamizawa, Hokkaido. He has been making efforts to spread the wonder and delight in brewing wines and the tips to enjoy them throughout Japan.

Chisa Tsubota

Ms.Chisa Tsubota started jazz dance and ballet in her childhood and joined the theater company ‘I’M’ in 2001. In 2008, she enrolled in the Broadway Dance Center-in New York and acquired dance styles in jazz, musical theatre, contemporary, tap, ballet, hip hop as well as singing while making appearances on many dance shows and stages. After returning home, in 2010, she directed, choreographed and played the leading role in an original production by ‘I’M’, “Tsukifune no Miko Monogatari”: The story of Priestess on the Moon Ship, for Art Appreciation Day at Sapopro Odori High School. In the same year, she took part in many other stages including Anne of Green Gables sponsored by S.T. Corporation. Her local contributions include directing stage events, making event appearance, organizing flash mob at weddings, choreographing for YOSAKOI, making artist bookings, and holding workshops, as well as being a contracted choreographer.

Hideto Fujino

Mr. Hideto Fujino has worked as a fund manager for well-known asset management companies He has a long experience investing in SMEs, and has interviewed more than 6,500 CEOs within 25 years. In 2003, He started his own company, Rheos Capital Works, Inc., and manages its mutual funds “Hifumi Fund” and “Hifumi Plus.” He continues to show outstanding performance and “Hifumi Fund” has won the R& I Fund Award for 4 consecutive years. He also actively invests in start-ups, five of which have successfully gone public. One of them, Premium Water Holdings, Inc., was launched by Mr. Fujino himself and he continues to be a director.

Kaori Kuribayashi-Shigetomi

Ms. Kaori Kuribayashi-Shigetomi was born in Takikawa and grew up in Eniwa, Shizunai and Sapporo. During her stay in the Oregon Institute of Technology in the United States, she took a medical class, which wakened her desire to contribute to the medical services using her knowledge in engineering. She performed researches to develop medical equipment in the master’s course in Hokkaido University, before developing a medical device named “origami stent graft” using the folding pattern of origami during her doctoral course in Oxford University. Since then, she devoted herself in various studies as a Doctor of Origami Engineering. Having come back to Japan, she established the “cell origami” technique at the University of Tokyo, which enables three-dimensional cell culture folded like origami, with the micro-nano processing technology. Currently, she endeavors to apply this cell origami technology to regenerative medicine at Hokkaido University.

Masayo Takahashi

After serving as an assistant at Kyoto University Hospital, she became a researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in 1955, where she found potential of using stem cells for retina treatment. In August 2013, she started a clinical study using autologous induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to treat exudative age-related macular degeneration, and performed the world’s first case of implantation in September 2014. She is now the project leader at the Laboratory for Retinal Regeneration Research in RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology. She specializes in retinal degeneration, macular affection, regenerative therapy and low-vision care. Apart from her research, she has launched the “isee!” movement to transform the public image of the visually challenged. She established NEXT VISION in 2014 and assumed its director in 2016, with the vision “to help the supported to support others”.

Sachiko Asanome

From Sorachi Sub-prefecture of Hokkaido and she moved from place to place due to her parents’ job within Sorachi District in her childhood. In 1995, she somehow applied for a welfare volunteer position for Sapporo Snow Festival, which was the start of her career and she came to realize and find much of interest in “intriguing welfare” by seizing the same society through different points of view.And then, she has been involved in “Welfare volunteer house for Sapporo Snow Festival” by being concerned with Mobility Support Services. She is mainly engaged in home care support furthermore in-home care, and employment support so that challenged people can live life their own way. In addition to that she works for dispatching caregivers, consulting for travelers, caregiving technical assistance and training, and conducting collaborative projects among agriculture, welfare, and sightseeing.

Satoshi Nakajima

Mr.Satoshi Nakajima had a strong interest in computers and started writing articles on computer magazines and developing software at ASCII Corporation during high school. At university he developed “CANDY” a CAD software for PC. After graduating college he worked at NTT Musashino R&D Center but joined the startup of Microsoft KK. Afterwards he moved to US Microsoft Corporation and worked on the Next Generation OS interface design. He worked as software architect for Windows95, InternetExplorer 3.0/4.0 and Windows 98. In 2000 he left Microsoft to work at a VC and then started UIEvolution Inc. as the CEO and began the development of “UIENgine” for GUI. In 2004 the company was acquired by Square Enix Co., Ltd. but they went independent again via MBO. They got investments from Intel Capital Corporation and ITOCHU Corporation as a venture business and he returned to the CEO position in 2016.