Theme: Dive into Diversity

Let's leave this comfortable daily life for Diversity in the ocean of possibility.
Let's Dive into Diversity to create future, where everyone can develop their uniqueness through a friendly competition to give each other.
Let's rise up!

Since the port was opened, Kobe's open-minded climate has been a platform that receives various cultures from overseas and dispatches them to inside and outside Japan.
Kobe is a familiar and modern city with a dash of posh taste.
The image of this city probably comes from the various activities of our predecessors.

Kobe is a home to a large number of the diverse range of wonderful people and communities who are proud of the city.
However, they are pretty much playing their own roles individually and failing to make the most of their potentials and possibilities that only this diversity can realize.
Only a variety of people and community live next to each other does not mean they have chemistry.
This is a waste of diversity.
We believe that we should be able to embrace and respect for each other to live our each life sometimes individually and other times in harmony with each other.

We would like everyone to make TEDxKobe 2015 an opportunity to share ideas from diverse fields and genres of people in order to rediscover our surrounding world through the ideas.
We would like to draw a picture of our future: where only because we are different, we can improve ourselves each other; and only because we give to each other, we can make new creativities happen.

The word 'community' derives from Latin words 'each' and 'gift'.
Our concept of 'community' in the true meaning of it does not indicate only a mass of people, but also the people's relationships where the only difference can allow people give each other.
We believe that such group of people who are connected with each other under these relationships can make the world better.
Thus, we believe that the world of 'diversity' is such a world where people and community respect each other to extend their potentials and possibility together.

Welcome to the world of Diversity where the difference is celebrated!

Dive into Diversity
TEDxKobe Organizer
FUNAHASHI Takeo

Art Center of Kobe
Kumochibashidori 7-1-13, Chuo-ku
Kobe, Hyôgo, 651-0055
Japan

HAIOKA

Electronic Music Artist

Haioka, inspired by popular-traditional Japanese arts such as Ukiyo-e and Kabuki, offers his unique musical interpretation of modern Japan that blends up the old and the new. He produces his music mostly through his Japanese harp he got from his grandmother, his own voice, and electronic sounds. Way more different from retro-culture or common remake versions of retro-culture, he is always trying to express unique Japanese sense of time and space called "wabi-sabi", Japanese approach to try to live in harmony with nature, and Japanese virtue to find strong will in ambiguous words. His music takes various elements in as if weaving past and present into future. He is also highly acclaimed by overseas audience, bringing up new fashion of Japanese music to the world.

Edward SUMOTO

Social Activist

Mr. SUMOTO Edward, who has a Venezuelan father and a Japanese mother, was born and grew up in Kobe. He organizes Mixed Roots Japan, a volunteer group that promotes various exchanges among multi-cultural people related to Japan. "Mixed Roots" is a set of words that indicates people with culturally and racially diverse identities. This group is organizing a wide range of activities including family events, community radio programs, cultural exchanges through art and music, and workshops on expression for young adults. As an academic figure, Mr. Sumoto also proactively promotes social communication through tie-ups with both domestic and international universities. As one of those who experienced the disaster of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, he has been engaged in the activities focused on the importance of town community, and sustainable energy business that utilizes 'satoyama biomass' as his main occupation.

Ichiro KANAYA

Media Artist

The boy who watched 'The Universe', the whole-sky 3D movie ever screened for the first time in the world, was inspired by a highly sophisticated fusion of computer technologies and artistic expressions. 30 years later, the boy grew up and now he, Mr. KANAYA Ichiro, is a man of various talent such as a computer scientist, a new media designer, an ancient tumuli researcher, and a doctor of engineering. While he is conducting his researches to pursue scientific understandings of art works with applying computer technologies, he himself is a globally acclaimed artist whose collaborated art work won a prize at Kobe Biennale. Having been through Cambodia and Turkey for the purposes of preservation and digitalization of World Heritage Sites, he is also engaged in researches into World Heritage Sites in Egypt. What are we going to get inspired by him who plays active roles in a field where art and technology seamlessly meet?

Jun YAMADERA

Cycle Evangelist

Mr. YAMADERA Jun was fascinated by the infinite possibility of the Internet from its early period. He started an IT venture company in his hometown, Aizu in Fukushima. He had innovated various things with his mission of creating a magical digital culture since the year of Hanshin Awaji Earthquake. 16 years later, in 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake struck his hometown and brought unprecedented damage there. Even now, Fukushima has tremendous unsolved problems, and at the same time it is considered that Fukushima has the world urgent problems that must be settled immediately. Mr. Yamadera, who is always in search of cutting-edge technology, is now challenging to solve this serious situation more quickly than anyone else. His magical technology will give a new value even to bicycles which are very familiar to us, and will let them shine.

Lilian Terumi HATANO

Educator

As some may know, there used to be the National Kobe Emigrant Camp in Kobe, from where a lot of Japanese had been encouraged to immigrate especially to South America. Ms. Lilian Terumi HATANO, whose parents are Japanese immigrants to Brazil, is a 2nd generation of Japanese Brazilian and a first generation of Brazilian living in Japan. She studies in education of expatriates in Japan, especially working on multiculturalism as well as native (heritage) language education. Each immigrant has their own situation: They have various sorts of issues to solve out. Children with foreign nationalities or backgrounds are faced up on many ‘gaps’ including ones between languages, cultures, and customs. She is working on solutions for various issues caused by these gaps. See what questions she is going to raise to the world through her talk.

Makio TAKEDA

Insect Physiologist

Mr. TAKEDA Makio, an insect physiologist, has been fascinated with insects since his childhood. As studying entomology in the agricultural department of university, he decided to occupy himself with something relating to insects. Since then on, he has been researching in insect physiology and biochemistry at universities, companies, research institutions domestic and overseas. Currently he is not only teaching at universities, but also working as a director of an incorporated non-profit organization for children and insects. He organizes a traveling insectariums that visits nursery and primary schools, and gives lectures to primary schoolers. Through these activities, he encourages children to communicate with living nature. He is also one of those who operate Sayo-cho Insectariums. He wishes that people would open up their mind more toward highly-diverse societies.

Mari KATAYAMA

Artist

Ms. KATAYAMA Mari, was born tibial hemimelia, a deficiency in which the major and larger leg bone is absent. She had her both legs amputated when she was a 3rd grader. Then she bumped into a huge wall against her classmates who were in the most susceptible period of life, and she struggled in vein to break it through logically. Eventually she stared to express herself visually like by drawing on her prosthetic legs. She says, 'I do not care about things beyond my control' without hesitation but with a smile. She never sets limits on what she wants to do. For example, she accomplished her High Heel Project (performing in high-heels), which had been considered impossible. Currently she is embodying her unique creativity by working on a wide range of activities such as producing her self-portraits wearing high heels on her ornamented/decorated artificial legs, singing and modeling at concerts, giving lectures at universities.

Mari MATSUSHITA

PR Advisor

Ms. MATSUSHITA Mari, her ambition to publicize whole Kobe city led her to work at public relations office of Kobe city. She was chosen from the public. That was the first open recruitment Kobe city offered. Until March 2015, she had worked as a public relations officer of Kobe city, and has connected Kobe city government and the citizens of Kobe by providing government information intelligibly. She is now engaged in branding Kobe from both governmental and non-governmental viewpoints by promoting video projects or on-location shoots in the city. Twenty years have passed since Kobe experienced the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. What is the message to be sent from Kobe and what is the attractiveness to be newly discovered? “BE KOBE” can be one suggestion on those questions. It is a project which inspired by people in Kobe who are trying to solve social problems after the earthquake. This project she is working on with people in town shows us new possibilities of Kobe.

Ryo IKESHIMA

Event Organizer

It was one concert that Mr. IKESHIMA Ryo was convinced of the power of entertainment for the first time. At that time he was a university student working part-time at the concert. After the concert he saw every face of the audience turned into a smile. That made him believe the potentiality of entertainment so that he decided to study in New York. He worked as an intern at a local event organizing company and experienced street events operation. He believes that a ‘healthy community’ is the place in which people with different skin colors, different in size, and different body smell naturally live together, enjoy together and share the life. Back in Japan, he met the members of a leisure sword battle (IKUSA) team and has been organizing events across Japan. He is aiming for revitalizing communities through entertainment. He says he prefers to be a person who casts spotlights on someone rather than a one who stands in the spotlight.

Yu YAMAKAMI

Environmental Infrastructure Researcher

Toilets! Nothing is more attractive for Ms.YAMAKAMI Yu. This toilet-loving girl went to university to study ‘thermal environment in the restroom systems’, and got a toilet-relating job which she is now engaged in. When it comes to toilets, she can hardly stop talking about them. With the deepest love for toilets, she tells us about the histories and the world of toilets which are totally unknown to us. She is currently working in Kenya, Africa, where sewage systems have not been established yet, in order to develop and facilitate the spread of next-generation toilet systems applying biotechnology and Japanese know-hows. The way she is working on her toilet systems will make us aware of the possibilities and attractiveness of future lavatory systems which we have never realized.