Hita in the World: Creating a Place for Intermingling that Connects the Region to the Globe

Masahiko Nishioka is the founder and representative of Hita Place. He began his activities in 2000 to revitalise the central part of Hita City. He was elected as the “Most Passionate Enthusiast in Ōita Prefecture” by Asahi Beer. He was head of the Community Centre Management Organisation in Hita and currently is also serving as a member of the Hita Citizens’ Cultural Centre Management Committee. He has been promoting collaboration among numerous stakeholders in the area around Hita main station, and, as a lifelong challenge, engaging in the formation of a sustainable local community through the means of interaction. In this blog post, he introduces his activities in his hometown.

Hita City is located in Oita Prefecture in a basin in northern Kyushu. The city is surrounded by mountains and historically used to be a tenryō, a land directly administered by the Edo shogunate in early modern times. More recently, it has gained popularity due to local revitalisation initiatives based on the characters of the manga series Attack on Titan, as Hita happens to be the birthplace of Hajime Isayama, the artist of the series.

However, Hita City faces similar challenges as other regional towns nationwide, such as a declining birth rate and an ageing population, as well as the hollowing out of its central business district. It is against this backdrop that I will discuss what a number of volunteers and I at Hita Place have been doing for 25 years and what has motivated us to continue our activities.

Hita Place is a volunteer organisation for bottom-up town development, whose participants range from high school students to senior citizens. Aiming to revitalise the central city area and to build up the local community, we organise a flea market called “Hita Ichi” at the central park near Hita-Station on the third Sunday of every month. By holding this event regularly once per month, we aim to connect people with each other and translate that energy into revitalising the local area.

The Globe from My Childhood and the Power of “Place” I Discovered in Australia

The origins of my engagement can be traced back to my own upbringing. As a child, the shopping district around Hita Station was my playground. I loved going shopping there with my mother and I enjoyed the casual conversations we shared with the shopkeepers. The candy shop was always filled with children’s laughter; it was truly a place where I felt at home.

At the same time, I was also a boy who loved spinning the globe and gazing at world maps. “Beyond this basin exists a much wider world”—this kind of curiosity soon evolved into a more general interest in global affairs. When I was in junior high school, the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War ended. Just as I started to hope for peaceful times, Iraq invaded Kuwait. I wondered how humanity could possibly settle these ceaseless conflicts?

Several years later, I talked to somebody from the former East Germany aboard a ship heading for South Korea. During our conversation, we were intrigued by the fact that while the Eurotunnel opened between Britain and France, an undersea tunnel between Japan and South Korea would remain difficult. This was not primarily a technical issue, but rather a matter of attitude. Just at that time South Korea restricted Japanese culture, and Japan, in turn, was not actively welcoming South Korean culture either. Studying international relations at university, I came to understand the importance of culture. However, I could not find a clear answer on how I personally should act more concretely.

After graduating from university, I headed to Australia, a country characterised by both experiences of multiculturalism and white supremacy. During my journey across the continent, I witnessed scenes of discrimination against Aboriginal people, yet I was also impressed by the flea markets held in various places. There, people regardless of ethnicity and status showed their talents, forming a rich community built on mutual understanding. On one occasion, a girl of about seven or eight was playing the violin. Her performance was by no means professional, yet somehow it struck me deeply. At that time, I became convinced that it is not about being skilled or not. To express oneself—this is what ultimately makes us human. I wondered whether such a local gathering place could be realised in my hometown of Hita too.

No matter how globally I thought, achieving world peace by my own efforts alone would be most difficult. Japan at that time also felt as if it was stuck in the aftermath of the bursting of the bubble economy. I decided to first create a place in Hita where people could value those close to them. So, I returned home and started engaging in community building efforts.

The Journey of Hita Ichi, Starting from Just Five Booths

When I returned to Hita, the shopping district had been gradually losing its former vibrant atmosphere. We first launched a flea market in front of the main station. At the beginning, we just had five stalls. As we held it in an area with little foot traffic, naturally, only a few customers visited our market. It could hardly be called a “flea market” in terms of scale, but we kept on holding it on a monthly basis. Ten years later, it had grown to a notable size that filled the entire square in front of the main station and it received substantial attention in the region.

For our tenth anniversary, we created a new logo. It expresses our aim to cultivate smiles among local people by connecting the “-” (minus) and “+” (plus) elements of the kanji characters for “Hita” (日田) with an arrow at the bottom. The design, where the dual polarities linked to each other appear as a smile, symbolises the transformation in a Gestalt psychological way that we strive for: the reversal of negative elements into positive value through a shift in perspective.

Following a request from Hita City Council, the venue was relocated to the newly developed square in front of the cultural facilities of the city. At this point of time, we also changed the name to that of the regular market “Hita Ichi”. The name entails a number of wishes expressed by the Japanese word ichi (“one”):

• The ichi as in ichi-go ichi-e—treasuring each encounter as it comes, once per month

• The ichi as a place where each individual’s unique character can shine

• The ichi that brings together Hita’s charms, as the “number one place” in Hita

It became a gathering place for like-minded individuals, who shared this vision. The venue was further equipped with sound systems, and we started organising stage events. Children from dance classes and professional jazz musicians appeared, transforming Hita Ichi from a mere marketplace into a place of performances where local talents could blossom.

People-Centred Revitalisation: Our Collaboration with John Mori and Businesses

In essence, town-building ultimately relies on people and their links among each other. One illustrative example for that is my encounter with a certain individual called Yoriyuki Mori. When we met, he remarked simply: “I’ll sing for you. I don’t have a guitar yet, but I’ll just go and buy one.” True to his words, he appeared a month later with a song he had written by himself. With his unique character he instantly raised our popularity. Later, he even appeared on television under the name “John Mori”. It was thanks to such individual personalities and their resonance with each other that Hita Ichi became an increasingly energetic place.

Further, having businesses interact and mingle with each other is another indispensable facet for regional revitalisation. Masakatsu Arakawa, the manager of the local construction company Tenryōmoku, who had long kindly watched over our activities, encouraged us to make the local street a pedestrian zone and hold our event there. He even offered to sponsor it. In recent years, more companies such as Muji have been seeking closer relationships with the region and have consequently been setting up booths at our market, regardless of whether or not they already had their own stores in town.

At Hita Ichi, a remarkably diverse range of people assemble, from eateries to farmers, welfare organisations, and people working in education. Although we occasionally receive feedback that our motto is rather difficult to grasp, we stick to our clear objective of “intermingling” or majiri-ai in Japanese.

In a manner similar to the concept of chanpuru from Okinawa and Nagasaki’s chanpon¹, majiri-ai suggests that out of the blending of different elements new cultures and appeal arise. In that sense, we do our best to remain a place for mutual understanding, where people of all ages and backgrounds mix casually and find space for expressing their individuality. In 2022, a family who had fled from Ukraine to Hita also participated in Hita Ichi, setting up a booth for nail art. While arguably receiving donations is important for evacuees, we believe that offering chances to participate in society and interact with the locals lead to a more genuine form of support that is also empowering. We find that providing a safe space where everyone is warmly welcomed may result in a community better than the current one.

We have also engaged in activities beyond Hita Ichi. We successfully proposed to Hita City Council to hold a survey on the current situation of volunteer groups in the city. Based on this data, we organised the “Town-Building Cultural Festival” in 2013 to connect these groups. At that time, there were 136 town-building organisations in Hita City, yet they had little interaction. We planned this event to provide an opportunity for them to learn about each other’s activities. Through this event, we mingled with the cosplay group that would later become the starting point for the Attack on Titan town revitalisation project, forming a relationship where we would support each other.

Translating a Story into Reality: Becoming a Platform that Connects to the Future

The Hita Citizens’ Musical became interested in our activities and performed a play based on them. It tells the story of high school students, who, while revitalising a quiet market, discover their own paths for their futures through that experience. We were inspired by the desire to actually make this fictional story a real one.

In 2025, we asked Hita High School’s broadcasting club to moderate the stage. Now, each month, the venue is filled with the energy of young people. This connection has diffused to other student activities as well, e.g., becoming a place for efforts in social implementation, where high school students can think of the town’s future as something that lies within their own responsibilities. To be sure, it is not easy to restore the vibrancy of everyday life in public through just one monthly event. Yet, the community forged through Hita Ichi has undoubtedly become a key platform for the region in terms of revitalisation.

Our next step is to translate this connection into our everyday lives—from community creation to community business. One day, I hope to run a community café for everybody (locals and foreign visitors alike), further developing the area around Hita Station into a regional hub. And from here, we will connect the Hita region to the world.

To conclude, our series of activities may be seen as something similar to the environmental sustainability work of nurturing rich forests, purifying rivers, and waiting for fish to return upstream once again. It is about creating an environment that nurtures children to develop their dreams but also the wish to eventually return to Hita later in their lives. Even if they do not return, I believe that the young people raised here will keep their dreams alive and spread their wings toward a better world. From Hita’s forests they will be able to let their ideas reach out to the world.

I sincerely look forward to the day when I can have a conversation here in this place called Hita with each of you who kindly read this post.

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1. Both chanpuru and chanpon are dishes of Southern Japan that are characterised by a mixture of various ingredients. Their names express this kind of blended composition. ↩︎

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