Atsuko Isamoto | TEDxTokyo 2013
Japan has approximately 430 inhabited islands. It took Atsuko Isamoto, though, to create a website called Ritokei linking them all together. With the aid of local magazine editors, business advertising directors, and illustrators, she established Ritokei in 2010 to consolidate news from remote islands, operating under the theme “Let’s light a fire under Japan’s remote islands.” Updated daily, Ritokei offers insights into island events, economies, products and more.
Since the current Internet environment tends to be light on information geared toward remote islanders, there is now a beautifully laid-out quarterly print version of Ritokei as well.
In 2012, Ritokei won a Lohas Design Award from the LOHAS Club. Atsuko’s current pursuit, called the Island Books Project, involves assembling a collection of publications on Japan’s remote atolls. She hopes this will result in a bookshelf dedicated to these islands in hundreds of bookstores nationwide.