ABOUT
About Makigumi
A vacant-house revitalization company born in Ishinomaki.
We pursue homes that bring happiness to those who live in them
and remain sustainable for society.
MESSAGE
The "next" way of living
For ten years in Ishinomaki, we have kept facing vacant homes.
Here are the challenges that emerged — and the answer we chose.
01
Ishinomaki, our field
Based in Ishinomaki, Miyagi, we run rental operations that make use of vacant homes across Japan.
In Ishinomaki, where our work began, 22,000 homes were destroyed or washed away by the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011. Yet by 2018, 13,000 of the city's roughly 70,000 homes had become vacant — a vacancy rate more than 6 points higher than before the disaster.
While reconstruction demand rapidly supplied new housing, the population fell from 160,000 to 136,000. What remained were homes no one lived in.
02
Listening to landlords
After founding Makigumi in 2015, we received countless inquiries from landlords who owned vacant homes.
An elderly owner moves into care or passes away, leaving no one to live there, while relatives living far away have no prospect of returning. "Please do something about it" — we heard this story again and again.
We came to see that at the root of vacancy lie the problem of housing inheritance and an industrial structure that keeps oversupplying new homes even as the population shrinks.
Unless the mechanisms surrounding real estate — and the values of the people around them — change, the problem of vacant homes will never be solved.
03
Freedom as a value
"I make things, so I want a doma earthen-floor space." "I want to drive nails into the wall and build my own storage." "I travel between Japan and abroad, so a short-term contract would help." —
Creative, diverse people like these gathered in Makigumi's properties. Through this experience, we came to believe that "freedom" is the essential ingredient in realizing homes that bring happiness to residents and remain sustainable for society.
VISION
Toward co-creative rental operation
where landlords and residents
pool their ideas.
Makigumi's business model takes the "in-between" material of vacant homes that the market has abandoned, and — through simple, minimal services — offers residents a stage for diverse, free lifestyles.
From the Great East Japan Earthquake to the shock of COVID-19, as values around lifestyle shift dramatically, Makigumi keeps exploring and taking on challenges, updating the very nature of housing for the next generation through the vacant homes the market left behind.
Kyoko Watanabe, Representative Director, Makigumi Inc.
REPRESENTATIVE DIRECTOR
Kyoko Watanabe
Born in Ishinomaki, Miyagi. Founded Makigumi in 2014. Confronting the vacant-house problem that emerged through post-earthquake reconstruction, she drives the use of vacant homes across Japan under the concept of turning "liability real estate into asset real estate."
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