What the Earthquake Did Not Take

A reflection on the Noto Social Impact Capstone, May 2026

There is a warehouse by the sea in Kuroshima (黒島) where the fishermen keep their boats. The coastline looks further away than ever. Sugino-san slid the heavy door open and we stepped inside. The surfboards and a boat were placed, waiting to be in the sea again. Sugino-san walked slowly between them and began to talk.

We went through the history of Kuroshima: how prosperous and lively the town was, long before any of us arrived. How they caught and prepared food and brought it to the table. We also talked about the tools the fishermen use, which are old by design, deliberately, almost stubbornly old. Not because they can't afford better, but because they decided, a long time ago, that if you take too much, there is nothing left for the people who come after you.

I stood there and felt that I had arrived somewhere.

* * *

Twelve members of the Social Impact Project arrived on the Noto Peninsula on May 14th. We each chose our project based on personal and professional interest, stayed the first three nights in Wajima city (輪島市) together, and then separated into two groups by location. There were four project teams in total.

Team Asaichi: Sam, Masa, Jingya

Team Noto Renpuku: Tomoki, Soma, Ramith

Team Living Noto Dialogue (Guesthouse Kuroshima): Alex, Minami, Nick

Team Rebranding Noto: Emilie, Jia, Hangai

Most of us, except for our Japanese classmates, had never experienced a real earthquake. Living in the same dorm building, we often felt small quakes, but that was about it. Before our departure, we had read and learned about the earthquake and its impact, but none of it was as real as what we actually observed in Noto. It did not take long to realize that, yes — the recovery is rather slow. But what we agreed on, as a whole SIP team, was that we did not want to see it as all sadness and destruction. We knew there was more than that in Noto. And our mission during our nine days was figuring out what that was.

* * *

On the first full day, May 15th, Harada-sensei from Kanazawa University 's Volunteer Support Club sent us out into the neighborhoods to conduct surveys. Our job was to speak to the locals and hear their concerns. I had never done an interview in Japanese before, so naturally I was nervous. With my classmate Jia, I walked to the community hall and met the chairman. He sat down with us as if we had all the time in the world and talked for nearly an hour. About what he missed. About what scared him. About the Matsuri and the Asaichi (朝市) market, not as tourist attractions, but as the occasions around which people had organized their sense of who they were. It was a valuable hour where I felt I heard something real.

The next day, May 16th, was our cultural exchange event, the one we had spent the previous afternoon preparing for, handing out pamphlets, setting up country booths. I represented both South Korea and Canada, which was ambitious. For two hours we met children, elderly residents, young couples, and volunteers from all over Ishikawa. It not only helped me connect more with the locals, it also gave me more confidence in approaching them. Two students from Kanazawa University helped us run it. Watching them reminded me of my own years of community service; because I knew how hard it is to give that time, I felt genuine respect for them. And underneath that, I started thinking about what I could do for Noto.

* * *

On Sunday, May 17th, our Living Noto Dialogue team (me, Minami, and Nick) and the Rebranding Noto team took a bus an hour west along the coast to Kuroshima. Kuroshima is a preservation district, centuries-old buildings with dark wooden walls and tiled roofs, a village that had been old for a very long time before the earthquake shook it. Before January 2024, three hundred people lived here. The town was quiet and we could see many damaged buildings. Yet the village was beautiful, and once we stepped inside it, it felt like time had stopped.

Guesthouse Kuroshima sits near the sea. Sugino-san, CEO of Minato (湊), was younger than most of the people we met on this trip. He quit his civil service job after the earthquake and started his business around two core purposes: to help and give back to the local Noto and Kuroshima community, and to help people who feel uncertain about their lives and work by showing them a different way of living: the way of Kuroshima and Noto. I don't think Sugino-san had me in mind as his main audience, but it resonated with me deeply. I was looking for what I, as an individual, could actually do here.

Over four days from May 18th to 21st, our team facilitated a retreat for Guesthouse Kuroshima, with Sugino-san, Hisako-san, and Keiko-san. Each day we planned different activities and agendas for developing their business strategy and growth, covering both the current guesthouse and the new one they were planning, and how to implement it all. We also focused on knowledge transfer, so that the work would not end with us; that it could continue and sustain on their own.

On some days, other project teams joined our retreat. On Monday and Thursday, the Noto Rebranding team was with us, and on Wednesday, Team Asaichi joined. There was something quietly powerful about that. Different groups who had been working on different corners of the same problem, now able to bring insights gathered from different sites. When the Asaichi team arrived in Kuroshima on Wednesday and asked questions that cut straight through assumptions we had stopped questioning, I was grateful for them in a way I hadn't expected. We could see the synergy of our groups working together, and it was a great reminder of the power of collaboration.

At Guesthouse Kuroshima, we also had a valuable encounter with a Hitotsubashi ICS Senpai, Saka-san, whose hometown is Kuroshima. Now living and having built his career in Tokyo, he shared with us his perspective on what Noto means when seen from the outside. He talked about what he called the bonding quality of Noto, the kind of social fabric that Tokyo, for all its convenience, does not produce. The social value in a place like this, he said, is real; it doesn't translate well into the language that business and government use to measure things. And it is something that even people in Noto often haven't fully recognized in themselves. Capturing that social value while also creating economic value is the homework that the Noto community carries. I realized that this is exactly where we, as MBA students, could contribute something meaningful.

That same evening, we had dinner with members of the local fishermen's association. I had been told that communities in Noto could be guarded around outsiders. What I found instead was genuine warmth and unguarded curiosity about who we were and why we had come. And more than that, I saw resilience: they had survived something enormous and made their choices about how to continue. Watching the fishermen talk among themselves, the way decisions moved through the table without anyone visibly leading, the way disagreement dissolved into laughter, the way the oldest and the youngest inhabited exactly the same register, I understood something about strength that I don't think a case study can teach. Strength here did not announce itself. It was just there, woven into how people had related to each other across decades of shared work and shared difficulty.

* * *

Before this trip I did not know what kankei jinko (関係人口) meant. In short, it refers to people who are not residents of a place but maintain a meaningful, ongoing relationship with it, somewhere between a tourist and a local, with genuine emotional investment and connection. I realized the importance of "Ba (場)" in terms of increasing kankei jinko. What makes that happen, what makes a place stick to you like that, I've been thinking about ever since. It isn't just beauty or convenience. It's the people you meet there who change the shape of something inside you. It's the feeling that you left a version of yourself behind and that it's still there, waiting. That is what Professor Nonaka means by Ba, a shared space for encounter, for something to happen between people. I had understood it as a concept. In Kuroshima, sitting in Sugino-san's living room late at night, it was when that knowledge became real.

* * *

Twelve of us went to Noto, split across four projects, working in different neighborhoods with different clients. Some were at the morning market, talking to the vendors. Some were bridging and developing civic and non-civic alliances at Noto Renpuku. Some were walking through different areas in Noto, running strategy sessions for developing a new brand for the region. We represent different countries, different professional backgrounds, different reasons for being in this program. On the last night in Noto, when we gathered enjoying our canned beers, I saw our cohort differently than I had in any classroom. Each of us had gone somewhere different, seen something different, and yet we were all trying to answer the same question. I felt very lucky to have these classmates to share such a valuable experience with, and luckier still that what we each brought back made the others' understanding richer.

There is a word in Japanese, 光栄, that means something close to honor but heavier. It carries gratitude and privilege in a way the English word doesn't quite reach. That is what I felt as a member of this project. I left Noto having gained more than I gave, and I hope the progress continues. It was a meaningful experience to see our professional MBA knowledge being put to use right in front of my eyes. What I learned and felt in the warehouse in Kuroshima — what business case studies did not teach — the care for community, sustainability and strong independence — is what I will be carrying forward for the rest of my career.