Together with Communities

On November 28 and 29, 2025, we held Culture Snack Vol. 02 in the premises of The Campus and in other areas in the Shinagawa Konan area.
The event, the second in the Culture Snack series, was organized on the theme of celebrating the B-side of the community. The idea was to discover and enjoy together a new side (the B-side) of the people who live and work in the area.
The event was well-attended, with 133 stalls. Besides KOKUYO Group employees, the attendees included many employees of local companies and many local residents.
As with Culture Snack Vol. 01, Culture Snack Vol. 02 included a mystery-solving event around Shinagawa and the Isu-1 Grand Prix (in which contestants race around a course in office chairs). Much fun was had by attendees. Local firms were even more involved this year. They helped design and set up the event venue and the stalls, fostering closer ties with the community.
The community spirit was truly alive over the two days, with many second-timers delighted to be reunited with one another again this year and many first-time exhibitors thrilled by the new experiences.
During the event hours (late afternoon to evening on the weekdays and morning to evening at the weekend), numerous people inhabited an event space featuring the flavors of the community and experienced for themselves the hidden charms of the Shinagawa area.
Thanks to the support of local businesses and residents, the event proved a success in deepening connections with the community.

In 2025, KOKUYO supported Heart-Full Family’s High Five Christmas 2025 project. For this project, we donated some 80 thousand stationery gifts to 13,000 single-parent families across Japan.

This was the third year of the High Five Christmas project, which will continue to run each year. In the first year (High Five Christmas 2024), we donated some 70 thousand stationery presents to around 10,000 families across Japan.
As many single-parent families struggle with the cost of living amid inflation, we wanted to give children of such families a Christmas present containing the stationery they need in their studies, thereby giving children festive joy and learning opportunities.

We received messages of thanks from the families who received presents. For example, one parent said that their child was delighted to have a brand new pen. Another said that the gift was a godsend because they usually had to make do with old stationery, being unable to afford new stationery.

In 2025, we delivered a Campus gift pack, Campus being a brand that supports students in their studies.
Through support activities like this, we are helping build a world in which children can study in a way that suits them best.

KOKUYO Design Award is an international competition for product design that aims to co-create with talented designers and support their activities.
KOKUYO Design Award 2026 marked the 23rd year of the event since it began in 2002. The 2026 event, titled Hamon [ripples]: Design that Resonates, focused on the theme of unearthing ideas derived from one’s experience, examining them from multiple perspectives, and exploring standards for the future. In line with this theme, we asked for product designs that make ripples.
We received 1,344 entries from 60 countries (785 of the entries were from Japan and 559 were from other countries).
In February 2026, ten of the entries were selected for the New Generation Award. The winners received a trophy and a cash prize of ¥30,000.
The New Generation Award was created in 2024 to encourage a new generation of budding challenge-takers. This accolade is awarded to some of the KOKUYO Design Award entries submitted by students. The entries are selected not for their commercial potential but for their compelling ideas and perspectives.
Following the final round of deliberation in March 2026, the judges picked the winner of grand prize and three winners of the highly commended prize, presenting them with trophies and cash prizes*. The grand prize went to Before Note.

• *
  The cash prize for the entry that won the grand-prize winner was ¥2,000,000. For each of the entries that won the highly commended prize, it was ¥500,000.

• KOKUYO Design Award

We hold the Campus Art Awards in partnership with The Yomiuri Chukosei Shimbun. Campus Art Awards is a drawing competition for students at junior high school and high school. The award program began in 2015, and the 2025 event, the 10th year of the program, gathered 3,045 works.
The event was titled My Sweet Hometown: Plugging My Hometown.
This theme focused on the landscapes, customs, traditions, events, cuisine, confectionary, and other motifs associated with the students’ hometowns. The purpose was to give students an opportunity to take an interest in their hometown, discover its charms, and express them.
For the top individual prize, the winner received 50 Campus notebooks featuring the person’s winning picture. The school of the winner received 1,000 of the notebooks featuring the winning picture.

• Campus Art Awards

We want to contribute to a self-directed, collaborative society, in which everyone thrives.
In 2014, we launched a community outreach program called Chasing Big Dreams with Small Notebook.
In this program, members of Yujian Aixin, a nonprofit established by KOKUYO employees, visit elementary schools in China where they attend lessons and play games with the children.
They give the children notebooks and other KOKUYO stationery.

In 2025, the tenth year of the program, the Yujian Aixin members visited an elementary school in the Zhaozhuang District of Zhumadian, Henan.
As well as giving stationery products, the members conducted an environmental survey of the classrooms in advance and repaired the flooring of a 40-year old school building.
Drawing on KOKUYO’s spatial design prowess, the members redesigned the classroom. The members and children decorated the walls, which were showing signs of wear and tear. The colorful decorations included images of Campus notebooks and furniture. The renovated classroom was named Love Campus.