Shoichi Sakai
Office Director, Fukushima Prefecture Sheltered Work Promotion Association

Introduction

Fukushima Prefecture Sheltered Work Promotion Association (hereinafter “our Association”) works to promote sheltered work, with the goals of encouraging the autonomy and social participation of people with disabilities. Our Association was founded in June 1995, and our membership is made up of facilities for and groups of people with disabilities and individuals within Fukushima Prefecture who agree with our work.

We currently have 153 member facilities for people with disabilities and 16 group or individual members. In order to improve the life and benefits of the users of facilities for people with disabilities within Fukushima Prefecture through outsourced work from the prefectural government, our Association promotes the joint acceptance and fulfillment of orders spanning both independent and contracted manufacturing and sales, striving for the development and stable operation of sheltered work. Our goal is to encourage the creation of a society in which all can live cheerful lives. Our projects include sales promotion, work to raise wages, technological development, education and training, support for cooperation between the agriculture and welfare sectors, and social action work. In particular, since the average wage at “continuous employment support type B workshops” within Fukushima Prefecture in FY 2019 was just 14,926 yen, 41st in the country [out of 50 prefectures], we are drawing up a wage raise plan in Fukushima Prefecture, and working to raise wages at facilities for people with disabilities. 

The background to our launch

Our Association has been holding a New Product Development Competition, with Food Products and Non-Food Products categories, for our member workshops since FY 1999, encouraging the development of products which will sell well.

We have been sending specialist advisers to workshops where people would like to create products but do not know how to do so, helping them to develop new products. At the same time, we have asked them to enter the New Product Development Competition in order to gain feedback on their products, and have been proactively selling the winning products. However, some of the winning products have not attracted attention and have gone out of production, or have stopped being made when particular users left the facility: developing products which could continue to be sold was a problem.

In this context, the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred in March 2011. In the aftermath, the prefectures along the Pacific coast, Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima, with the cooperation of the Japan SELP Centre, launched a project which we called “hibica”. Written with the Japanese character for “day” repeated three times, it was based on the concept of things achieved through the accumulation of each person’s day-to-day life.

Making the most of the skills of the artisans with disabilities living in the three prefectures most affected by the disaster, and exploiting the facilities and networks of their workshops to the full, we have developed products and foods that closely match people’s realities and enrich their daily lives. 

We believe that creating high-quality products by working at a natural pace and with painstaking care, using one’s own hands, and giving pleasure to the recipient, is the first step in giving workers a sense of purpose in life. What is more, it leads to higher wages. These were the hopes and goals of hibica.

We decided to use Aizu cotton to create products at facilities for people with disabilities in Fukushima Prefecture, prompted by exhibiting Aizu cotton products at the Tokyo International Gift Show in 2015. We were able to develop our products into their current form together with the Japan SELP Centre.

High-quality traditional Aizu cotton, which has a 400-year history, is a very strong and functional textile. The farm clothes of Aizu cotton worn when doing agricultural work have long been loved by the people of Aizu. From the end of the Meiji Period into the Taisho Period (in the early twentieth century), the production of Aizu cotton reached its zenith, but from the Showa Period (1925 –) onwards, production shrank due to a rapid decline in demand. At present, only three factories in Fukushima Prefecture’s Aizu-Wakamatsu City, including “Harappa”, which our Association uses, are responsible for its manufacture. 

Harappa kindly agreed to cooperate with our Association to make it possible for us to assure a stable supply of Aizu cotton, and so we took the plunge and started to create products using this cotton.

We launched the Aizu cotton Brand 9: que in 2015, in the hope that the products manufactured by our Association could make the high quality and “greater” warmth of Aizu cotton more familiar to people. The brand name, “9: que”, comes from the English word “cue”: in Japanese, “giving a cue (aizu)” sounds the same as “launching Aizu to the world”. The Japanese number 9 is also pronounced “cue”.

We recruited six workshops within the prefecture where people with disabilities mainly make sewn goods in order to launch the brand. Our first three product types were tote bags, card cases, and handkerchiefs.　

Our initiatives so far

The Japan SELP Centre collaborated with us on the production of Brand 9 products, and we held several training sessions in order to make common products across the different workshops. Each facility had strengths and challenges when it came to manufacturing the products. We made various mistakes with measurements or ways of sewing due to differences in interpretation, but we learned a lot from these mistakes, and by sharing them with each other, the quality of the products from each facility improved.  

As each of the participating workshops gained greater technical skills, there were proposals for new Brand 9 products and, after examining the details of each, we added hair elastics, brooches, and A4 bags to our lineup. We are still making all these products today.

In addition, the participating workshops began manufacturing their own products using Aizu cotton, besides the Brand 9 items. These have been well-received at exhibitions, and sales are growing slowly but steadily.

In order to launch the products we manufacture to the world, we have been exhibiting at Tokyo International Gift Show since 2015. Many buyers have seen them, and through connections made there, we have gained experience of selling them at special sales events in department stores and other venues in the Tokyo region.

We have also proactively promoted our products, for example by applying to have them featured in catalogues of specially selected goods made by companies in Fukushima Prefecture. As the reputation of our products grew, there were not enough facilities manufacturing them, and so we added two more. We also surveyed our member workshops about making new products, and we have started work to develop a few new items.

We are working to sell our products through e-commerce sites. They are currently listed and sold through one such site but, with the help of our supporters, we plan to launch our own sales website.　

Conclusion

From the standpoint of coexisting with the local community, we believe that it is desirable for the manufacture of products using Fukushima Prefecture’s traditional Aizu cotton to become a central pillar of the independent production of items by the prefecture’s facilities for people with disabilities. However, considering the overall growth of the business, there are difficulties in responding to orders if we continue to manufacture the items at a limited number of facilities for people with disabilities. 

Moreover, we are also considering the possibilities for expanding laterally to create new products, without limiting ourselves to sewn items. Fukushima Prefecture, our Association, and facilities for people with disabilities need to come together to take the next steps to raise the wages of users of facilities for people with disabilities. We will continue to do our best in our future activities, hoping for further growth.

If you are interested in our Association’s products as a result of this article, please do get in touch with us.

Set of Aizu cotton items, including Brand 9 products (A4 bag, handkerchief, card case) and an item produced by a member workshop (book cover)

Exhibiting at the 2021 Tokyo International Gift Show