OVERVIEW
stay hot,stay creative
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The Dogo Onsen Revitalization Project: A Project for All is a new,
three-year revitalization program for the Dogo Onsen area of
Matsuyama City. We will outline the project below. - Dogo Onsen is reputed to be the oldest hot springs resort in Japan. Its symbol and main building is the stunning Dogo Onsen Honkan. The Dogo Onsen Revitalization Project, which is scheduled to run to the end of 2024, aims to carry out maintenance and repair work on the Honkan, so that this precious architectural treasure can be handed down to future generations in its present splendor. Since the initial Dogo Onsen Art 2014 project, Dogo Onsen has launched a wide range of art projects for community development. The program “Dogo Onsen Revitalization Project: A Project for All” runs for the three-year period from financial year (FY) 2021 to FY 2023. The project’s concept is “stay hot, stay creative.” At Dogo Onsen, numerous artists have soared on the wings of their creative talents, releasing passion and heat in the process. The 2024 remodeling of the Honkan is geared toward the 130th anniversary of the building’s construction, and the project is going ahead in the hope that once again, the heat and passion of “Art × People × Hot Springs” will allow Dogo Onsen to warm up Japan, and indeed the whole world. The project’s sponsoring bodies include local groups such as the Dogo Onsen Innkeepers Association, the Dogo Shopping Street Promotion Association, and the Community Development Promotion Council for Pride in Dogo Onsen, along with Ehime University, financial institutions, and the administration of Matsuyama City. All of these stakeholders have joined together to form the “Community Development Implementation Committee for the Dogo of the Future” (Chairperson: Eiji Hato, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo). To develop the Dogo area’s local resources, the Implementation Committee aims to create a new Dogo Brand, and by launching multifaceted, creative projects, to achieve an “autonomous virtuous cycle that will power sustainable community development that will shine as an example even a century from now.”