Takamori Town
Daisei Kusamura

Kusamura became mayor when he was as young as 44. It was a unique career turn from an owner of a company which imported records and second-hand clothes as well as ran restaurants.

Quick action and shared information are the keys to manage a town —a business owner turned mayor

Many trees are planted around the building of Takamori town hall. It has bright and open atmosphere with counters set low to easily make eye contacts with visitors. It was October 2013 when Takamori-machi associated itself with The Most Beautiful Villages in Japan. “First and foremost I was astonished to learn about the organization in which so many attractive towns and villages join and work hard under the spirit of being one of the beautiful villages. And I thought I wanted to have this town affiliated as well. That was the start.”
“When I first became mayor, I started off by brightening up the town hall building, under the concept of ‘bright town’ and ‘town of education’. Until then, the counters were set higher with documents piling up like a wall. So I took the wall down first. I also changed all the streetlights of school zone to LED.”
The motto of Mayor Kusamura is “shared information.” He discloses the information of the town as much as possible by using the local cable TV channel TPC (Takamori Point Channel). Not only the administrative assemblies but also interviews such as this one are recorded and televised. “The most important thing is to share information with townspeople. Taking quick action is also necessary.”
The present issue is to resume normal services of all lines of Minami Aso Railway which was heavily damaged by 2016 Kumamoto Earthquakes. “I set forth a goal of restoring the entire line since immediately after the disaster. We can’t go around the Aso region without roads and railways. Aso is, so to say, a remote island. It is the hardest time for Minami Aso Railway but we will do our best to resume the service of every single line.”

Interviewed in January, 2017
Writer : Hideko Takahashi / Photographer : Hiroyuki Tamura