Kamikatsu Town
Terumi Azuma

Being a café owner is only one of the aspects that describe Terumi Azuma.

Draw a picture of tomorrow that continues beyond our goal.

Outside the large glass window that takes in plenty of sunlight, we see the surrounding mountains looming in. The high-ceiling store is decorated sophisticatedly with softly lit pendant lights. It is modestly lined up with products and publications that tell the charm of the town.
Terumi Azuma, the owner of the café Polestar, describes the shop as a "showroom to convey the uniqueness of Kamikatsu.” Azuma was born and raised in the Ichiu district, one of the most remote mountain villages in the town. She studied at a university in the Kansai region and interned at an environmental NGO and a store in Tokyo while she was still studying, all to realize a dream she had since junior high school to work and raise her children in Kamikatsu. After graduating from university, she immediately returned to the town and opened the café at the age of 24.
“But it's not that I wanted to run a café in particular. It was just a means to an end."
The reason why she says this links to her other face as one of the representative partners of RDND LLC. and its projects.
One of the businesses to solve the issue we face in making Kamikatsu self-reliant and sustainable was a café.
RDND was founded with the concept of "how to have fun for two weeks in Kamikatsu" and has four main businesses: café, public relations/e-commerce website, education, and guesthouses.
In fact, the year the company was founded was also the year the population of Kamikatsu dropped below 2,000. Although the catchphrase "the smallest town in Shikoku" can be a part of the town's character, the difficulty of maintaining the community still remains as a daily challenge for the residents. That is why Azuma has continued to protect and nurture the cafe as a place where both local people and travelers can gather and relax.
In May 2020, she also started a project to organize custom-made mid- to long-term stay plans in Kamikatsu under the name of INOW (pronounced “eno”). The cofounders are Linda Ding and Ms. Kana Watando. Together with these two Canadian women, who were brought to Kamikatsu by a miracle of timing, they plan to use "zerowaste" as a foothold to bring the experience of appreciating the essence of life in Kamikatsu to as many people as possible.

Interviewed in October, 2021
Writer : Mikiko Tamaki / Photographer : Hiroyuki Tamura