Living with twelve meters of snow — and thinking about the age of AI

Tsunan is a small town of just under 8,000 people on a river terrace in Niigata, Japan. People have lived on this land for more than ten thousand years. In an average winter, roughly twelve meters of snow falls here, and in heavy years the snowpack itself can reach three to four meters. For most of those ten thousand years, snow was simply something to endure.

We are Musuhi, a small non-profit founded in July 2026 by local residents. The name comes from an old Japanese word meaning "to bind together and bring forth." We started this letter because we believe a place like Tsunan has something to say about the questions many people are asking in the age of AI: What is work for? What does a good life look like? What should technology do — and what should it leave to us?

Our answer, still forming, is simple: technology should be the quiet helper, and people and nature should remain the protagonists. This letter is a record of our small experiments toward that idea.

Eleven gatherings: what a snow-country town talks about when it talks about the future

Before founding the organization, we started something much smaller: a monthly gathering called Musuhi Juku ("juku" is a traditional word for a small private school — closer to a village schoolhouse than a cram school). Since December 2025 there have been eleven gatherings and community events — dialogue sessions on the town's future, a dementia-friendly community café planned by students at the local secondary school, and a market day held together with neighboring Tokamachi. The first session drew five people; one evening with a longtime town-hall officer drew twenty-three.

We have been reading essays by Japanese thinker Kazuto Ataka on his "Kaze no Tani" (Valley of the Wind) concept — asking whether places outside the big cities can remain livable in a technological age — and we keep returning to one question: what would that mean here, under the snow? No conclusions yet. But neighbors who had never spoken sat at the same table, and that is where everything starts in a small town.

Snow is not waste — it is a resource

Here is the reframe that excites us most. Tsunan's snow, historically a cost — roads to clear, roofs to shovel — can be read as a cooling resource. Four yukimuro (snow rooms) already exist in Tsunan: warehouses cooled by stored snow, where rice and vegetables keep at stable low temperatures without electricity, and are even said to taste better for it.

In Hokkaido and other parts of Japan's snow country, pioneers have used snow to cool data centers. Could the energy-hungry infrastructure of the AI age and a snow-country village actually need each other? We are studying this carefully — as a possibility under community discussion, not a done deal — and always with one condition written into everything we do: the water sources and forests come first.

What's next

One of our next dreams is a one-day modern terakoya — a small learning program where children from the city and from Tsunan explore nature, food, snow-country culture, energy, and disaster preparedness together. It is still in the planning stage. We will share how it takes shape, honestly, in future issues.

If this letter resonates with you, you can read more at musuhi.or.jp/en/. Donations of any size support Musuhi's community activities in Tsunan — gatherings, learning programs, and local projects — as explained on our support page. (One honest note: because we are a Japanese general incorporated association, donations are not tax-deductible for individual donors under Japanese law.) If you represent a company, foundation, or philanthropist considering a larger, longer-term commitment to this region's future, we would be glad to talk directly — and mostly, we would simply love to hear from you: [email protected]

From the Representative Director

Musuhi Tsunan (General Incorporated Association) — Tsunan Town, Niigata, Japan. Issue 01, Summer 2026. Future issues at musuhi.or.jp/en/.