A Town Builds a Company for People Who Live in Two Places

Japan’s administrative system gives a person one registered address. Real life can be more complicated. A software engineer may keep a home and employer in Sapporo while spending one week each month helping a rural manufacturer. A family may return every season, not as tourists but to farm, surf and join community events. A would-be founder may need six months of local relationships before deciding whether to move.

Small towns already see these people. What they often lack is an operating system for them: somewhere appropriate to stay, one person who knows whom to call, a route into paid work, and housing for those who want a deeper commitment. Without that connective tissue, a successful tour ends with exchanged business cards and no next step.

Atsuma, a Hokkaido town of 4,253 people as of July 31, has incorporated that missing layer. On August 25 it joined Satoyume Co., Quval Co. and local agriculture-and-lodging company Noyasube Co. to establish Tsugite Co. The new company is registered at 18-1 Kamiatsuma, has ¥1.8 million in capital and is led by Satoyume CEO Shumpei Shimada.

Tsugite’s launch announcement gives it three connected businesses. It will operate town-developed accommodation for dual-location residents, including “multi-habitation” housing. A concierge function will match users with residents, businesses, jobs, training, visits and local activities. A property arm will provide housing advice and information while testing whether vacant-home projects can become viable businesses.

What Atsuma is trying to count

Most population policy counts bodies at midnight on a census date or names on the resident register. Atsuma’s plan adds another category: katsuyaku jinkō, literally a “population in action.” It means people who contribute through labor, consumption or investment whether or not they reside in town.

The idea responds to unforgiving arithmetic. Atsuma’s population fell from 4,776 in the 2015 census to 4,265 in 2020, a decline of 511, or about 11%. People 65 and older accounted for roughly 35% of the 2020 population. The town plan says the shortage is qualitative as well as numerical: local government and companies need digital, marketing and business-development expertise that permanent recruitment alone has not supplied.

Dual-location policy avoids presenting every neighboring municipality as a competitor for the same shrinking pool of permanent residents. A person can retain a city career and still become useful, known and accountable somewhere else. Atsuma is about 35 minutes by car from New Chitose Airport and about 90 minutes from Sapporo, according to the town. That is not a daily urban commute for most people. It is plausible for repeated multi-day stays.

The town’s formal count is more demanding than a mailing list. A qualifying dual-location resident must be registered outside Atsuma, obtain certification under the town’s “hometown citizen” program, join the ATSUMA LOVERS app and use a designated local facility or participate in a local activity multiple times a year. The plan’s cumulative target rises from 30 in fiscal 2026 to 60 in 2027, 120 in 2028 and 200 in 2029. The last figure is equivalent to about 5% of the town population, the plan says.

This gives Atsuma a repeat-behavior measure rather than a vanity total of social-media followers. It also has blind spots. A frequent contributor who declines certification disappears from the metric. A certified person who makes the minimum visits may count without creating much value. Registration is therefore an input, not the outcome.

The relevant question is not how many people Atsuma can claim. It is how much useful time, skill and spending the town and a repeat visitor can share.

The company sits between a room and a role

Housing alone cannot make a second community. Nor can networking events compensate for nowhere to live. The strength of Tsugite’s design is that its three functions follow one person’s increasing commitment.

A first-time user reserves temporary housing. The company then knows that person’s schedule and interests and can make introductions that are specific rather than generic. A successful match produces a reason to return: a paid assignment, farm work, a local project, training or a relationship. If the visits become regular, the property function can help find a more stable base. The sequence is stay, connect, continue.

Atsuma has already laid physical groundwork. Its March 2026 Special Residence Promotion Plan lists renovated multi-habitation homes in Shinmachi, the Kamiatsuma shared satellite office, a conversion of three former public-housing buildings planned for fiscal 2026–28 and a cultural exchange facility scheduled for completion in fiscal 2027. Tsugite’s registered address is the same as the Kamiatsuma office listed in the plan.

The plan also described a preparatory “town-development company office” that would manage resident data, answer practical questions, develop public and private services, match talent, consolidate property information, operate facilities, organize tours and receive corporate training groups. The launch release narrows the public-facing emphasis to facilities, concierge work and property. It says vacant-home activity will proceed in stages after demand and commercial viability are tested. That is a plan to investigate a business, not a promise that ready-to-rent houses already exist.

A startup pipeline came before the disaster

Atsuma’s appetite for outsiders did not begin with the latest national policy. In 2016, the town launched its Local Venture School as a route for recruiting entrepreneur-track members of Japan’s Local Vitalization Cooperator program. Town figures dated April 27, 2026, show 29 appointments since fiscal 2017. Nineteen had started businesses in Atsuma and 21 were living there. Their fields include horse logging, sawmilling, woodworking, food processing, baking, forestry consulting, video production, restaurants and coffee roasting.

The record matters because it shows that Atsuma has experience moving people from interest to work. It also shows the limit of an all-or-nothing model. Not every useful person can resign from a city job, move a family and launch a rural company. Dual-location living creates a lower-risk step before migration—and a legitimate long-term option for people who never migrate.

Then came September 6, 2018. The Hokkaido Eastern Iburi Earthquake killed 42 people, 36 of them in Atsuma, according to Cabinet Office figures dated January 28, 2019. Landslides destroyed neighborhoods; within the town, 222 homes were destroyed, 308 half-destroyed and 1,045 partly damaged. The disaster also shut the Tomatoh-Atsuma power plant and helped trigger the first prefecture-wide blackout in Japan.

Four months later, the town newsletter introduced ATSUMA LOVERS. The name covered residents, workers, shoppers, volunteers, donors, visitors and even people who simply kept the town in mind. It was a striking response to disaster: belonging was defined by attention and action, not only address. Today’s app and hometown-citizen certification turn that emotional category into an administrative relationship.

Japan finally gave two-place living a legal address

People have split their lives among regions for generations. The policy infrastructure is new. An amendment to the Act on Development of Infrastructure for Broad-based Regional Revitalization was promulgated on May 22, 2024, and took effect that November 1. The transport ministry says it was the first Japanese statute to define the concept of dual-location living.

The amendment did three important things. It allowed municipalities to adopt promotion plans with legal support measures. It created a designation system for nonprofit and private organizations working on housing, livelihoods and community connections. And it allowed councils bringing together municipalities, prefectures, residents, designated organizations and businesses.

Atsuma revised its plan under Article 22(5) and has designated six “special residence-support” corporations, including Satoyume. The label is specialized terminology under this regional policy and should not be confused with similarly named organizations in Japan’s housing-welfare system.

The law recognizes a practical truth: moving between places creates problems that sit across bureaucratic departments. Housing staff cannot create jobs. An employment platform cannot resolve land use. A tourism office may attract a visitor but has little authority over leases or public facilities. Tsugite is an institutional attempt to hold those fragments together.

Public-private does not mean public questions disappear

A company can hire specialized staff, charge for services and make operating decisions more quickly than a municipal department. It can also make public responsibility harder to follow if the contracts are opaque.

A June 24 paper for a meeting of all town assembly members explains Atsuma’s rationale. The municipality said it lacked enough internal staff and know-how to sustain the program alone and wanted a jointly owned company to act as its helm. The draft ordinance structure in the paper would require the company to submit a business report and financial statements to the mayor after every fiscal year and immediately report any matter with a serious effect on management.

Those are useful safeguards. The published launch materials nevertheless leave essential opening data unanswered: the ownership percentage of each shareholder; the full board; the town’s initial investment; the first-year budget; operating or management contracts from the town; opening dates; user prices; and revenue targets. Capital of ¥1.8 million is not the annual operating budget. Its modest size is not, by itself, a verdict on viability. It does make the funding model especially important.

There is also a scope question. The June town paper described travel and marketing—including tours and lodging operations—as a principal business alongside dual-location and property work. The August company overview lists only facility management, concierge services and property utilization and brokerage. The documents do not explain whether travel was deferred, folded into the three functions or removed.

A second hometown can still create first-home problems

Atsuma’s website says it welcomes participants not as customers but as partners. The distinction captures the program’s aspiration. It should not blur labor rights or commercial responsibility.

A visitor may gladly volunteer at a festival or join a farm activity in exchange for learning and friendship. Repeated work that produces business value is different. The concierge must be able to distinguish community participation from employment, clarify insurance and supervision, and build paid arrangements where appropriate. A romantic language of belonging can otherwise conceal who works and who earns.

The local side also bears costs. A visiting specialist does not solve a problem merely by arriving. Residents explain context, arrange meetings, repair misunderstandings and host newcomers. If each match consumes more local capacity than it supplies, the program worsens the shortage it was designed to address. Tsugite’s performance must therefore measure host burden, not only visitor satisfaction.

Vacant houses present a similar trap. A visually empty property is not necessarily available housing. Inheritance records, stored belongings, insulation, plumbing, seismic condition, snow-season maintenance and owner consent all sit between vacancy and a lease. Homes converted for part-time outsiders can also compete with young residents and families. Atsuma will need separate data on local and outside demand and a clear allocation policy for short, medium and permanent use.

There are environmental and financial questions, too. Repeated car and air travel carries costs that a lifestyle campaign can ignore. Shared pickups, longer stays and fewer but more purposeful trips may reduce the impact per productive day. The company should treat transport as part of the operating design, not an externality.

The number after 200

The name Tsugite evokes a joint that connects pieces of timber. That is a good metaphor for the new company, but a joint is judged under load. Satoyume says the corporation is the first jointly financed public-private company in Hokkaido established specifically to promote dual-location living. Japan.co.jp could not independently verify the prefecture-wide “first” claim, so it remains attributed to the company.

At the founding, Shimada said his visits since 2022 had shown him a community that supports people willing to try. Mayor Shōichirō Miyasaka said Atsuma had gradually created a cycle in which people attract more people during the recovery from the earthquake. These are stakeholder statements at launch, not independent evidence of results.

The decisive figures will appear after the target of 200 certified participants. Did a local shop gain repeat customers? Did a company fill a real skills gap at a fair price? Did an unused building become a home whose rent covers maintenance? Did existing residents gain services and relationships without losing housing or donating excessive time? Did Tsugite earn meaningful customer revenue, or simply shift municipal work into a corporate wrapper?

Atsuma has spent a decade learning how to welcome outsiders: first as entrepreneurs, then as people who helped after disaster, now as residents of more than one place. Tsugite turns that social history into reservations, introductions, leases and accounts. The idea is compelling. Its credibility will come from the unglamorous evidence that the connections hold.