Ryohin Keikaku Co., Ltd. (Toshima-ku Tokyo; President and Representative Director: Nobuo Domae) signed the "Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement for Sustainable Community Development" with Mashiko Town, Haga County, Tochigi Prefecture (Mayer: Tomoyuki Otsuka).

For realization of "a Simple, Pleasant Life, and Society", MUJI is being involved in a variety of initiatives to revitalize local communities with local authorities and local residents playing a leading role.

Mashiko Town is located in the south-east of Tochigi Prefecture, bordering on Ibaraki Prefecture, and has a population of around 21,000. The town is known for its ceramic industry and its speciality is the famous "Mashiko-yaki" pottery. Surrounded by a rural landscape, this town is full of nature with undeveloped woodland. Agreed with Tochigi Prefecture that signed the declaration of virtually zero CO₂ emissions, Mashiko Town is actively planning to promote projects in regard to carbon neutral at the initiative of the town office.

Based on this background, Mashiko Town, which is famous for production and sales of everyday use "Mashiko-yaki" pottery tools, and MUJI, which manufactures and sells products that underpin the basics of daily life, signed this comprehensive cooperation agreement for the purpose of thinking together about production life-cycle from production and actual use to after use, and collaboratively working on "Reduction of the negative impact on the global environment" and "Resource-recycling" from the environment preservation and resource-recycling point of view.

Also, Mashiko Town, like many other regions in Japan, is facing challenges in developing sustainable community due to population decline and accelerated population aging. On the other hand, Ryohin Keikaku has abundant experience gained through store opening in cities all over Japan, and initiatives and activities held in collaboration with local authorities. With this experience, we will work together to address the challenges Mashiko Town is now facing in "revitalizing the community" and "utilizing public facilities" and will contribute to development of the community.

Through this agreement, Mashiko Town and Ryohin Keikaku will work together in a variety of fields to further develop the initiatives, aiming to realize sustainable communities through the revitalization of local regions in this town and improvement of the community service.