Strategic Partners=Researcher×Investor×Advisor×Patron×Collector
Where research, culture, and new ideas grow together.
We work alongside the people and practices
that enrich the world of tomorrow.
Narukama Strategic Partners is a Japan-based firm that invests in research, culture, and emerging ideas — not only capital, but the founder's own research, creative ideas, and artistic sensibility — so that what matters has room to flourish.
Within the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Lab, we extend the group's TeleAbsence research — interfaces that evoke the presence of those who are absent — to Ryōkan, whose waka and brushwork Japan still treasures even as living memory of him thins with each generation. The research asks whether a game can let a player re-member a historical person: not merely learn about him, but restore his presence through the body. In Ryōkan Pilgrimage, the player walks his landscape, traces his calligraphy with a real brush, and recites his waka aloud — and with each act, Ryōkan returns to the world a little more.
The calligraphy in the game is generated by a system trained on Furusato, an authentic manuscript in Ryōkan's own hand, collected and digitized by the founder for this research. Ko Narukama conducts his academic work under the name Ko Ishiyama.
Carrying stories across cultures. A Japanese communications and branding studio that helps Japanese and international brands be understood — through public relations, marketing, and market development.
Visit afumi inc. (opens in a new tab)Rethinking an everyday ritual. Retail technology that blends online and offline into gentler, more human ways to discover and buy.
Learn More about PRENO Inc. (opens in a new tab)Taking an AI company public. As Representative Director & President, Ko Narukama led ExaWizards — a developer of AI services that address social issues — to its listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Mothers market (now the Growth market) in 2021, under the name Ko Ishiyama.
Company ExaWizards Inc. (opens in a new tab)Building research inside a company going public. Ko Narukama was the founding Director of the Recruit Institute of Technology, the group's technology and AI research arm, in the years around Recruit Holdings' 2014 listing on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange (now the Prime market) — under the name Ko Ishiyama.
Company Recruit Holdings (opens in a new tab)Growing the future indoors. A Japanese agri-tech company building advanced closed-type plant production systems for vertical farming — rethinking how, and where, we grow.
Company Profile PLANTX Corporation, PDF (opens in a new tab)Bringing generative AI to a regional newspaper. A wholly owned subsidiary of the Niigata Nippo, founded in 2024, that pairs the paper's archive with generative AI to build services rooted in the region. Ko Narukama holds the role under the name Ko Ishiyama.
Institute Niigata Nippo Generative AI Research Institute (opens in a new tab)Gifts to universities and research institutions in Japan and abroad — so that research and teaching have the freedom to follow what matters.
A public-interest foundation that awards scholarships to young people from Japan who take on the world in music, sports, art, and academia.
Foundation Ezoe Memorial Recruit Foundation (opens in a new tab)A public-interest foundation that sends gifted young pianists to study abroad — through auditions, master classes, and international festivals.
Foundation Yasuko Fukuda Scholarship Foundation (opens in a new tab)The collection centers on Ryōkan (1758–1831), the Zen monk, poet, and calligrapher, and on Yasuda Yukihiko (1884–1978), the master of nihonga painting who revered him. Several of the Ryōkan pieces passed through Yukihiko's own hands. The manuscript Furusato has been digitized and opened to research at the MIT Media Lab.
Ko Narukama is a researcher, strategic partner, investor, and patron — and, at heart, a student of Japanese culture. His patronage spans learning and the arts: he gives to universities and scholarship foundations, and collects works by Ryōkan and Yasuda Yukihiko, which he has opened to research. He works with brush and ink, pen plotter, and even falling snow to bring the poet-monk's hand back into the present — and brings all of this to everything he joins, investing his own research, creative ideas, and artistic sensibility alongside capital.
As a Research Affiliate of the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Lab, he developed Ryōkan Pilgrimage with Hiroshi Ishii within the group's TeleAbsence research — a project that restores the presence of a historical figure through embodied play: walking his landscape, tracing his calligraphy, and reciting his waka.
Previously, he served as a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo and as a Visiting Professor at Shizuoka University.