ABOUT
About Regrow
Project Regrow is an initiative that promotes and supports what we call Regrow: growth in life value, not illusory value. By life value, we mean value that leads directly to happiness. Project Regrow began in 2022, and as of 2026 it is run by sha alone. With play and IT at its core, it makes games and other works.
Growing, but not getting happier
Most of us are working hard at many things, and I think most of us can feel ourselves growing in many ways.
And yet: we grow, and it still hurts. We grow, and we don't get any happier. I suspect that feeling is more common than not.
I believe this is because we are growing in a direction that doesn't add to our happiness. In other words, we are growing only in terms of illusory value.
What matters is growth in the direction of value that leads directly to happiness: growth in life value. That is what I call Regrow, and it is where the name comes from.
When Regrow happens
Looking back, there have been several moments in my own life that I'd call Regrow.
When I hit a wall in games.I sat down with an opponent and simply asked how they played. "Oh, so you can see it that way too" — that one moment changed how I played. I became far more flexible, and as a result, I went on to represent Japan.
When I changed jobs.More than once, I have chosen to move into work that paid less but was still unexplored and worth doing. Financially, those moves were failures. Even so, they let me contribute to people's happiness far more than before, and my days became deeply satisfying.
Looking back, each of those moments was a time when something I took for granted fell away. And Regrow does not reject visible achievements either: there were times when my perspective changed first, and the result — representing Japan — simply followed.
Why Regrow has become so hard to find
What we take for granted falls away when we touch something outside ourselves. But today, the chances to touch that "outside" are shrinking. Environments and systems that allow Regrow have quietly drifted out of reach.
I see two causes: excessive money bias, and a world covered in man-made things, which has put distance between us and the natural world.
Man-made things get optimized by money bias, and that artificiality is then reinforced by systems. As a result, we touch the natural world less and less — until, eventually, touching it comes to be seen as "bad."
Take the idea that "touching soil with bare hands is unhygienic, so you shouldn't." Hygiene matters. But it can matter too much. When it does, our Junka〜n (something like circulation) with the land is cut off.
Neither money nor hygiene is bad in itself. The problem begins when they become excessive.
A closer look: how Regrow's values are structured
Regrow's way of thinking is nested in layers. The outer layers are the foundation; the inner layers are what we work with more concretely.
- Life, nature, Junka〜n
- Protecting a minimum standard of living, and moving away from the mindset of cutting off by-products as "worthless" (I call this mindset consumption). Nature keeps its Junka〜n going as a system free of consumption in that sense.
- Regrow's values
- Regrow: value that grows in life, not in illusion.
- Play
- What wraps around difficult things.
- Principles, technology, information
- What gets wrapped.
Making small changes playable
A big change, like changing careers, can't be packaged and handed to someone else.
But a small change can be handled through play. Take MOTOKAO. "I remember" is shakier than we think, and our "collective memory" is far from perfect. Even so, everyone ends up certain that they remember. MOTOKAO lets you experience that process. As changes go, it's a very small one. That's exactly why play can handle it.
Project Regrow builds systems that promote, accelerate and support Regrow. Given the strengths of its members (for now, just me), its core is play and IT. I actively use technology and AI too — but used only by the yardstick of illusory growth, they get in the way of Regrow, so I bring them in with care.
Treasure the sense that something is off
I hope you'll treasure that sense that something is off, and the question "why?"
Ideally, I hope you'll come away holding a question of your own. Even if not, just doubting something you've always taken for granted, even once, can help you start to notice what you've overlooked, or what you've kept your eyes closed to.
What do you take for granted?
If you broke it apart, what kind of world might be there?
Is there anything that resembles that world?
Works
- MOTOKAO
A party game where you rebuild a face from memory, then work together to restore the "original"
- CDG (Chaos Discussion Game)Coming soon
A game that shakes up your viewpoint and perspective
- PQComing soon
A game that shakes up your values