Life Spiral Up.
— What we aim for
A society where everyone has access to safe water and is blessed with rich food.
That richness circulates through the region and is passed on to the next generation—
this is the future we aim for.
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The roots of CEO Masayoshi Nakamura's philosophy lie in the loneliness he felt as a child and his strong desire to create places in society where people can connect with warmth. Delivering water, nurturing soil, and connecting food, childcare, and local learning are all part of what I-kan calls future infrastructure: the foundations that support people's lives.
CONCEPT
Toward Life Spiral Up, where nature and the economy circulate together.
When I-kan speaks of every stakeholder, it means not only customers, employees, and the local community. It also includes the Earth environment itself: the nature and ecosystems that sustain us. In an age of climate change and population decline, facilities that simply deliver water or keep air conditioning running are no longer enough. I-kan is evolving pipework infrastructure into well-being infrastructure that supports the health of both people and the planet.
ORIGIN
Infrastructure does not mean only roads and pipes. It also means a safe place to return to, the feeling of being watched over, time around the table, and environments where children can grow freely. The question born from Nakamura's own experience was how to build a society where people are not isolated and can live within warm relationships. I-kan is trying to answer that question through its businesses.
TRUST
The ideal society cannot be realized by the president alone. That is why I-kan has trusted and entrusted responsibility to business leaders, nursery principals, chefs, engineers, and professionals in the field. Expanding from plumbing into food, agriculture, childcare, and community activity has been a series of zero-to-one steps made possible by trusting expertise and sharing responsibility.
NATURE POSITIVE
For I-kan, which has connected water, soil, food, childcare, and local learning, nature is not a theme outside the business. Protecting biodiversity and helping it recover is a challenge to pass on the foundations of everyday life to the future. From our field in Miyakoda, we are rebuilding the relationship between nature and people.
LIFE SPIRAL UP
New challenges do not move smoothly from the beginning. There are difficult moments in making them work as businesses, and there are times of searching in the dark. Still, I-kan keeps taking the next step and accumulating zero-to-one efforts. Beyond that, people, the region, nature, and society can gradually improve like climbing a spiral staircase. Life Spiral Up is the practice of seriously building that future.
OPEN INNOVATION PARTNERS
The nature-positive challenge cannot be completed by I-kan alone. By working with IKIMON Inc. and Grow Up Academy, we combine knowledge and execution to create new circulation from the region.
View biodiversity initiatives →
From yesterday to today, from today to tomorrow.
Co-creating a future where the lives of everyone involved
steadily improve, like ascending a spiral staircase.
There is a reason why we chose the word "Spiral" instead of linear growth.
A spiral staircase may look like it represents going in circles, but in reality, it is steadily gaining altitude. Our daily work is the same. Even if it looks like a repetition of similar tasks, we surely grow by accumulating "small improvements" and "new realizations."
Also, a spiral means "circulation." Employee growth leads to company growth, company growth creates contributions to the region, and regional richness supports employees' lives again—creating this virtuous cycle through business is our raison d'etre.
The targets to whom we promise "Spiral Up" are not just employees.
Thoughts of the Founder
I-kan Corporation's core business is plumbing, supporting lifelines. However, our expansion into farms, restaurants, and childcare is not merely diversification. It is an inevitable evolution to embody a certain 'wish' that our late founder continued to embrace as a company dealing with 'water'.
We at I-kan are a company maintaining urban infrastructure through "Water" and "Air," which are indispensable to people's lives. If you compare the "pipes" distributed throughout the walls, floors, ceilings of buildings, and the city underground to the human body, they can be called the "blood vessels" responsible for life support.
These "pipes" play the role of delivering clean water and air, essential for life, to every corner. To build beautiful cityscapes and comfortable living spaces, it is best if these important pipes are not visible to the eye. Unnoticed by people, they quietly and ceaselessly support our lives and urban functions 24 hours a day.
Another role of these blood vessels is to promptly dispose of the city's waste products. Properly treating and purifying wastewater and returning it to the rivers and seas is also our mission. "I want to restore the beautiful river where I played as a child." This has been I-kan's theme since our founding. Our ideal is not to talk about the beauty of rivers and the fun of playing there in the past tense, but to actually reproduce it and pass it on to the next generation.
Founder (The Late) Shigeyoshi Nakamura
In 2025, our "Under the Renri Tree" community area was certified as a "Nature Coexistence Site" by the Ministry of the Environment.
✦ Origin of Life Spiral Up
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Certified Area
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Demonstrating green infrastructure combining "Rainwater Utilization x IoT." Building sustainable water cycle systems responding to climate change.
Deepening understanding of biodiversity and nurturing future leaders through "Regional Clubs" involving students and residents.
Hamamatsu City has one of the highest net outflows of young people (ages 15-24) among core cities nationwide. We hear voices saying, "There are no attractive jobs locally" or "I have to go to Tokyo to do what I want."
But we think differently. Hamamatsu has rich nature, a solid industrial base, and a warm community. There is value here that cannot be found in the city. Isn't what is missing "attractive ways of working" and "integration of life and work"?
That is why I-kan expands not only plumbing but also restaurants, farms, nurseries, and lodging. To create an environment where people think, "I want to work here, live here, and raise children here."