Ichizo Oguro has passed away.

He was the former editor-in-chief of the magazine Sotokoto. Involved with publications like BRUTUS, Croissant, and Gulliver, he later founded Kirakusha, the publishing house through which he launched Sotokoto.

Seeing his name made me realize that another era has come to an end. This is not simply about the demise of magazine culture, nor just the passing of a time when paper media held supreme power. More broadly, it marks the end of an era when editors could propose "ways of living."

Magazines once did far more than introduce consumer goods. They bound together fragments—where to go, what to wear, how to inhabit a room, what to eat, what music to listen to—presenting them as a coherent mood of life. They did not merely distribute information; they shaped the atmosphere. They did not just showcase products; they directed the flow of desire. Rather than encouraging consumption, they traced the very contours of how to live.

Ichizo Oguro was an editor of that era. He understood the desires of city dwellers. Having passed through the urban sensibility of Magazine House, he stood at the center of a time when magazines bridged the city, consumption, and the body.

Yet, his next destination lay outside the city.

Before terms like environment, countryside, local community, slow life, and LOHAS became administrative or marketing jargon, Sotokoto presented them in the form of a magazine. Looking back, the word "LOHAS" now carries a touch of embarrassment. Vocabulary like organic, eco, slow life, sustainable, rural living, and living with nature sounds somewhat dated today.

However, to become dated means that a concept once circulated widely throughout society. It was used by many, consumed, institutionalized, commercialized, turned into tourism, absorbed into brochures promoting immigration, and eventually lost its freshness as a word. In other words, Sotokoto was not too early; it grew old precisely because it was early.

The local was once something to be discovered. Urbanites headed to the countryside, stepping out of Tokyo. They sought time separate from efficiency and consumption, food not mass-produced, and face-to-face relationships. This was the "outside" for city dwellers.

This is why the name Sotokoto was highly symbolic. "Soto" (outside) "Koto" (things). Things of the outside. Events happening not within the city, but outside it. Or, alternative ways of living yet unknown to urbanites. Ichizo Oguro edited that "outside."

However, what is worth considering is what followed. What remained after LOHAS? What remained after the slow life movement, after regional revitalization, and after the word "sustainable" became entirely commonplace?

What remained is, perhaps, folklore.

LOHAS beautifully edited ways of living, whereas folklore gathers the fragments that happen to remain within everyday life. Though seemingly similar, the two are entirely different. LOHAS involves choice; folklore involves accumulation. LOHAS is close to an intention of how one wishes to live. Folklore is closer to the traces of how one has ended up living.

The old sign of a neighborhood barbershop. A notice on a shuttered store. An elderly person sitting in the same spot every morning. A mysterious ornament in a shopping arcade. A disused bulletin board outside a station. Potted plants continuing to multiply after being placed by someone. Stores in old photographs that no longer exist. A person who has broadcasted the local festival for decades. A small confectionery shop’s market stall. A local custom whose origin no one remembers.

These are not LOHAS. They are not a beautifully curated life, a conceptualized region, or a poster promoting migration. They simply exist. They remain. They persist. They are on the verge of being forgotten.

Folklore is precisely these kinds of things.

Perhaps what I am collecting now is what lies beyond Sotokoto. Sotokoto headed outward, toward the provinces, seeking a way of living distinct from the city. Yet, what is required now is not necessarily to travel far.

Even within a five-meter radius, an outside already exists.

The outside exists in neighborhood streets, in old photographs, in our parents' memories, in a child's words, in a room with a cat, in the obituary of a former colleague, and in the music we once listened to.

The outside is not a geographical distance. It refers to that which cannot yet be fully grasped with our current vocabulary.

The generation of Ichizo Oguro edited that outside through magazines. They arranged pages, chose photographs, wrote copy, created special features, and bundled the mood of the era. Through this, many were able to imagine ways of living they had never seen.

Today, however, magazines alone can no longer edit the era. Information has dispersed, and life has fragmented. Everyone takes photographs, everyone writes, and everyone posts. Yet, because of this, what was once precious easily slips away.

The local is now over-discovered. Every town has its "local media." Every municipality has its "regional resources." Every tourist spot has its "hidden charms." Every migration website boasts about "human connection." Every sustainability document details a "future lifestyle."

The local has been over-edited, and as a result, it is growing weary. Regional identity, human warmth, rich nature, visible connections, mindful living, sustainable futures—these phrases are not lies. Yet, through repeated use, they can gloss over the rough textures of real life.

In the true local, we find stranger things, things that make us weep, things that make us laugh, things that cannot be explained, and things that are slightly frightening. Though seemingly trivial, they remain unforgettable. It is within these things that folklore dwells.

One feels as though folklore is what remained after LOHAS.

The territory carved out by Ichizo Oguro is by no means small. He opened the eyes of urbanites to the outside of the city and presented values separate from consumption. He introduced the environment, the regions, and ways of living into society not through dense ideology, but with the tactile feel of a magazine. It was a task only an editor could achieve.

Yet, once that work spread throughout society, once its vocabulary became commonplace and was absorbed by institutions and advertisements, a different task became necessary. This is no longer about proposing how to live. It is about gathering what remains in daily life, preserving fading voices, gently assigning tentative names to fragments that have remained nameless, and archiving things before they solidify into meaning, without forcing them to mean too much.

I believe this is the work of the local from now on.

There is no need to make the local fashionable again, nor to turn the regions into beautiful narratives, nor to reduce life to a correct image of the future. Rather, what is needed is to refrain from over-editing. We must leave things strange, leave them small, leave them unfinished, and leave them without knowing whom they will serve.

That is where the folklore after LOHAS resides.

The work of Ichizo Oguro once brought the local to the forefront of society. He made life outside the city visible through the language of magazines. We, who are left in his wake, must look at our feet once more. We look not outward, but at the outside that exists right here. We do not discover the regions; we find that which is submerged within daily life. Instead of proposing a beautiful life, we gather the traces of a life that is quietly disappearing.

The era when magazines proposed how to live has certainly receded. Yet, a wind still blows from the opening that era created.

After LOHAS, folklore remained. It is not an elegant word, a new trend, or a concept to build markets around. It is simply what remains in daily life—something that cannot be easily explained, yet lingers in the mind, something that should be gathered before it is forgotten.

The "outside" that Ichizo Oguro observed is no longer just a distant region. It exists on today's roadside, in old photographs, in the back of a neighborhood shop, in the memories of our parents, in the play of children, and within ourselves as we pause upon reading an obituary.

After the local edited by magazines, there remains a local that could not be fully edited. Gathering these remnants is, perhaps, where the next folklore studies begin.

© SHIRO & Co.

First published: 2026-06-12