Connecting the world
with universal wisdom “SOPHIA”

Vision

In an era marked by volatility, fragmentation, and sustained decision-making pressure, many of today’s global challenges persist not because of a lack of strategy or intelligence, but because of how individuals and institutions understand themselves in relation to others and to the situations they inhabit.

ENSOPHIA is a cultural institution that explores how a shift in self-perception can shape the quality of leadership, decision-making, and collective action in complex systems.

Our work is informed by Gagaku, one of the world’s oldest continuously performed musical systems. For more than 1,300 years, Gagaku has served not only as ceremonial music, but as a living social system—one that integrated diverse cultures, temporal layers, and ritual roles without reliance on centralized control, domination, or enforced uniformity.

What distinguishes Gagaku is not simply the absence of a conductor. Its practitioners do not engage the world primarily through a “self versus other” lens. Instead, they understand themselves as part of a shared space shaped by sound and silence, timing and environment, continuity and change. Within this space, action arises through attentive alignment rather than individual assertion.

ENSOPHIA approaches this as a practical reorientation of the self. When individuals learn to perceive situations from the perspective of the space they share—rather than from an exclusively self-referential standpoint—they gain alternative ways of sensing complexity, engaging difference, and coordinating action without fragmentation.

We believe this shift in self-perception extends beyond individual development. It reshapes the conditions under which conflict, polarization, and short-term decision-making take hold, opening new possibilities for addressing challenges that cut across organizations, cultures, and societies.

Through cultural diplomacy, artistic collaboration, and spaces for leadership reflection, ENSOPHIA works to translate this way of perceiving the self and the world into contemporary contexts—supporting individuals and institutions in responding to complexity with greater coherence, clarity, and depth.

“Listening” begins with how we understand ourselves in relation to others and to the situations we inhabit.

Our Activity

  • Co-create by exchanging cultures and mutual understanding

    Our starting point was to transmit the values of multiculturalism and presenting possibilities of new collaboration of cultural performing arts and music as we traveled back along the Silk Road from east to west.
    When we encounter differences, we re-discover our own essence and value. New creativity may be born from there.
    By creating stages and workshops centered on music and cultural performing arts through exchange and co-creation with different cultures; we envision the possibility of new value creation through multicultural coexistence and collaboration.

  • Promote the sharing of wisdom and practices that transcend cultures for the better lives

    The world’s diverse cultures have accumulated wisdom for “better living” that has been nurtured in each country, nature, and social environment.
    We will hold lectures and workshops as a platform to share and exchange those differences and commonalities, and generate new wisdom for all lives on the planet.

  • Create community by promoting interaction of social diversity and mutual understanding between different cultural backgrounds and sectors

    Creating a platform where people from different cultural and social backgrounds, beliefs, and sectors can meet to connect and dialogue with each other to generate new wisdom for solving their issues, and creating possibilities for unprecedented collaboration and innovation to create the value gifted from diversity.

Company Profile

The objectives of our organization is to make use of the universal wisdom to the world that has been natured in the diverse traditions, arts and cultures for help creating better societies by mainly engaging in the following activities:

  • Promoting traditional arts and cultures

  • Dispatching and inviting artists and specialists to/from the abroad

  • International cooperation projects

  • Training of traditional arts and music, cultural projects

  • Publishing books, music and performing arts, and its event production

Name of the Organization　General Incorporated Association ENSOPHIA (predecessor: SILKROAD JAPAN)

Address　Kuwano Bldg 2F, 6-23-4 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo

webisite　ensophia.org

email　info@ensophia.org

Founder / Co-Representative Directors 　Yoshika Sawairi, Jumpei Ohtsuka

Directors　Takashi Kawamoto, Shoukei Matsumoto, Kazumi Terada, Mihoko Kashiwakura, Fuminori Sasaki