Kanno Taishi, mayor of Nishikawa Town and creator of Japan's first municipally issued NFT, "Nishikawa Town Digital Resident Card NFT," talks about the "push activity" of local governments

Nishikawa Town in Yamagata Prefecture aims to create a connected population and increase the number of immigrants by issuing NFTs. We asked Mayor Kanno Taishi about the background and purpose of announcing Japan's first municipally issued NFT.

In April 2023, Nishikawa Town announced the "Nishikawa Town Digital Resident Card NFT" as Japan's first municipally issued NFT. Please tell us about the background and purpose of starting this project.

Kanno Taishi (hereinafter Kanno): The purpose and background of issuing the "Nishikawa Town Digital Resident Card NFT" is to increase the connected population of Nishikawa Town. Ultimately, we also hope that NFT buyers will immigrate to the town.

The main targets for people who we would like to immigrate to are the so-called wealthy and younger generations. In addition, as part of our efforts to increase immigrants, Nishikawa Town is also focusing on developing saunas as a tourism business. We thought that NFTs were exactly the area that overlapped with these target groups.

In fact, when we looked at a survey conducted by a major research company, we recognized that the target group we were looking for tends to be linked to the NFT market. So we explored ways to access the NFT market, and decided to issue the "Nishikawa Town Digital Resident Card NFT."