Democratizing Proof of Existence
"To record and pass on one's existence —
that is not a privilege, but a right for everyone"
It all began with one dog.
Pearl, a beloved family dog since 2007. After she passed in 2025, I placed her throat bone in a clam shell, added a four-leaf clover I had picked and a petal my daughter had found, and sealed it in epoxy resin to create a "portable grave." — That was the origin of "proof of existence."
Our first destination was Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. With Pearl's grave and our family, we pledged love and peace. During that journey, we discovered that our family's ancestral grave still exists on Maui. As a couple — both second-born children — we decided to spend half the year on Maui as grave keepers.
On Maui, we visited every major temple and church, examining Eastern and Western gravestones with our own eyes. That's where we encountered the "Unknown" — forgotten graves of Japanese immigrants in Lahaina. We began the work of repatriating remains. In Gunma Prefecture, we surveyed 5,000 gravestones on foot. We met Martin, a Japanese-American who had been unable to bring his mother's remains home to Japan for three years. We are currently assisting with the interment at a family grave in Japan.
Not just "reclaiming forgotten existences," but
"building a system so no one is forgotten in the first place."
The foundation for this conviction was cultivated in an unexpected place. Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture — the city that experienced soil liquefaction in the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. After catastrophic damage, a new district was built with hope of permanence, engineered with advanced countermeasures. The homeowners' association uniting the detached houses of Quon Garden Shin-Urayasu and the condominiums of Quon Shin-Urayasu — "Timeless Town Shin-Urayasu." The district also includes a nursery and a nursing home, designed around the concept of "cradle to grave." In this community bearing the name "Timeless," I served as association president for two years. Supporting the lives of approximately 250 households, creating a place that would be lived in across generations. Precisely because this land had once lost everything to disaster, the conviction was born that "records" and "succession" must be protected by systems.
Managing a community, surveying gravestones, working tirelessly for the repatriation of remains — when everything connected in a single line, TokiStorage was born.
You become a story, generations connect in dialogue, the path forward — that is TokiStorage’s mission.