Mitou Junior - Enhance Young Innovative Creators Program

What's Mitou Junior?

Mitou Junior is a half-year-long program to enhance young innovative creators in Japan. This program, initiated by the Mitou Foundation in 2016 and originating from the government-backed MITOU Program, has received support from various companies and organizations since its inception. With that support we offer the following benefits.

Mentoring

Creators will be able to learn from mentors and other MITOU Program graduates, like professors and tech founders, who are at the forefront of technology.

Financial Support

Each group will be eligible to receive up to 500K Yen as funding for development.

Support developing projects at CASE Shinjuku.

Place to develop

If necessary, places to develop will be provided. And transportation and accommodation expenses for participating in events like Maker Faire Tokyo will also be covered.

Booth exhibition at Maker Faire Tokyo 2023.

Award outstanding performance

Creators who have shown their outstanding performance during Mitou Junior program get an outstanding performance award. The award is highly recognized for Admissions Office of several universities, including Keio University SFC and Tokyo Metropolitan University.

Award ceremony for graduates of the MITOU Junior program at The University of Tokyo.

Projects Showcase

Up to now 743 applications are submitted to our Mitou Junior program, and we support 94 projects and 116 creators. (Acceptance rate: 10-13%)

Example projects, accepted and boosted by our program, are as follows.

Visible - Web Accessibility Validate & Fix

vamboo - A visual programming language to create GUI application in functional and reactive way.

Vreath - A New Consensus Algorithm Makes CryptoCurrency Easily Available

Toubans! - The easy-to-use duty-management chatbot

Hopefully Automatic Train Operation (HATO): Immersive Automatic Model Train Control System

Check statistics Check the latest projects (in Japanese)

Sponsors & Supporters

Mitou Junior program has 10+ financial and in-kind sponsors. Also we have 10+ supporters, including MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) and METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry).