“Breathing life into culture, with technology and heart,” the “Purpose” under the Group philosophy, avows our commitment to supporting society and people’s lives through business. The TOPPAN Group addresses social issues through extensive engagement with the greater community by delivering wide-ranging goods and services.

Recognizing the strong links between our business and society, we work to fulfill our responsibilities as a good corporate citizen and foster mutual understanding through interaction and dialogues with local communities. We believe that the building of relationships of trust and mutual growth with communities are essential for a sustainable society.

Our community involvement has been strengthened through social contribution activities across the entire global Group. We support donations, the arts and culture, and education and participate in diverse initiatives such as environmental conservation and volunteer activities that address the needs of communities.

We promote printing culture and support graphic designers through Graphic Trial, an exhibition that explores relationships between graphic design and the art of printing in search of new forms of expression. Artists at the forefront of graphic design experiment with different offset-printing techniques every year to create posters for the exhibition. Graphic Trial is held at the multipurpose P&P Gallery in the Printing Museum, Tokyo.

We continue to work with the Japan School Library Association and The Mainichi Newspapers Co., Ltd. as a cosponsor of the Central Contest for Book Report Drawings, an annual contest that cultivates the reading and creative skills of children by encouraging them to express their impressions of books by drawing. Apart from cosponsoring, we have been organizing various support activities such as student tours of the Printing Museum, Tokyo. In another program, prize-winning students have been presented with replicas of famous Japanese-style paintings produced with TOPPAN printing technology.

We have been collaborating with the Support Center DREAM and the Borderless Art Organisation as co-organizers of the Kanosei Art Project (kanosei means “potential” in Japanese) since 2018. The project seeks to add value to the works of borderless artists and to develop a model that supports both business and the independence of persons with disabilities. The next generation of leaders is expected to emerge in the process.

Borderless artworks are now converted into high-definition image data using our original processing technology. Digital artworks are exhibited and sold to the public as Primagraphy^® works and used for the development of sales promotion tools and other items for businesses. Copyright royalties from Primagraphy works have been returned to the borderless artists and the organizations that support them.

Activities in Fiscal 2022

We held our first exhibition in a metaverse gallery, in tandem with online exhibitions featuring framed Primagraphy works and VR experiences. The metaverse exhibition is an innovative style of museum that links visitors to true-to-life avatars who can freely move about the room and chat. We applied the metaverse gallery to new employee training in order to facilitate communication among participants. Commercial usage of borderless artworks has also been diversified. Companies have picked up the works to produce novelty goods and decorate temporary fencing at construction sites. Cumulative royalties from the borderless artworks totaled approximately 9.3 million yen as of March 31, 2023.

The Kanosei Art Project received the Grand Mécénat Award, the highest recognition of corporate activities for supporting the arts and culture, at the Japan Mécénat Awards 2022 sponsored by the Association for Corporate Support of the Arts of Japan.