Shobu Gakuen is located on a corner of the Yoshino Plateau, ten kilometers northeast of the Kagoshima city center. In the fall, the terrain, from the mountains from the upper reaches of the Inari River and Takinokami to the seaside in front of Sakurajima, turns red, yellow, brown--all the colors of autumn foliage. In the spring, the sunlight in this southern region seems like early summer, and the mountainsides glow with the deep green of new growth. It was in this magnificent setting that Shobu Gakuen was founded in 1973 as a facility supporting people with intellectual disabilities. Its surroundings have changed considerably over the years due to rapid urban development, but the Taiyo-kai’s home is still filled with trees, flowers, and green as far as the eye can see. The cherry trees planted to commemorate the founding of this institution and the many other varieties of trees grow larger, year after year, casting their benevolent shade over this place of ease. The huge laurel tree, believed to the 250 years old, brings memories of the old days of Shobu-dani in Yoshino-cho to us on its sturdy branches, waving in the breeze, where clusters of birds gather.
While cherishing and preserving the natural beauties of this place, gifts from the past, we have carried out a variety of pioneering experiments here in order to build a creative, stimulating community. We opened Do Shobu, the Day Care Support Center in 1999, and with the completion of our new campus in 2007, and the establishment of Amua no mori, the support center for children holding an art hall in 2019, we have created our own history. We will preserve the old Shobu Gakuen as an interface between the human beings who depict a sustainable future for humanity and the environment. We hope that by gathering here, people--with or without disabilities--will communicate with each other in many ways and connect joyfully.

SHOBU STYLE, our support center for persons with disabilities, creates a friendly, safe, relaxing environment in which people with disabilities can live more comfortably in their local community.
Our dream is to create a community in which disabilities do not matter, in which the categories of person needing support and provider of support disappear, in which through making things people can exercise their innate creative abilities and share the joy of creating and collaborating together.
We hope to demonstrate the potential for creative social welfare programs through lives which allow people to support each other, connect with each, and create.
Our work at SHOBU consists of three programs: Life for Mutual Support--Support for Independence; Life that Creates--Culture and Creativity; Life that Connects—Local Community Interaction. These programs are of course related and affect each other as we develop new approaches to enabling persons with disabilities to build a better relationship with the wider society through drawing out their creative abilities. While making effective use of SHOBU’s specialized nature and management techniques, we work together with the family members of our clients to consider what the best care program to enable each to live a decent human life would be.