What the next generation faces
The world is in upheaval, a state of turmoil where the light of hope is frail. It is the youth who must inherit this future, and it is the youth who must chase and protect this fragile light. But what is our youth looking at? Phones and social media train them to look inward, obsessed with their selfies, obsessed with their feed, obsessed with their own image.
SENKŌ is here to turn their cameras around.
Our belief
At SENKŌ, we believe visual storytelling can restore what a generation's attention was meant for: the real people, real places, and real stories that live outside the screen. Through an annual competition, creative labs, mentorship programs, and a digital gallery, we guide youth to step outside, talk to a stranger, see their own community with new eyes, and tell a story that isn't about them.
In doing so, we cultivate the next generation of light chasers
— the storytellers who illuminate the world.
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Years of Youth Storytelling
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Storytellers
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Schools Engaged
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Provinces Reached
The founder
SENKŌ began as an act of solidarity. When Japan was struck by an earthquake on March 11, 2011, documentary photographer Yasuhiko Okuno, a Japanese filmmaker who had called Chiang Mai home for over 20 years, gathered his community. Together with his partner Mieko and Chiang Mai's Japanese diaspora, he organized TENKAWA: a charity art and culture event raising funds for earthquake victims back home. For three years, they sent funds across the sea.
But in 2014, the act of solidarity became something new, and something more personal. With the help of Higashikawa, Japan's Town of Photography, TENKAWA turned into a youth photography competition, giving Thai high school students a reason to step outside, talk to strangers, and document the communities around them.
Over the next few seasons, dozens of schools joined and hundreds of students told local stories from across Thailand. Each year, the winning team traveled to Higashikawa, Hokkaido, to join the town's youth photography festival, exchanging culture, inspiration, and stories with peers from around the world.
Then the pandemic hit in 2020. Lockdowns kept students from taking photos, and the recession that followed emptied out sponsorship budgets. But Yasuhiko didn't give up. With no budget, running everything digitally, he quietly kept sending a team of Thai students to the Higashikawa Youth Photo Festival, year after year.
The next chapter
In 2025, Koh, Yasuhiko's 26-year-old son, stumbled across photos from the Higashikawa Youth Photo Festival. He was blown away.
In every photo he looked at, he saw something rare. The beaming smiles of two students who'd just met. The contagious laughter shared with a local baker they'd just photographed. The rollercoaster of disappointment, relief, and surprise on students' faces as they checked the shots they'd just taken. Despite being from different parts of the world, these students overcame language barriers with each other and the locals to find something real.
In an age where the youth are addicted to their screens, Koh saw a rare, genuine connection between young people, and a testament to the power of storytelling. The photos sparked his imagination of what TENKAWA could become. But there was no marketing, no social media, no website, and the logo was a decade old.
So Koh, a filmmaker like his father and social entrepreneur, proposed a rebrand and a new vision adapted for the era.
In 2026, TENKAWA was reborn as SENKŌ.
閃光 — a flash of light, sudden, bright, cutting through the dark.
We chose it because we believe that is what the youth are. Not a distant hope. A flash. Right now.