The first class of the 2026 Can詰め Project was held at Jissen Women's University. Toyo Seikan's Murase Ken (村瀬健) was invited to the class, marking the start of the project's fifth year of planning to address concerns faced by university applicants.
On 6 October, Murase Ken (村瀬健) of Toyo Seikan Co., Ltd. was invited to the Social Systems Theory course in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Jissen Women's University for the first class of the 2026 Can詰め Project. This marked the fifth year of the collaboration, and the students deepened their understanding of the value and role of packaging.
The class was conducted within the framework of Social Systems Theory, with discussions based on experiences to date. In collaboration with Toyo Seikan, a packaging manufacturer, the students develop and propose ideas. Following mutual and corporate evaluation, the idea to be turned into a tangible product will be selected, and the resulting canned products are scheduled to be distributed at next year's open campus.
Murase Ken (村瀬健) explained the characteristics of the containers produced by Toyo Seikan and the company's environmental initiatives. He organised the role of a can into three functions: protecting its contents, delivering them and conveying their value. He also introduced examples of products aimed at reducing environmental impact, including a manufacturing process that does not use water and initiatives involving aluminium cups.
At the close of the class, it was suggested that planning solutions to applicants' concerns could also help address the university's student-recruitment challenges. The students were asked to conduct multifaceted analysis and generate ideas that considered not only the characteristics of cans, but also the feelings of applicants and their parents, as well as significant differentiating factors.