Longevity Minds Launches a Tokyo Community Built Around Aging
Shuzo Yamamoto and Satotaka Omori are building a Tokyo community of scientists and builders around aging, in a country where nearly 30 percent of people are already over 65.
media age.house
Shuzo Yamamoto and Satotaka Omori are launching Longevity Minds, a Tokyo collective of scientists and builders working on human health, starting with aging.
They had their first conversation about a month before deciding to build it. “Apparently, one month was enough to decide we should build something,” Yamamoto said. What drew them together was a shared obsession with a hard problem: understanding aging, and figuring out what can actually be done about it.
Yamamoto is the founder, and not a scientist himself. He comes from Mercari and the founding team of Y Combinator-backed Tailor. Omori is co-founder and head of aging biology at Integrated Biosciences in the United States.
Background
For Yamamoto, the reason to build it in Japan is plain. Nearly 30 percent of people there are already over 65, the highest share in the world. The country already has world-class science, healthcare, and industry, and one of the clearest reasons in the world to care about aging. What it needs is density.
“That’s what we’re building.” The aim is to build Japan’s most concentrated longevity community, and to make Japan a global center for what comes next.
“I don’t know whether ‘longevity’ will even be the word we use 10 years from now. But I’m convinced we’ll understand the human body far better than we do today — and that will open entirely new ways to improve human health.”
Longevity Minds started in Tokyo to bring two groups together: people expanding what we know about human health, and people who can carry that knowledge into the world. The future of health, the group says, should not stay in the lab. Too many breakthroughs still sit in papers. Too many technologies never meet ordinary life.
“Science should not end with discovery. It should change how we live.” Longer healthy years, the group says, have always meant more than time. They have meant more room to learn, build, discover, and contribute. The next gain should do the same.
On September 2, the ZERO Foundation said it had established the community, to move progress in aging research, life science, artificial intelligence, and healthcare into daily life. The people it wants in the room are researchers, entrepreneurs, engineers, clinicians, company leaders, investors, and policymakers who are already moving their fields.
The foundation’s representative director is Taku Watanabe (渡邊拓), a visiting professor at Tohoku University, vice head of ZERO INSTITUTE, and founder and general partner of HERO Impact Capital. ZERO Foundation was set up in December 2021, is based in Minato, Tokyo, and supports next-generation researchers working on problems that face the planet and humanity.
Summit Tokyo
The first gathering followed on September 15 in Shibuya. Longevity Minds Summit Tokyo 2026 was invitation-only, mostly in English, and ran from 3 p.m. to 9. Its line: “Where science meets the people moving human health forward.”
age.house, the Stockholm longevity community behind this site, co-hosted together with Longevity Minds. Yamamoto shared hosting duties with age.house co-founders Anton Dalsätt and William Ferreira Andrén.
The program included a session called “Japan Takes on XPRIZE Healthspan,” with Japanese researchers and teams in that competition, plus conversations on aging research, AI, personal health, industry, and science and technology policy. The questions were practical: what the work is trying to prove, how the science would change human health, and what it takes to get research into society. Prof. Shigeo Horie spoke, with a slide on Japanese lifespans. Omori was on stage too.
What’s Next
Yamamoto wants to hear from people working on longevity or human health, and from people coming to Japan. The group can be reached at contact@longevityminds.org.
At a Glance
- What: Longevity Minds, a Tokyo community of scientists and builders focused on human health, starting with aging
- Who: Shuzo Yamamoto, founder, with Satotaka Omori, co-founder and head of aging biology at Integrated Biosciences
- Institution: Established by the ZERO Foundation, announced September 2
- Ambition: Japan’s most concentrated longevity community, and Japan as a global center for the work
- First event: Longevity Minds Summit Tokyo 2026, September 15, Shibuya, co-hosted with age.house
- Site: https://www.longevityminds.org/
Disclaimer
This content is for informational and educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your health.
