Working title · a documentary in development · Visual Creations, Ghent
Ikigai
生き甲斐
The Pilgrim and the Machine
Four weeks in Japan on a pilgrim route a thousand years old, among the people who keep its temples and castles, stand behind its counters and run its companies, asking all of them the same question.
One journey, five storylines.
- Format
- Pilot, not for broadcast
- Purpose
- Supporting material to sell a series or a feature
- Filming
- 2 November to 1 December 2026
- Production
- Visual Creations, Ghent
- Main researcher and project owner
- David Temmerman
The project
How they see it, and what we can learn
A Belgian entrepreneur takes on a new challenge, and travels Japan for four weeks to prepare for it by going looking for his ikigai. He walks a pilgrim route a thousand years old, cycles across seven bridges and eats his way through the kitchen of a country that treasures its craft. He films all of it himself, on one digital camera.
The country leads. Its culture, its landscape and the places worth standing in set the order of the film, and the storylines are woven through them rather than laid on top.
The people we meet along the way are the film. We ask them how they look at all of this, what it means to them, and what we might learn from it. One man, one camera, a thousand year old path, and a great many other people who know it better than he does.
This is not a guidebook and not a top ten. It is the account of someone travelling slowly, who therefore sees things a crew of five never gets to see. No lighting, no second camera, no director asking for one more take. One traveller who steps inside, takes off his shoes and asks how it works.
The tension of the film lies in the contrast. He travels with tomorrow's technology, live translation in his ear and a route planned by machine, through a country that holds on to its past with both hands. What happens when those two meet at the same counter.
The film is made together with Visual Creations in Ghent. He travels and films alone, and the production house carries the development, the edit and the financing, so that what comes back from Japan becomes a film rather than a folder of footage.
Five stories run through the same four weeks and keep crossing one another. The film is built as a layer cake rather than a single line.
The pilot
What this film is for
2 November to 1 December 2026
A test, not a broadcast
Proof of concept
The film that comes out of this journey is not made to be aired. It is made to be shown to the people who decide what gets aired. It is the evidence that the idea holds: that one traveller with one camera can carry a country, that the four storylines braid rather than compete, and that the material has the weight of a documentary rather than a travel vlog.
From there the work can go two ways, and the pilot is deliberately cut to serve both. As a series format, where each episode takes one traveller, one country and one question. Or as a single feature documentary about these four weeks alone.
That is why the journey is being filmed in full rather than to a script. We would rather come home with more than we need and find the shape in the edit, together with Visual Creations, than decide in October what the film in November is going to be.
The threads
Five stories, one journey
None of these is a separate chapter. They cross at the same counters, on the same path and in the same week, and that crossing is what the film is about.
I. Ikigai
Ikigai is not a diagram with four circles, however often the internet draws it that way. In Okinawa and elsewhere in Japan it means something smaller and more stubborn: the reason you get up. For one person that is a boat. For another it is a bowl of broth that has had to taste the same for thirty years.
We put that question to people who are not used to being asked. A swordsmith in Osafune working to methods eight hundred years old. An innkeeper on the Kumano Kodo who cooks every evening for eight strangers. A bonsai grower in Omiya tending a tree he will not see come of age.
The traveller is inside this thread rather than standing next to it. These four weeks close a sabbatical and open the next chapter, and the search is his own before it is anyone else’s.
That is also why he seeks out his peers on their own ground. He has spent his working life in the market that moved from infrastructure to cloud, and he wants to hear from the people in Tokyo and Osaka who made that same move how it went, what it cost them and what they would do differently. The same question as the swordsmith’s, asked in a different building.
II. Culture, food and the people behind it
The route is built around places worth standing in. Four original castles and the shogun’s own, the sword forges of Bizen where they have been hammering steel for eight hundred years, the thatched farmhouses of Shirakawa go, a bonsai museum in a suburb of Tokyo, and the oldest bath house in Japan. But the buildings are not the story. The people who keep them are.
So we film the smith rather than the sword, the thatcher rather than the roof, the man who opens the bath house at six, the grower watering a tree he will not see come of age. Every one of these places survives because somebody turns up for it every morning. That is the same question the whole film is asking, wearing different clothes.
The food is the other half and carries the same weight, for the same reason. Morning markets in Tokyo, Kanazawa and Osaka. Counters where one person has cooked one thing for thirty years. The inns on the Kumano Kodo where the family of the house puts dinner on the table. Wherever we can we go with a local foodie who knows which stall is the right one and why, because a market filmed by an outsider is a crowd, and a market filmed with a local is a story.
Putting those people on screen is the point rather than the backdrop. Every dish on this route has a reason. Tempura came ashore with the Portuguese, sushi was street food for the workers of Edo, and the snow crab season opens four days before we reach the Sea of Japan. We would rather have somebody tell us that themselves, standing at their own counter.
III. The way of the samurai
He has looked up to samurai culture for a long time and wants to understand it properly rather than romantically. Not the armour in the display case but the code underneath it. Discipline, loyalty, the readiness to serve something that outlives you, and the composure of a person who has already decided what he will not do.
The route is laid out for exactly that. The black castle of Matsumoto and the white one at Himeji. The forges of Bizen, where they have been making blades for eight hundred years. The shrine on Omishima where warriors left their armour before going to sea. The swords in the National Museum in Ueno. And the Kumano Kodo itself, walked by retired emperors and by the men who served them.
The reason is practical as well as personal. Boardrooms fight their own wars, and in January he takes a leadership role in one. What the samurai worked out about discipline, loyalty and holding a line is what he wants to carry back into his own working life, which is a better souvenir than a sword.
In 1876 the samurai laid down his weapon for good. His rank was abolished, his trade was gone, and the country he had served had decided to become something else. What survived was not the sword but the code, and that is the part worth bringing home.
IV. Leaders and AI
In January he takes up a leadership role at a managed services provider in the Netherlands. So the journey carries a working question as well: how do leaders in the same industry run their companies in Tokyo and in Osaka, and what are they doing with artificial intelligence.
Japanese firms think in decades where ours think in quarters, and the craft runs through the office as surely as through the forge. That makes the question sharper. A country this attached to doing things slowly and properly has to decide what to hand to a machine and what never to hand over at all.
Who we look for. Around five companies of the same kind as the one he is joining. Cloud and managed service providers in Tokyo and Osaka, ranging from a listed data centre operator to a consultancy of a few hundred people that lives on other people’s infrastructure. One conversation each, with the person who carries the decisions.
These interviews sit alongside the swordsmith and the innkeeper, asked in the same tone and about the same thing. What keeps you at it, and what would you not give up.
V. The machine that planned it
Every day of this journey was prepared with artificial intelligence: the route, the bookings, the reading behind each stop, even the first letter to a Japanese bathhouse, written in Japanese. On the road it keeps running, for live translation and for finding what the guidebooks leave out.
The film keeps score. Where did it help, where did it get in the way, and what did it cost in surprises, which are the thing you travel for in the first place. Visual Creations follows that question with him, because the answer bears on how a production house works as much as on how a traveller travels.
The route
Four movements
Every movement is built the same way: the location, the person who keeps it going, and their own answer to the question. The route is fixed and fully booked. It runs from the busiest city on earth to a forest path where there is often no signal, and back. Each movement has its own pace, its own kitchen and its own kind of silence.
Tokyo to the Alps, down to the Inland Sea, and back by way of the sacred mountains of Kumano. Distances are given in ri, as they were when the road was new.
The City
2 to 6 November · Tokyo, Nikko
Breakfast among the fishmongers at Tsukiji, the neon wall of Shibuya, then two hours north into the mountains to Toshogu, where the shogun lies who gave the country two hundred and fifty years of peace. The starting point, and at once the contrast the whole film turns on.
Who we look for. A knife maker in Kappabashi who grinds for the cooks of the city, a stallholder at the Tsukiji outer market, and a craftsman who keeps the carvings of Toshogu intact.
The Mountains
6 to 12 November · Matsumoto, Takayama, Shirakawa go, Kanazawa
The black Crow Castle, the wasabi fields fed by spring water, the carpenters of Hida who were so good they were sent to the capital as tax, and a city that spent its wealth on gardens and gold leaf rather than on war. This is where the craft lives.
Who we look for. A wasabi grower in Azumino who judges water temperature by hand, a sake brewer behind one of the cedar balls in Sanmachi, a thatcher in Shirakawa go, and a gold leaf beater in Kanazawa, where almost all of Japan’s gold leaf is still made.
The Sea
12 to 21 November · Kyoto, Himeji, Shimanami Kaido, Kobe, Osafune, Osaka
Seventy six kilometres by bicycle over seven bridges and six islands, through the old realm of pirates who were really toll keepers. Then the sword museum of Bizen and the kitchen of Osaka, where eating until you drop is a verb. The movement ends in the water: Solaniwa Onsen on Osaka Bay, the largest onsen theme park in western Japan, with a Japanese garden under its roof, where the rest day before the pilgrimage is spent.
Who we look for. The smith, the polisher and the scabbard maker who work beside each other at Osafune, a citrus grower on the lemon island of Ikuchijima, a chef at a Kobe beef counter where the meat comes from one animal at a time, and whoever keeps the water right at Solaniwa.
The Path
21 November to 1 December · Kumano Kodo, Kyoto, Tokyo
The heart of the film. Four days on foot along the Nakahechi, a pilgrim route more than a thousand years old and on the world heritage list, from inn to inn, with dinner cooked by the family of the house. Then the autumn colours of Kyoto and the return to Tokyo, with a head empty enough to begin again.
Who we look for. The families who run the three inns on the trail, the keeper of Tsuboyu, the smallest bath in the world and the only one on the heritage list, and a bonsai grower in Omiya at the very end.
The cycling day, 15 November
Seventy six kilometres over seven bridges and six islands, from Shikoku to Honshu. Oyamazumi Shrine on Omishima, halfway, keeps most of the old armour that survives in Japan.
The pilgrimage, 22 to 25 November
Four days on foot along the Nakahechi, inn to inn, from Takijiri over the passes to Hongu Taisha and the great torii at Oyunohara.
The same route in Google Maps
The cultural locations, pin by pin
Nikko Toshogu Matsumoto Castle Daio Wasabi Farm Sanmachi, Takayama Shirakawa go Kenrokuen Omicho Market Nijo Castle Nishiki Market Himeji Castle Oyamazumi Shrine Bizen Osafune Sword Museum Bikan, Kurashiki Kuromon Market Solaniwa Onsen Kumano Hongu Taisha Omiya Bonsai Art Museum Tokyo National Museum Kappabashi
The full route, with dates, lodgings and an interactive map, is at ikigai.mercurio.be.
For venues
What we ask and what we give
We work small and quietly. One person, one small camera, no tripod in the way and no light that disturbs your guests. What we ask is modest, and what we give back is yours.
What we ask
- Permission to film during a quiet part of the day. We do not need the place to ourselves
- A short interview, twenty to thirty minutes, with someone who works there. In Japanese is perfectly fine
- One spot inside your own grounds that the person would want to show us, and the reason why
- Your limits set out in advance, so we do not have to guess them
What we give
- The raw footage of your venue, free to use on your own channels
- Should your venue make the finished film, it is named there and carried along wherever the film is shown
- No hidden camera, and no images of guests without their consent
- A look at the passage about you before it goes out, and we correct anything that is factually wrong
- Your name and logo are never used in promotion without your agreement
Protecting your name matters to us. This pilot is made to be shown to broadcasters and distributors, so whatever travels on carries your name with it. You will see the passage about you before that happens, and anything factually wrong gets corrected. The final edit stays with us, as it has to in documentary, but you will never be surprised by it.
Would you rather read the full project outline first. Ask us and you will have it within two working days.
The partner
Visual Creations
Visual Creations is an independent production house in Ghent that has been making film since 1999. It works under three names, each with its own trade, and all three sit in the same building. A project therefore runs from first idea to finished film without changing house.
VC Film
The production house for fiction, short film and documentary. Develops, produces and guides the financing, with knowledge of funds, soft money and the Belgian tax shelter, and with the contacts for distribution.
VC Studios
The post production studio. Editing, visual effects and colour grading for cinema, television and online, with more than twenty years of experience and offices in Ghent and in Axel.
Zumo
The content studio, working since 1999. Documentary, short film, branded content, corporate film and visuals for events, for brands and organisations at home and abroad.
Reigerstraat 43, 9000 Ghent, Belgium · visualcreations.be
The maker
Why this traveller
David Temmerman, Ghent
A career spent on how people work together
Main researcher and project owner
He has spent his working life in Belgian and Dutch technology, on the commercial side rather than the technical one. At Combell through its years of fast growth. At Sentia, where he built the partner ecosystems around Amazon and Microsoft, before Accenture bought the company. Since then under his own name, Mercurio, as a cloud sales and marketing leader. In January he takes up a leadership role at a managed services provider in the Netherlands.
What runs through all of it is one subject: how people and companies come to work together, and what makes that hold. Partnerships are not contracts, they are people deciding to trust each other over a long stretch of time. That is the same thing he goes to ask a swordsmith in Osafune and an innkeeper on the Kumano Kodo, and it is why the question is not borrowed for the occasion.
It is also what makes the interviews in Tokyo and Osaka possible. He walks into those conversations as somebody from the same trade who has run the same transition, not as a reporter with a list. People talk differently to a peer.
He is not a cameraman by training, and that is part of the design rather than a gap in it. One traveller, one camera, no crew, no second take. He does the research, writes the approaches, makes the contact and leads every conversation himself. Visual Creations turns what he brings home into a film.
The team
Who is working on it
Entrepreneur from Ghent with a background in technology and innovation. Owns the project, does the research, travels alone, films and leads the conversations. This journey is his research and at the same time the first shoot.
Founder of the house, and the sponsor of this project inside it. Opens the doors there and guards the line between a good idea and a film that can actually be made.
Founded the house and sets the creative direction of what it makes. The one who decides whether an idea is a film, and what kind of film it should become.
Responsible for planning and delivery in the studio, from raw footage to finished episode.
Founder of the house, and the producer who follows up post production: editing, effects and colour grading.
David Temmerman works on this project as a subcontractor to Visual Creations.
References
Work of the house
A selection of the productions Visual Creations worked on, as producer or for editing, visual effects and colour grading. Every title links to its own page, and some carry a trailer.
Showreels and the full catalogue: VC Studios, on Vimeo · Zumo, on Vimeo · VC Film
Television and streaming
- De Mol
- De Slimste Mens ter Wereld
- Dancing with the Stars
- Code van Coppens
- Nonkels, series 1 and 2 Streamz
- Callboys, series 2
- De Container Cup VIER
- Geub Telenet
- De Columbus
- Brainman
- Monaco Vrouwen
- All In
- Rademaekers pilot trailer
- Papamagneet Ket & Doc, JEF
Film and short film
Brands and organisations
- Amnesty International
- Greenpeace
- bpost
- Ford
- Louis Vuitton
- Mastercard
- Nike
- Studio 100
- Kinepolis
- Pukkelpop
- Canvas
- Sporza
- Studio Brussel
- Radio 1
- All of Zumo’s work
Media landscape
Where this film belongs
Flanders has a strong tradition of travel series in which one recognisable traveller steps into a country and lets it surprise him. Reizen Waes has run on VRT 1 for ten years. The Dwars door series, made by Arnout Hauben, is a co-production between VRT and the Dutch broadcaster VPRO, and won the Gouden Televizier Ring in 2024. That is the shelf this pilot sits on, with one difference: here the maker travels alone, films himself, and a question rather than a list of destinations is at the centre.
What is striking is what is missing. The last Flemish documentary of any weight about Japan is Patrasche, A Dog of Flanders, Made in Japan from 2007, broadcast on Canvas in 2010. Since then there has been no Flemish voice on contemporary Japan, while Dutch makers keep returning to the country. That gap is real.
Broadcasters and co-production
Financing
Festivals and pitching
This overview is for orientation and was checked in October 2026. Dates and conditions shift, so verify them before planning around them. Screen Flanders, long a standard route for Flemish productions, accepts no new applications from 2027 onward. Which way this pilot goes is something we decide together with Visual Creations once the material from the journey is in.