What are the X Dignity Center and PRANCE at Keio University?

Two organizations within KGRI, a research institute of Keio University in Japan. The X Dignity Center co-hosted the event celebrating the release of the Japanese edition of the book *Plurality*, and PRANCE was set up in 2026 with the aim of realizing the "Nameraka Society" and Plurality.

In Japan, the book Plurality is also connected to university events and research organizations. Two examples at Keio University are the X Dignity Center (2024) and PRANCE (2026). This article follows the history of both along a timeline.

In short

Both are organizations inside a research institute of Keio University called the Keio University Global Research Institute (KGRI) [1][2][3].

The X Dignity Center (founded 2024) is a center for thinking about "dignity" in the 21st century by bringing many academic fields together. It co-hosted the event celebrating the release of the Japanese edition of the book Plurality [1][4][2].
The Plurality and Nameraka Society Research Center (PRANCE) (set up 2026; its Japanese name is プルーラリティ・なめらかな社会研究センター) lists as its research goal the realization of the "Nameraka Society" proposed by Ken Suzuki and of "Plurality" as advocated by Audrey Tang and others [3]. (Its English name differs from source to source; see "What is debated" below.)

For example

May 10, 2025: the event for the release of the Japanese edition. A one-day conference celebrating the release of the Japanese edition of PLURALITY was held at Keio's Mita campus. It was co-hosted by four groups: the SmartNews Media Research Institute, the X Dignity Center of Keio University, Plurality Tokyo and Namera Kaigi (なめら会議). Audrey Tang and Glen Weyl also spoke [2]. According to X Dignity's report on the event, about 80 people attended in the hall and about 120 online [5].

August 2, 2026: Digital Democracy Summit 2026. The official website names the host as "Keio University KGRI PRANCE × Digital Democracy 2030" (our translation of the Japanese page) and the venue as the Kita-kan (North Building) Hall at Keio's Mita campus. The closing remarks were given by Tang and Ken Suzuki [6][7].

In more detail

What the X Dignity Center is

The X Dignity Center was founded on July 1, 2024, as a center within KGRI [1].

According to the center's "X Dignity Declaration", its purpose is to think about ethical questions concerning "dignity" in the 21st century, at a time when the boundaries between oneself and others, and between humans and machines, are gradually becoming blurred. The "X" (read "cross") stands for thinking by overlapping academic fields. It also names as issues the "attention economy", in which people's attention is fought over, and technology that connects the brain and machines (BMI, brain-machine interfaces), and it cites "dokuritsu jison" (independence and self-respect), a phrase of Yukichi Fukuzawa [4].

There are four co-directors (the role of director is shared among several people): Junichi Ushiba, Takeharu Okubo, Satoko Tokunaga and Tatsuhiko Yamamoto. The chair of the steering committee is Keigo Komamura [4][8]. The declaration itself does not mention Plurality [4].

Timeline (the parts related to Plurality)

July 1, 2024 The X Dignity Center is founded [1].

December 21, 2024 A symposium hosted by X Dignity, "Spreading 'information health' from Japan to the world" (「『情報的健康』を、日本から世界へ」), is held both in a hall at the Mita campus and on Zoom (Ken Suzuki's own record of his talks calls it an "international symposium" [9]). Ken Suzuki gives a special lecture, "The Nameraka Society and the Divided Society" (「なめらかな社会と分断社会」). The text of the announcement does not contain the words Plurality, Tang or Weyl [10].

The report on the event (a reposting of a note.com article by Yuya Suzuki) is a bullet-point summary, not the speakers' own words. According to it, Ken Suzuki presented society through three models, "flat", "step-function-like" and "smooth", and said that we need to face the reality of division squarely [11].

May 10, 2025 The event for the release of the Japanese edition (see "For example" above). In the provisional program in the announcement, the first session, "The intersection of Plurality and academic knowledge", listed Tang, Weyl, Keigo Komamura, Shigeki Uno, Kan Suzuki and Yosuke Yasuda, with Ken Suzuki as moderator. It was followed by sessions on Polis, on disinformation and Community Notes, on quadratic funding and quadratic voting (QF/QV), and on AI [2]. Ken Suzuki's own website says that he planned and organized the event and served as moderator [9]. A university-wide notice from Keio (May 16, 2025) also linked to the event report [12].

July 25, 2025 In a series for Shueisha Shinsho Plus, Keigo Komamura reviewed PLURALITY, writing that "the reform vision called Plurality is comparable to a constitutional amendment" (our translation) [13]. This was a personal book review, written before PRANCE existed.

February 27, 2026 With the approval of KGRI's management meeting, PRANCE is formally set up. The principal investigator is Keigo Komamura, and the co-director is Ken Suzuki. According to KGRI's page, its actual activity in fiscal year 2025 lasted about one month (March 2026) [3].

The member list on the same page includes 唐鳳 (Audrey Tang) and ワイルグレン (Glen Weyl in the English version [17]) as visiting professors at KGRI (professors invited from outside). This list is folded away on the page, and the person who collected the materials extracted it from the data inside the page [3].

June 1, 2026 KGRI's page writes that Ken Suzuki is to join KGRI as a project professor and plans to lead PRANCE's research in earnest [3]. Suzuki's own biography says he has been co-director of PRANCE since February 2026 and became a project professor at Keio University in June 2026 [14].

August 2, 2026 Digital Democracy Summit 2026 (see "For example" above). The PR TIMES press release says that the Digital Democracy Promotion Organization (一般社団法人デジタル民主主義推進機構, a general incorporated association whose representative director is Ken Suzuki) co-hosted it with PRANCE, with a capacity of about 200 people [15]. At the end of the official website, the organizing committee of PRANCE, Digital Democracy 2030, Socious and Tech for Impact Summit is named as the co-host [6].

What PRANCE aims for

According to KGRI's page, PRANCE starts from the view that democracy is not working well in developed countries. As examples, it names entrenched conflict, violent words and actions, and division caused by manipulating people's perceptions through social media. With this in view, it aims to sort out the problems that stand in the way of realizing the "Nameraka Society" and "Plurality", establish ways of putting them into practice, and present solutions for Japan [3][16].

Working with the technology-building community "Digital Democracy 2030" (DD2030), it also works on making tools that can actually be used. It has three subprojects [3].

Deliberative democracy in practice — Deliberation means discussing things carefully to deepen one's thinking. It studies places for discussion in Taiwan, Europe and the United States, and examples of "participatory budgeting", in which residents decide how a budget is spent, and tries them out in Japan. It plans to gather opinions using Polis and other tools in the first half of fiscal year 2026, and to hold a deliberation event within the year [3].
Broad listening — Using AI to collect and analyze the opinions of large numbers of citizens. It released a beta (trial) version of "AntiFraud", with which citizens can report fraudulent ads, on March 19, 2026, and held a press conference, "Stop Fraudulent Ads", on the same day (speakers: Ken Suzuki and Keigo Komamura) [3].
Information integrity — Efforts to keep information healthy. It deals with measures against false information, centered on fraudulent ads that impersonate famous people. Based on Suzuki's study trip to Taiwan in January 2026, it is pursuing research comparing the systems of different countries [3].

What is debated

We found no criticism of these two organizations in the materials. However, there are places where the sources describe things differently.

PRANCE's English name. Keio's English page calls it "Plurality Research and Nameraka Center of Excellence" [17], Ken Suzuki's own website "Plurality and Nameraka Society Research Center" [14], and the introduction of Suzuki on the Reverse Alignment coalition's website "Plurality and Nameraka Society Research Center of Excellence" [18].
When Ken Suzuki became co-director. The English biography on his own website gives co-director as from February 2026 and project professor as from June 2026, separately [14]. The Reverse Alignment coalition's website puts both project professor and co-director in one sentence, as from June 2026 [18].
Keigo Komamura's title and role. His title differs from source to source. KGRI's page for fiscal year 2025 gives "professor (fixed-term)" [16]; the page for fiscal year 2026, "project professor" [3]; X Dignity's member page, principal of Keio Academy of New York, project professor and chair of the X Dignity Center's steering committee [8]; the summit's speaker page, "Professor, Keio University (university-wide)" [6]; and the July 2025 book review, "Professor, Faculty of Law, Keio University" [13] (all titles are our translations). His role in PRANCE also differs: the member list on KGRI's page says "principal investigator", while the activity report on the same page and the summit biography say "co-director" [3][6].
Was the summit in person or online? A notice on DD2030's top page says it "will be held online on 8/2" (our translation) [19]. The official website and PR TIMES give the venue as Keio's Mita campus, and the official website says "in person + online" [6][15]. It was not an online-only event.
The announcements for May 10, 2025. The Tokyo Plurality Week announcement writes "May 6, 2025" in the date field for this day's event, which does not match the date in its heading. It also calls the four groups the "hosts" [20]. X Dignity's announcement gives Saturday, May 10, from 13:00 to 18:15, with the four groups as "co-hosts" [2].
The summit and Plurality. The word Plurality does not appear on the summit's official page. The link between the summit and Plurality runs through the research goals of PRANCE, which hosted it [6][3].

Where it fits in Plurality

The book Plurality mentions neither X Dignity nor PRANCE. Keio appears only in the caption of a photograph in chapter 3-3: "Figure 3-3-C. Ted Nelson at Keio University, Japan, 1999." [21] (→ Ted Nelson).

PRANCE is a Japanese university research organization that puts Plurality and Ken Suzuki's "Nameraka Society" side by side in its name and its goals (→ Ken Suzuki). Its subprojects overlap with tools that appear in the book: deliberation and Polis, and broad listening. For practice, it works with DD2030.

For the story of how Plurality has been received in Japan, see The Plurality movement in Japan and the Japan timeline.

About the sources for this page

The topic of this page was chosen by the site's operator, Hirokazu Nishio. In the materials, Nishio appears only as a panelist in the session "Polis: a new form of consensus building" on May 10, 2025 [2], and as a speaker in the summit breakout session "The technology of broad listening" (with Shinta Nakayama) [7]. He is also listed in the speaker introductions on the summit's official website, but as a speaker in the same breakout session [6].

Most of the materials are Keio's own pages, plus the official pages and press releases of the events and Ken Suzuki's own website. Almost no independent news coverage has been collected. No official announcement by Keio about the founding of PRANCE or Ken Suzuki's appointment has been found either; the only basis is the project page.

Sources

Announcement of the founding of the X Dignity Center (in Japanese) — https://www.x-dignity.kgri.keio.ac.jp/news/48/
X Dignity, announcement of the event for the release of the Japanese edition of PLURALITY (in Japanese) — https://www.x-dignity.kgri.keio.ac.jp/news/848/
KGRI, "プルーラリティ・なめらかな社会研究センター（PRANCE）", fiscal year 2026 (in Japanese) — https://www.keio.ac.jp/ja/org/kgri/project/2026/P26-22/
X Dignity Declaration (in Japanese) — https://www.x-dignity.kgri.keio.ac.jp/about/
X Dignity, event report (2025-05-10, in Japanese) — https://www.x-dignity.kgri.keio.ac.jp/news/1263/
Digital Democracy Summit 2026, official website (in Japanese) — https://summit.dd2030.org/
Digital Democracy Summit 2026, program (in Japanese) — https://summit.dd2030.org/program
X Dignity, members (in Japanese) — https://www.x-dignity.kgri.keio.ac.jp/member/
Ken Suzuki's own website, record of talks (in Japanese) — https://nameteki.kensuzuki.org/event
X Dignity, announcement of the symposium "『情報的健康』を、日本から世界へ" (2024-12-21, in Japanese) — https://www.x-dignity.kgri.keio.ac.jp/news/408/
X Dignity, report on the symposium (2024-12-21, in Japanese) — https://www.x-dignity.kgri.keio.ac.jp/news/606/
Keio University, notice (2025-05-16, in Japanese) — https://www.keio.ac.jp/ja/news/20250516-1/
Keigo Komamura, "Plurality（プルラリティ）を読み解く④" (Reading Plurality, part 4), Shueisha Shinsho Plus (2025, in Japanese) — https://shinsho-plus.shueisha.co.jp/news/31462
Ken Suzuki, biography (Japanese and English) — https://nameteki.kensuzuki.org/profile
PR TIMES, press release on "Digital Democracy Summit 2026" (in Japanese) — https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000002.000178637.html
KGRI PRANCE, fiscal year 2025 (in Japanese) — https://www.keio.ac.jp/ja/org/kgri/project/2025/I25-12/
KGRI PRANCE, English version — https://www.keio.ac.jp/en/org/kgri/project/2026/P26-22/
Reverse Alignment coalition website — https://reversealignment.ai/
Digital Democracy 2030, top page (in Japanese) — https://dd2030.org/
Tokyo Plurality Week announcement (note.com, in Japanese) — https://note.com/digitaldemocracy/n/n4c91cddef564
Plurality, 3-3 "The Lost Dao" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-3/eng/ ［CC0］

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