About four years ago members of JALT Omiya started talking about organising a one-day conference. They were inspired by the efforts of other JALT chapters especially the JALT Hokkaido Language Conference. From there various other developments in Japan's ELT community had an influence including JALT West Tokyo's minconferences and the Joint-Tokyo JALT one-day conference. Also, the PAN-SIG Conference and the work of the JALT-JET Liaison committee were inspirations. Eventually a group of people who met at events organised by JALT, AJET, ESTEEM, ETJ, and others, saw a trend toward cooperation developing between a growing number of ELT organisations in Japan, and they wanted to be a part of it.

Up to this point the co-operation had been within JALT, or between JALT and one other organisation. Usually one of the organisations held a dominant role and the other provided support. The logical next step was to hold a multi-organisation event. The group of people who became the Nakasendo English Conference Organising Committee realised that many of them belonged to more than one organisation. They had many connections through their involvement in a variety of ELT communities. They decided that it was time to start making better use of their connections. So, on Sunday, 25th November 2007 at the JALT National Conference in Tokyo, the first Nakasendo English Conference Organising Committee meeting was held.

Although it began very humbly, because of the current relevancy of its aims with many language teachers in our area, it has grown significantly since the first event in 2008. These aims include supporting young teachers' organizations such as ESTEEM and (as of 2009) MASH that, despite their small size, have proven innovative in our field, as well as encouraging greater exchange between teachers of different levels and from diverse backgrounds. Specifically with regard to the latter aim, we hope to 1) create more awareness of what is going on at the levels of English education other than the one(s) individual participants are teaching at and 2) improve relations and exchanges between individuals and groups involved in English language teaching and learning in Japan. Finally, we seek to plan and run our event through cooperation and collaboration, using the Nakasendo English Conference wiki upon which any person interested in participating in the conference can write their ideas, comments, and questions.