Meeting the actor active across Asia

Last time, we featured the story of Colombia's book king, who placed bravery at the heart of his work and built libraries to help people live lives free from drugs.

This time, from my book " Adventure Called Work: Meeting the World's Extraordinary Talents " (published by Chuo Koron Shinsha), we feature an actor who effortlessly crosses borders and thrives beyond industry boundaries.

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I first met him about two years ago when he was visiting Tokyo. His acting career had already expanded primarily across Taiwan and Hong Kong, and he was traveling to places like Thailand and Indonesia for work. He had come to Tokyo to begin his activities in Japan.

"I have a base in Taiwan, but I go wherever I'm called, work there, and then return," he said. He had the aura of a traveler, unbound by any fixed background.

I myself work overseas frequently and go wherever I'm needed. Realizing we shared such a similar view on work, we instantly hit it off and talked about many things.
Work is always intertwined with life; it's an act of people engaging in dialogue against the backdrop of culture and society to create something. When the country changes, so do the perceptions and approaches to work.

However, after working in multiple countries, you realize the need for people with a flat perspective, unbound by their background. Such work always demands a certain objectivity and universality.

A traveler is someone who understands the uncertainty of the future. Living in a society where values are fixed, one tends to imagine a stable future as an extension of the present. But working across several countries reveals how easily and quickly societal values can crumble, replaced by new ones that become dominant.

If you work believing in the permanence of your organization's values, you create things fragile to change. In this sense too, the presence of the traveler—the "person who is always on the outside"—becomes necessary for teams in various settings.

He is an actor, but also a film director and a musician. Media people interviewing him are surprised by this, and he is surprised by their surprise.
For an artist, the medium chosen as the optimal form of expression—whether it happens to be music or film—is simply that. Limiting oneself to one medium, he says, is merely confusing the means with the end.

That's why he dislikes labels. This is another point where I resonate with him. Fixing labels and limiting one's place may be comfortable, but it only restricts oneself.
His way of working may indeed be unique. Yet, the effortless way he crosses borders, as if taking a stroll, is incredibly appealing.

Fundamentally, we live in a world where progress seems impossible unless you transcend geographical, value-based, and industry boundaries. To approach this appropriately, you have no choice but to break free from fixed concepts and comfortable niches.

Ultimately, it means going all in, betting everything on your raw, unvarnished self. You operate entirely within the realm of personal responsibility. You set your own mission, design the bar you must clear, and then leap over it. That's precisely why opportunities can expand infinitely.

He became a film director because someone believed he could do it and gave him the chance to direct a film. That opportunity existed precisely because his own talent possessed that capacity for expansion. Going in with nothing, being your raw self, is undoubtedly difficult. However, it simultaneously means equipping yourself with the capacity to expand and approach any opportunity.

An uncertain future lies ahead, and nothing exists without risk. Therefore, whether you're exposed or protected by someone else, the difference isn't as great as you might think. If that's the case, a stance like his—one that allows him to approach any opportunity—might be very well-suited to this era.

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Next time, I'll be heading to Shizuoka to meet an authority on fermentation. Stay tuned.