How to Build a Creative City: Teruo Kurosaki (Part 1)

The "Experience Driven Showcase" series began in April 2015 and has featured diverse work examples over its first nine months. In 2016, we're launching a new initiative within the series: "Go meet the people you want to meet!" While encounters happen daily, the people we can meet through our work are surprisingly limited. Guided by the spirit of "I just want to meet them, so let's go talk first!" and "Let's talk, get inspired, and then work together next time!", this project will deliver a series of diverse dialogues. For the first installment, Dentsu Inc. Event & Space Design Bureau's Makoto Miyaguchi went to meet Teruo Kurosaki of Ryushi Creative Group.

Interview & Editing: Aki Kanahara, Dentsu Inc. Event & Space Design Bureau

 

Creative people gather where creative cities are born

Kurosaki: Right now, I'm working on a book about how to build a Creative City Lab. I'm talking with people like Portland's Development Bureau, and just yesterday I met with my friend John Jay. I know someone involved in Urban Gleaners—essentially, the regeneration of plants and food. In Japan, farms discard 10-15% of their harvest to meet distribution standards. Add cooking waste and retailers throwing out leftover food after closing due to expiration dates, and we end up discarding about 25% of food.

Running our farmers market in Aoyama, we've been thinking a lot lately about offering a perspective that sees vegetables and food as gifts from heaven, blessings of nature. Sake, for instance, was originally "sacred sake" – not meant for sale at all. It was something distributed at shrines. Now everything has become a "commodity," so we're rethinking that and planning to create a brand of sake called "NOT FOR SALE."

 

Miyaguchi: That's wonderful. I imagine many people are interested in Portland. How many times have you visited Portland overall, Kurosaki-san?

Kurosaki: About 40 to 50 times, I think.

Miyaguchi: How often?

Kurosaki: About 4 or 5 times a year. My brother married someone from Portland and has lived there for 35 years.

Miyaguchi: Portland has become a city that always comes up when discussing creative urban development. Beyond that, which cities interest you now?

Kurosaki: Downtown LA, Brooklyn in New York, Detroit... Places that get a reputation for being pretty rough. In London, Shoreditch in the East End, and parts of Copenhagen or Paris too... What I find most fascinating is watching how these shady areas transform.

Venice Beach in LA used to be home to poor people, but now it's full of artists. Once that happens, companies like Google move in. Like how Microsoft opened an office in Portland. Essentially, big corporations themselves move in search of creative talent.

Miyaguchi: So you're saying places with a shady vibe tend to attract creative people?

Kurosaki: More than that, it's places where values are shifting. Take Uber or Airbnb—in Japan, they'd have to navigate the Road Transport Act and Hotel Business Act, right? But overseas, they just start by thinking, "Let's put my car or house to use."

Miyaguchi: So Japan's many laws and regulations are moving in the opposite direction of the global creative trend, right?

 

Farmers' markets draw up to 20,000 people a day

Kurosaki: Take the location of our farmers market, for instance. The area around the United Nations University was practically a deserted plaza, especially on weekends.

Miyaguchi: You'd just assume you couldn't hold an event like that there. That's our common sense.

Kurosaki: Right? But we decided to co-host it with the United Nations University.

Miyaguchi: Sales increase for everyone involved, including the UN University, and the farmers from rural areas make a profit too.

Kurosaki: Exactly. It also gives young people job opportunities. When we hold the Bread Festival, 20,000 people come in a single day. Bread sales hit 10 million yen in one day. That's insane, right? Lately, more young people are getting into meticulously hand-dripping coffee, but they only sell 20,000 to 30,000 yen worth a day. But if they do a Coffee Festival at the farmers market, they sell 150,000 yen worth in a day.

We don't spend much money. We don't charge advertising fees either. What's interesting is that we handle everything for festivals and events—concept, content planning, management, and communications—with just 15 to 20 people, all driven by creativity. Large corporations just can't pull off producing a farmers market like this.

Miyaguchi: That hits close to home (laughs). That approach creates a more vibrant town, right? People naturally participate, and money circulates properly. We organize various events too, but it's really tough...

Kurosaki: When big companies take charge, compliance and rules pile up, right? They block every potential downside, thinking "what if this happens?" It's physical labor, but nobody quits because it's fun. For the farmers' market, we set everything up every weekend, then take it all down and store it in the warehouse afterward. It's incredibly heavy labor. The fixtures are super heavy, and just the weights alone are several tons. But even though it's tough, we don't quit. Customers don't want to leave either (laughs). They just want to hang around forever.

Miyaguchi: If it's fun, it's like a school festival—the hard work doesn't feel like a burden, right?

 

How to produce urban informatization

Miyaguchi: Will deregulation change Japanese urban development?

Kurosaki: Cities are becoming information-based. Traditionally, real estate meant owning the building itself, right? But one developer intentionally built many event halls during his lifetime, positioning them as information hubs by always including media companies like Media Services / Radio,TV Division. That was deliberate. So I think it's right for advertising agencies to start moving into real estate production now. Information is the key.

Companies growing rapidly these days generally don't have assigned seats. They only check at the entrance for security reasons. No one, not even the top executives, wears suits; everyone dresses casually, just like software companies. They operate with small teams, yet they're 3 trillion yen companies. Companies are changing at an incredible pace like this.

Dentsu Inc. should be like that too. For example, I think it would be better to have a small, elite team working in a beautifully renovated old building, tackling big projects like revitalizing Tokyo.

Miyaguchi: Renovation is trending, after all. Tokyo has plenty of old buildings popping up.

Kurosaki: The ACE HOTEL, which is thriving in Portland, has that vibe where someone in a T-shirt greets you like a friend: "Welcome! Come on in, come on in." Like Airbnb, inviting people into your own home. Ultimately, shouldn't hotels aim to make guests feel as comfortable as they would in their own home?

I think the same applies to cars. The idea of becoming rich, riding in limousines or Rolls-Royces, and living in a castle-like house—that's a nouveau riche mindset. If you were truly wealthy, you wouldn't crave those things. I think ACE HOTEL has incredibly high investment efficiency. They're transforming old buildings into beautiful spaces through art.

Miyaguchi: The constant flow of people, the gathering of diverse individuals—that's creative, right?

Kurosaki: Exactly. Even non-guests use the lobby and can work there. But in Japan's luxury hotels, spaces are segregated for guests only, right? Understanding this major shift in contemporary values—that being creative feels good or interesting—is becoming key. Dentsu Inc. should quickly pick up on this and steer in that direction.

※Part 2 is here