From a Used-CD Catalog to the Moon: The Restless Voyage of Yusaku Maezawa
Most founders, after selling their company and pocketing a fortune, opt for a quiet second act. They buy a yacht, play endless rounds of golf, and occasionally tell old war stories to the press. That alone would qualify as success.
Yusaku Maezawa simply refuses to stay on that track. From a mail-order catalog of imported CDs, he built ZOZOTOWN into Japan's largest fashion e-commerce platform, gave away a billion yen on Twitter, flew to the actual International Space Station, and won a race tossing a Ferrari around a circuit. The word "impossible" seems never to have been installed in his operating system.
How did a band kid from Kamigaya, Chiba, end up tracing such an improbable orbit? Follow the trajectory and one consistent instinct emerges: steer, at full throttle, toward whatever looks the most interesting.
It Started With Drumsticks
Maezawa was born on November 22, 1975, in Kamigaya, Chiba. He attended Waseda Jitsugyo High School and chose not to go on to university. What he held in his hands instead was a pair of drumsticks. In 1993 he formed the band Switch Style on drums, and in 1998 they made their major-label debut on BMG Japan. His younger brother was part of the band, too.
True to character, music was never going to be the end of the story. In 1995 he began selling imported records and CDs through a mail-order catalog — the simple impulse of delivering things he loved to people who loved them. In 1998 he founded Start Today Co., Ltd. That year, when his band's debut and his company's birth coincided, marked the pivot of a young man trading two passions for the path of an entrepreneur.
The Invention Called ZOZOTOWN
In 2000 he suspended the band to focus entirely on business, moving his catalog sales online and expanding into apparel. Then, in 2004, he launched the fashion e-commerce site ZOZOTOWN.
At the time, conventional wisdom said clothes couldn't be sold online — you couldn't know the size, trust the colors, or try anything on. Dismantling those assumptions one by one, ZOZOTOWN grew into Japan's largest fashion marketplace. A business that began as an extension of a used-record catalog ended up reshaping millions of closets. Maezawa's commercial instincts were, without doubt, the real thing.
In 2018 he renamed the company from Start Today to ZOZO, Inc. The following year, when ZOZO came under the LINE Yahoo umbrella, he stepped down as President and CEO. One era closed there.
The Billion-Yen New Year Gift
In 2019, the same year he left the CEO's chair, Maezawa created another legend: a 100-million-yen New Year giveaway on Twitter. Cash handed out by lottery to people who retweeted him sent the whole country buzzing, and cumulatively he is said to have distributed around 4.9 billion yen to the public. Somewhere along the way he became known as the "money-giveaway guy," a fame that spilled far beyond the entrepreneurial world.
It would be easy to write this off as a publicity stunt. But he pours the same intensity into collecting contemporary art, amassing supercars, and reaching for space. The willingness to convert hard-earned money straight into "dreams" and "fun" reflects a thorough allergy to boredom. His large donations to municipalities such as Minamiboso and Tateyama earned him the Blue Ribbon Medal several times over.
A Private Citizen, Bound for Space
In 2018 Maezawa stunned the world by announcing the dearMoon lunar flyby project with SpaceX. Then, in December 2021, he became the first Japanese private citizen to stay aboard the International Space Station, spending roughly 12 days there. The mission was livestreamed on YouTube, and the image of Maezawa floating in orbit lodged itself in many memories. In 2023 the voyage was chronicled in the documentary "Why I Went to Space."
Sadly, in 2024 the dearMoon lunar flyby was cancelled. But he refuses to stand still on Earth, either. That same year, leading the racing team MAEZAWA RACING, he won the Shell Am class of the Ferrari Challenge Trofeo Pirelli Japan series. In the sky or on the ground, the man keeps his foot on the accelerator.
Outlandish, Yet Impossible to Dislike
There's a surprising warmth to the private man. He has been through a divorce and has publicly acknowledged three sons from common-law relationships with two women. The aura of a doting, generous big brother never quite fades, no matter how wild his ventures get.
Bugatti Veyron, Pagani Zonda, Aston Martin Valkyrie — his supercar list reads like a boy's dream grown to adult scale. Contemporary art, antiques, Buddhist statuary. His collections seem scattered, yet a single thread of genuine "I love this" runs through all of it.
A man who started with a used-CD catalog, built Japan's largest fashion marketplace, and turned that money into dreams big enough to fly to space. Maezawa's life is at once a success story and a grand experiment in what it means to live an interesting life.
While ordinary executives fret over tax planning, he works out how to board a rocket. Where that impulse comes from, no one can quite say. But one thing is certain: we watch this boredom-proof voyage with just a touch of envy.