Good News From Teruo Kurosaki

Images courtesy of Teruo Kurosaki

It takes more than an optimistic person to build a news organization from scratch.

The process involves years of planning, buckets of start-up money, and blind faith in the eventual success of the venture. Years of frustration with the status quo must fuel the person daring enough to attempt such a feat. In the case of Current TV, it took no less than a former Vice President of the United States, and it remains to be seen whether Al Gore’s overly hip channel can cut it in the Gen Y world to which it’s pandering. Despite all the deterrents, there are a few rare visionaries willing to risk getting into this absurd business for the right reasons. Teruo Kurosaki is one such person.

The Japanese design guru-turned-restaurateur-turned-
philanthropist-turned-pedagogue is now turning media mogul with Good News, a television station that Kurosaki ambitiously expects to launch in September. As of July, the ink was barely dry on the contract securing the station’s Roppongi studio space, so the launch date may be more of Kurosaki’s infamous optimism coming out. A website, free print newspaper, magazine, and podcasts are part of Kurosaki’s plans for multi-platform domination. He describes it as “all crossover media, all good news.”

To be expected with a name like “Good News,” the content will be largely positive and upbeat. This may sound like an impossible dream or, at its worst, hippie censorship. But Kurosaki says there is a bad and good side to every story, and conventional media either ignores or underreports the good.

He gives an example. “Say some people have been killed,” citing a crash or natural disaster or a bombing. “Maybe a father has been killed, but a baby is [still] alive. That’s a good point.” Still skeptical? Kurosaki says it’s all in the way you perceive the world.

“Population, environment, peace, humanity – all these major things we worry about,” he says. “We express them as facts or numbers, but don’t put any emotion in it.” And that emotion, Kurosaki says, is where the good news can be found. He intends to staff Good News with optimistic, forward-looking people, much like himself.

“I want to build a network with good people,” explains the irrepressibly boyish 58-year-old. “We’ll be a power, like in ’68,” he says, referencing the convergence of Japanese student protests and the Vietnam War. “In 1968, we revolutionized things,” Kurosaki explains, with obvious nostalgia for the historic year of action and change. In fact, “1968 Revolutions” was the theme of his 2004 Tokyo Designers Block (TDB) show, a citywide arts-and-design festival that showcased the work of emerging designers. Kurosaki mounted the show every year between 2000 and 2004.

To outsiders, Kurosaki’s involvement in the much-beloved TDB came to an abrupt end in 2004, when he relinquished control and moved on to other projects. In the wake of his departure, TDB became the annual “Design Tide” event, now in its third year. For his part, Kurosaki said it was time for a change.

“I was mixed in with bad people, so I had to go back to really good people first.” This could be Kurosaki alluding to the fact that, in 2004, TDB relied on corporate sponsors for the first time. After Kurosaki absconded from TDB, he opened the Ikejiri Institute of Design the following year. Its purpose is to train the next generation of Japanese designers.

Housed in an abandoned junior high school in Shibuya, the academy practices what Kurosaki preaches through his R-Project: recycle, reuse, rethink, recreate, renovate. The school structure itself embodies these R-principles by breathing new life into a deserted building and revitalizing the surrounding area in the process.

Kurosaki is often called the “godfather of Japanese design,” which is an odd title for someone who is not actually a designer. But be it through a rehabilitated school, a design festival, or a “Good News” network, one thing that has remained the same is Kurosaki’s desire to make the world a better place through his work. Fortunately for the public, the man who disdains the word “entrepreneur” has a knack for transforming his various passion projects into viable businesses.

But it didn’t start out that way. Once Kurosaki received his degree in applied physics, he took off to travel the world for several years. He returned to Japan in 1975 to open an antiques importing business, which grew into the Idée and Sputnik furniture and design empire, which he sold to retail giant Muji in 2006. Along the way, he cultivated the careers of innumerable global design stars, introducing Philippe Starck, Marc Newson, and Shiro Kuramata to Japan, if not the world.

Through Idée and Sputnik, Kurosaki was more than a mere peddler of goods. He heralded a new way of thinking about space, furnishings, and the environment in which one lives in Japan. It was the kind of anti-conformist reasoning that got people to consider buying a bubble chair or a beanbag over a plain old couch.

With Good News, Kurosaki isn’t aiming for global media domination on the scale of, say, Rupert Murdoch. But he is actively setting up global partnerships for his network in Asia and the United States, and meeting with potential backers in Geneva and Tokyo. One of the questions they undoubtedly ask him is, “How are you going to pull this off?”

“We’re not going to make excuses or compromise,” Kurosaki explains of his editorial vision. “We’ll just accept the facts. Not change them, but we’ll just focus on the good points.” If not for Kurosaki’s proven career filled with successful and even historical ventures, one might raise an eyebrow to such idealistic dreams for a positive news network.

“In the underworld, good things are bad and bad things are good,” Kurosaki explains, referring to how appearances are not what they seem. “People who work for big companies like CNN are greedy because they go for commerce first,” he says.

That’s why Kurosaki has a plan to retain editorial independence. In his final year of the Tokyo Designers Block, he learned that corporate sponsorship is not a free meal ticket; Good News “has to be economically independent,” he says. “We are not aiming at just profit, but I also don’t want to be dependent on sponsors. If we are dependent on sponsors, it will be bad.”

Then again, he’s definitely not ruling out future collaborations. Of the Vice President, Kurosaki says, “I would love to talk with him later.”