Childhood classmates who rediscovered each other at a class reunion at the age of 40, Kazunobu Mineta and Ken Oe still affectionately refer to each other as “Ken-kun” and “Kan-chan.” Here, they discuss past memories, and future visions.

(The following dialogue took place at Kazunobu Mineta’s office in Shimokitazawa, Tokyo.)

Oe: I travel from Yamagata to Tokyo every week, but I generally just go to our office in Sendagaya or visit districts like Nakameguro or Shibuya for meetings, so I don’t often make it out here to Shimokita. I used to come here when I was younger, though.

Mineta: Ever since I came out here, I’ve been in Shimokita. My studio is here, and so is the record company I signed with, and for a while I even lived in Umegaoka since it was so close. My brother lived with me in the same apartment, and we were there for about two years. But you know, I’m really impressed that you’re doing what you do in Yamagata, and it makes me think about where I’ll eventually end up in the future. We now communicate by email, and we can stream data and people can subscribe to it, so you don’t need to be in Tokyo to have a career in music. Going back to your hometown doesn’t mean you’ve failed, because a lot of successful people also choose to leave Tokyo. There are good things about being in a smaller city, but when I was younger, I just felt that I had to get out. But if I had turned 18 in 2019, I might not have felt the need to go to Tokyo.

O: I started out by going to a university in Chiba, but I didn’t like the idea of not living in Tokyo, so at first I commuted from Nakano and later on I moved to Shinkoiwa.

M: I had to commute by monorail from Chiba city to my university, which was further out in a smaller town. It cost 1000 yen to get to Shinjuku from there, but I never had any money, so (my manager) Eguchi would often wait outside the ticket gate for me so he could pay my fare.

O: Both of us were determined to get to Tokyo, but somehow we ended up in Chiba.

M: Yes, that’s what happened.

O: Afterwards I went back to school to study the fashion business, and then I worked at a multi-brand fashion boutique. After about five and a half years of doing that, my family business was downsized, and I was suddenly called back. That wasn’t something I’d been expecting, and it had been 18 years since I was back. Once there, I didn’t really feel comfortable or like I belonged at either my family home or the company, so I decided to go on the offensive and bring some fresh air into the business by launching a new brand. At first, no one in the company took me seriously, and if I wanted to make a sample or anything, it was always put off for later. But I refused to give up and kept pushing forward, and little by little I began to gain support.

M: For me, this would have been like trying to establish my own label while trying to run the family electronics store at the same time. That’s quite a feat, and there’s no way I could do it.

O: After getting some experience and results under my belt, I later launched a men’s line, and many of the buyers I now work with are close to my age. I produce items we wore when we were young, things which were made from different materials then but which I make from knit fabric now, and they recognize what I am doing as a form of creative expression.

M: When we were young, there were a lot of movies that featured three or four kids going out and having adventures, like Stand by Me, The Goonies and E.T. Before that, remember, the main characters in movies tended to be adult men who played assassins or policemen. Since we were the same age as these kids, we somehow saw our worlds as overlapping with theirs. The same kids who breathlessly watched those films back then are now the people making the shows we see on places like Netflix. When you watch these shows, you can somehow feel this. We came of age in an era of mass consumption just before the explosion of the internet, and though some people speak of us as a “lost generation,” there may be some things that can’t be done by earlier or later generations, but only by us. You know, I really wish the kids of today could see the movies we saw back then. Also, when we were elementary school kids, do you remember how we all wore loose clothes and tucked our shirts into our Edwin’s or Levi’s? These days, you see young girls in Harajuku dressed the same way, girls who know nothing about how things were back then. And now it’s actually considered high fashion.You know, Ken, you should design some attractive uniforms for Mineta Electronics – not those typical company jackets embroidered with worker names, but things that our female employees can look nice in. I’ll be sure to mention this to my brother.

O: Well, my father also relied on Mineta Electronics for a lot of things, even getting them to come out to replace his fluorescent lights and so on. I thought that was a bit much to ask, but back home in Yamanobe, Mineta Electronics has always been seen as a trusted fixture of the community.

M: Also, you know, I only wear Onitsuka Tiger shoes onstage, but there was this time that some shoes in a shop display caught my eye, and when I called my sister to ask about them, she told me that they were from the company which my old classmate Ken ran. They were a collaboration between Onitsuka and your company, and that was when I really started to recognize your brand. Then last year when I was looking for some clothes with my stylist, there was one outfit that I liked and picked up for a closer look, and it happened to be from COOHEM. So I need you to design me some outfits for my Ging Nang Boyz stage performances too. Encountering these things produced by an old classmate from a small town of less than 10,000 people is incredible, and I’m really happy about it. The things that you do – the clothes you make at COOHEM – really have an original character. And originality isn’t something that comes from dressing or acting differently from others – it’s something that comes from deeper inside. There’s a lot of music and a lot of songs out there, but the things that I like have one thing in common. It’s not that a person has to be a great singer, but when I see that person standing there, even before they start singing, something about their presence makes me excited about what I’m about to see. When people like this make music, or movies, or whatever, you know it’s going to be interesting. This isn’t just true for people who make things, because people can be NEETs or hikikomori or whatever, and you can sense that a lot of them have something special. When you’re looking at them from the outside, that is. If those people set out to do something, you know it’s going to be interesting – and I just really find myself drawn to people like that.