Hideaki Fukutake - New WOW owner hopes to add festival to the show
Friday, 17 March 2023
As cheesy as it sounds, Hideaki Fukutake’s first impression of the World of WearableArt show was a big fat Wow!
“There is music, there is art, there is craftsmanship, there is dance, there is humanity,” he says.
Fukutake saw the show for the first time only last year. He liked it so much he bought it.
“I thought it was unique in the world and at the same time had a lot of potential. I felt a sense of responsibility to help ensure it is protected for future generations.
**READ MORE:
* World of WearableArt pumps $30m into Wellington's economy
* World of WearableArt founder sells extravaganza to billionaire's son after 35 years
* Wellington pays out more than $3.6m for canned World of WearableArt event
* National Profile - WOW creator Dame Suzie Moncrieff
**
“The most interesting thing for me was that almost all the audience were Kiwi. The really good festivals that last a long time are ones loved by locals.”
The Japanese businessman and lover of art had searched the world for something unique like WOW to add to his new Auckland-based company, Still.
Fukutake, whose family moved to Aotearoa in 2009 along with his billionaire father Soichiro Fukutake and mother Reiko, has plans for WOW. But rather than expand overseas, as former owner Dame Suzie Moncrieff and her sister Heather had long imagined, Fukutake is looking closer to home.
He recently met Wellington mayor Tory Whanau to discuss how they could harness the popularity of WOW and the enormous number of people it brought into the region to create a festival around the event. Those discussions will continue.
Many thousands of people come to the show but little else happens around it, Fukutake, says.
“I love the idea of WOW becoming an experience beyond the event that can develop over decades, or even centuries. One idea is for WOW to become a festival around the city that involves the community.”
Fukutake is well versed in WOW’s history – how it was conjured up at Moncrieff’s kitchen table 35 years ago. How that kitchen became a headquarters for the unique blend of art, performance and fashion. How it grew and grew until it left Nelson (to the initial chagrin of Nelsonians) bound for its big capital cousin, which now hosts more than 60,000 during the three-week season.
“It’s a beautiful story and I really respect what Dame Suzie has achieved,” he says.
He believes that expanding a good thing, to make it bigger in itself, wasn’t necessarily the right move.
“We are doing an art project on some small islands in Japan and people say, why don’t we expand to more islands and other countries? That’s one way to think about it – to physically grow the size [of a project] – but if we really want to get it right we should focus on a very narrow area. If you are going to expand it can get quite diluted.”
That art project he’s talking about is actually a big deal.
The Fukutake family have spent many millions of dollars – Forbes suggests US$250 million – on transforming several islands in the Seto Inland Sea, which had been a toxic industrial dumping ground, into a high-art destination.
Naoshima is perhaps the most famous of the islands, with its Chichu Art Museum designed by famous architect Tadao Ando and works by artists such as Monet and Walter De Maria.
Sculptures are dotted around the landscape – installations by the likes of David Hockney, and Yayoi Kusama’s famous pumpkin sculpture the Kabocha, which is back in place after being washed away by a typhoon from its spot on a pier.
His foundation will open another museum on the islands, about 500km from Tokyo, in 2025.
Fukutake, 45, whose youthful looks belie his age, was a teenager when he first visited Naoshima, where his grandfather had set up a campsite for children.
Hideaki’s father, Soichiro, took over the campsite on the death of his father and gradually turned it into an art destination.
The project is a microcosm of Hideaki’s philosophy on the power of art to connect.
“I believe in the power of art. Artists work with locals on the island to make their work – strangers working together.
“The population of the island is ageing and declining [but] once we bring in the artworks lots of young people visit the island.
“The island projects have brought together the young and the elderly, artists and architects, architects and nature.”
Fukutake was brought up in Okayama, in western Japan, and studied business at Chuo University.
In the 1950s, his grandfather set up the educational publishing company Fukutake Corporation, focusing on education and correspondence. In 1990, it changed its name to Benesse Corporation, taking the Latin words bene (well) and esse (being) as its philosophy.
It acquired the Berlitz language schools, and invested in more education publications, nursing care businesses and lifestyle magazines in Japan and other parts of Asia.
His father took over the company after his own father’s death. After working independently in the medical and aged care business, Hideaki Fukutake joined his father in the business and is now a director.
His office at Princes Wharf in Auckland is a place of beauty, with plants all over the show and shelves packed with books on architecture and art. The peace is only shattered by a coffee grinder.
But it is art that plays the lead role. Among his collection are pieces by New Zealand artist and 2019 Venice Biennale representative Dane Mitchell, Australian abstract artist Sydney Ball and German sculptor Tobias Rehberger.
Japanese artist Ellie Omiya’s giant work Ikuko, a riot of colour on canvas, hangs on one of the whitewashed walls.
He has just bought a work by Misheck Masamvu, a VW Kombi van made out of the side of a kitchen table, held up on giant chopsticks.
“My team aren’t sure how to get it into the office but are excited about it. I don’t have time to drive a VW van around New Zealand, and they’re not electric yet, so I got one for the office instead.”
Art is central to Fukutake’s way of looking at the world.
It plays an important role in presenting new values and beauty, but also connects people – across the divides of generation, language, culture, values, demographics and geography, he says.
“If you look over history, art changes culture. It makes people think in a different way. For anyone who is new to art, look for things that get an emotional response out of you. Does it make you slow down, speed up, think differently? Great art stands alone, without the explanation beside it, and helps you see differently.”
He says his company, Still, established in 2020, aims to invest in, develop and support New Zealand projects that enhance art, culture and community.
Among its acquisitions are Kings Plant Barn, Hulbert House, Shape Group and Consult Recruitment NZ.
The family – Fukutake’s parents and his wife and three children – chose to shift to Aotearoa for many reasons, he says.
“We wanted somewhere that was clean and green, had a great education system, but mostly we wanted to live with people that had a unique perspective on the world.
“From New Zealand we felt that we could see the rest of the world more clearly, something we noticed in the New Zealand people too.”
A report last year in Forbes Asia suggested the family left Japan’s complex tax regime to benefit from New Zealand’s system, but Fukutake is adamant that was not a factor in their decision.
He believes that we pursue values that are different from the rest of the world, at least in the fields of art and culture.
“In many cases, indigenous culture and art come from remote areas. This is because art and culture are at odds with some of the values of modern society. Efficiency, growth, speed and rationality are such obvious, powerful and objective forces that physical distance and information barriers are necessary to resist them.”
His Still partner, Paul Cameron, says Fukutake is a humble man – flash cars and ostentatious houses are not his style.
He’s a grafter who works day and night, he says.
Fukutakeand his family are building a new home with lots of walls to hang art on.
He is no artist himself, he says. He made a nice pottery cup for a team-building exercise, but that’s the extent of his artistic prowess.
But he knows a good thing when he sees it. He knows when something has the wow factor.