Meet Yusaku Maezawa: The lucky passenger SpaceX will fly to the moon

One of Japan’s most famous billionaires – Yusaku Maezawa – will be the first commercial passenger sent to the moon by Elon Musk and his SpaceX company.

The organisation plans to fly Maezawa in an orbit around Earth’s satellite, “within the next two-to-three years.” He will be expected to undergo similar training to professional astronauts and will be in his late forties by the time lift-off comes around.

As Reuters report, Maezawa made his fortune by founding the wildly popular shopping site Zozotown. He’s also made a quick buck from his art dealings and expensive car collection. But what else do we need to know about the future spaceman? That’s what we’re going to find out.

Who is Yusaku Maezawa?

His Instagram feed is peppered with shots of his luxury living – including private jets, yachts and designer watches, but also his beloved art.

Yusaku Maezawa hit the headlines last year when he bought a Jean-Michel Basquiat masterpiece worth $110.5 million. But he also often features in the tabloid glossies for his celebrity love life.

He used to date the ex-wife of professional baseball player Yu Darvish, a pitcher at US major league team Chicago Cubs and is now reportedly with Japanese actress Ayame Goriki.

The entrepreneur has a passion for modern art and splashed a record sum for Basquiat’s 1982 “Untitled”, a skull-like head in oil-stick, acrylic and spray paint on a giant canvas.

Maezawa founded the Contemporary Art Foundation in Tokyo and was on the 2017 list of “Top 200 Collectors” of the ARTnews magazine based in New York.

He insists he is just an “ordinary collector” – despite his extraordinary bank balance. His purchases are born out of love and driven by gut instinct, rather than the instructions of any art advisor. And rather than squirrel the work away, he loaned it out to museums including the Brooklyn Museum, in the artist’s hometown.

He told AFP in an interview last year:

“I buy simply because they are beautiful. That’s all. I enjoy classics together with the history and stories behind them, but possessing classics is not the purpose of my purchase.”

“I hope it brings as much joy to others as it does to me, and that this masterpiece by the 21-year-old Basquiat inspires our future generations.”

Art was high on his mind when he announced he would blast into space on a SpaceX rocket in 2023, saying he would invite six to eight artists from around the world with him:

“They will be asked to create something after they return to Earth. These masterpieces will inspire the dreamer within all of us. I am moved that I shared the historic moment on the scene. I am so thrilled and encouraged I can’t put it into words.”

Yusaku Maezawa net worth

He’s estimated to be worth $3 billion, which is around R45 billion in total. As a young man, Yusaku Maezawa had aspirations in the music world and was a drummer with a band named Switch Style, which made its debut in 2000.

In an interview with corporate affairs website Nippon Shacho, he said he eventually discovered that the business world was more creative than music. Writing songs, releasing albums and touring the country performing was “gradually becoming routine work,” he told the website.

“We were about to become salary worker-like musicians,” he said, referring to the famous Japanese “salaryman” businessman. Even before the band’s debut, he was dabbling in business, founding Start Today, which operates online fashion shopping site ZOZOTOWN.

Start Today is now a publicly listed company with 900 employees according to its website. He said his company has grown because he and his staff “are doing what we enjoy.”

“We love clothes, and we love our colleagues who love clothes. We are doing business as an extension of our hobby,” he said.