14 Facts About Yusaku Maezawa

Yusaku Maezawa is a Japanese billionaire entrepreneur and art collector.

Yusaku Maezawa founded Start Today in 1998 and launched the online fashion retail website Zozotown in 2004, now Japan's largest.

Yusaku Maezawa began attending Waseda Jitsugyo High School, Tokyo, in 1991, where he started a hardcore punk band with his classmates called Switch Style, in which he was the drummer.

In 1998, Yusaku Maezawa used the basis of the mail-order album business to launch the company Start Today.

In 2001, Yusaku Maezawa declared a hiatus on his music career.

In 2018, Yusaku Maezawa introduced Zozo, a custom-fit clothing brand and the Zozosuit an at-home measurement system, in over 72 countries and territories.

In May 2016, Yusaku Maezawa attracted significant media attention with a record purchase price at auction of $57.3 million for an Untitled artwork of a devil by Jean-Michel Basquiat, and broke a record again in May 2017 with a $110.5 million auction for another Untitled of a skull by the same artist.

In 2022, Yusaku Maezawa sold an untitled Basquiat Painting for $85 Million.

On 17 September 2018, it was announced that Yusaku Maezawa was to become the first commercial passenger to perform a flyby of the Moon.

Yusaku Maezawa was to fly on board a SpaceX Starship, which has been in development since 2017.

On 13 May 2021, Yusaku Maezawa announced he would be joining Space Adventures on a trip to the International Space Station in December 2021, via a Soyuz spacecraft.

Yusaku Maezawa spent 12 days on the orbital station with his assistant, Yozo Hirano, where he completed the top 100 things demanded by public, as well as recorded highlights in preparation for the SpaceX lunar flight.

On 5 January 2019, Yusaku Maezawa secured the most ever retweets for his Twitter message offering one million yen each to 100 randomly selected people who retweeted the message and followed him.

Yusaku Maezawa is divorced, with three children, and lives in Chiba, Japan.