Introduction and Background
This is Rainomoto's Podcast, The Creative Mindset.
Hi everyone, welcome to The Creative Mindset, a podcast about what the future holds at the
intersection of creativity and technology. I am Rainomoto, the founding partner of I&CO,
a global innovation firm based in New York and Tokyo.
Today's episode is Ask Me Anything, where we take questions from our listeners and invite
one of them onto our show to have a real-time conversation. Today's question came from
Alice Komagami, an up-and-coming graphic designer who recently relocated from London to Tokyo.
She was introduced to me by a good friend of mine a few months ago and at the time,
she was still based in London but had decided to relocate to Japan.
However, she didn't have a job lined up and even though she grew up speaking with her
parents in Japanese at home in London, she never lived or worked in Japan.
By the time Alice and I caught up for this recording, she relocated to Japan and just
started a new chapter of her career in a foreign land. So let's get started.
Ask me anything.
So Alice, good to see you online.
Alice's Relocation to Tokyo
Thank you for having me.
Where do we find you?
I'm coming in from Tokyo, which is very exciting because that's very different to where I spoke
to you last time.
That's right. So just to quickly give the listeners an image of how we met in the first
place was an introduction from a really good friend of mine, who is a creative director
based in London, Flo.
And he was kind enough to introduce you to me because back then, it was last year, back
in the fall of 2023, you were interested in moving to Japan.
And that's where we ended the conversation seven, eight, nine months ago.
And since then, you've moved not only to Japan, but you've moved within Japan.
So give us an update on what you've been up to and yeah, ask away.
Yeah, so I guess I've pretty much been a Londoner since the age of eight.
I was working at a creative agency called Mr. President.
They were really lovely.
But yeah, I kind of had an identity crisis of being Japanese and not having lived in
Japan, which is when I kind of asked Flo to introduce me to Ray.
And yeah, since the last time we spoke, I'm now in Tokyo.
I've not only moved to another country to work, but I've also moved in-house before
I was at a creative agency.
I'm now on, which is like kind of a sportswear brand.
Yeah, like a lot of changes has happened.
Wow, eight months.
It's a whole, like literally you're on the other side of the world.
Exactly.
Alice's Career and Today's Conversation
So Alice, if you wouldn't mind giving a quick overview of your career and today's conversation,
Alice, the reason why you reached out to me was even though you have the Japanese heritage,
it's really the first time, I mean, you have been to Japan, but it's really the first
time that you're living in Japan.
Yeah.
And you wanted to ask me about working across different cultures, different languages and
different borders.
But before getting into that, do you mind giving a quick overview of your career and
what took you to where you are now?
Yeah, so I kind of always knew I wanted to go into graphic design.
And so I started studying graphic arts at Winchester School of Art.
And then during my second and third year, I was introduced to a tutor about Mr. President.
At that time, I had no idea, to be honest, what a creative agency was.
And I kind of wanted to go into kind of branding.
So then because my tutor suggested it, I kind of applied to it.
Yeah, luckily, it was incredibly fun.
It was kind of quite a nice eye-opener as to what the industry was about.
And luckily, they wanted me back after graduating.
And so, yeah, after graduating university, I went back as a junior.
And then I kind of worked my way through becoming a midway and then senior.
And I'd hit my five-year mark at Mr. President.
They're like such lovely people and very much in contact with them.
苦悩するアイデンティティ
On a personal side, I had a very strong kind of identity crisis of being Japanese,
but having never worked in Japan and what that kind of meant for me.
And so I kind of took the five-year benchmark as like a good opportunity to switch things up.
Yeah, I've kind of just taken that on full throttle and moved to an in-house team as well.
So since moving to Japan, you moved to Japan in September or maybe a little bit later in 2023?
October.
October.
Yeah.
And what has your time been like since then?
So I spent kind of a mini career break to be with my grandma,
which is really lovely.
And then I was kind of freelancing for the people at Mr. P, which is amazing as well.
And then in between, I was applying to jobs.
I kind of, you know, didn't have anything lined up
because it was much easier to look for a job locally.
So I kind of was searching pretty much every day.
But a lot of the agencies or kind of places I wanted to work were very Japanese.
And I'm not sure, you know, how many of your listeners know,
but Japanese companies are very much known for being quite strict and kind of rule following,
which basically was the complete opposite to my career experience.
And so, yeah, it was quite terrifying to kind of think,
not only am I moving to another company,
but I'm also moving, potentially moving into a culture that,
working culture that could be quite strict.
Were you born in Japan?
Yeah.
Yeah.
日英のデュアルアイデンティティ
And you talked about how strict a Japanese, especially corporate culture can be.
Yeah.
But would you say that your upbringing was quintessentially Japanese
or were your parents, was your household more westernized or British slash English?
Yeah.
I mean, that's a really good question.
And I think that's probably where my identity crisis comes from.
From home, I speak to my parents in Japanese because they,
you know, that we're all based in London.
And so I say my house is very much like an Osaka, you know, strong dialect,
kind of just chatting to each other all the time.
Whereas, you know, outside of home, it's very much English.
So it kind of, I have like a dual identity and I would kind of often code switch
depending on where I was and who I was with.
Yeah. That's interesting.
I went through some of that myself, although my parents sent us overseas.
They didn't move with us.
My brothers and I went to a boarding school and then college.
So, and we were in Japan until, I was in Japan until I was 15.
So I had a good decade and a half of my upbringing in Japan.
So I didn't have this dual cultural balance that you were striking
when you were growing up in London.
文化の衝突
But did you feel in the professional, once you got out of school, was there,
I would assume that when you were growing up as a student,
there were some cultural nuances and differences that you had to balance.
But, you know, since we're talking about your professional career,
were there moments when you felt like that cultural difference
or even cultural difference became a conflict either internally within you
or the way you worked with your colleagues?
I think this is something that I've always been quite curious about,
is that I think there are several elements to me being quite Japanese,
or if anything, like people from Osaka are known as being quite like,
what's the word?
In Japanese, it's seppachi, which means like you're rushing all the time.
You just want to get things done.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Also, like being Japanese is like very like neat and having things organized.
And I think those elements played a massive role in who I am as a designer.
Interesting.
I think my strong point as a designer is attention to detail.
I kind of pick up on the like little nuances in the final details,
which I think is quite a Japanese thing, not the stereotype,
but Western cultures are much better at kind of looking at the bigger picture
and what the creative idea is.
Whereas I always saw myself as someone that was quite good
at kind of seeing the final executions.
Is everything where they need to be?
Is everything perfect?
And yeah, I definitely think my cultural kind of identity had a play in that.
But I didn't know whether that was just me self-stereotyping my cultures
or whether that was just kind of like a global experience.
So it'd be great to know if you kind of have a similar experience.
日本での仕事経験
Yeah, I've always strongly identified myself as a Japanese designer.
My career started in Japan.
I, as I mentioned earlier, I was in Japan until I was 15.
And then when I was 16, I went to Europe to go to high school.
I went to and finished college in the U.S.
But the first professional working experience that I had
was in Japan under a Japanese designer.
And it was so, and this is in the 90s, you know,
I'm a few years older than you,
a little bit more than a few years older than you.
So it was in the 1990s or 25 years ago.
It was really tough.
I mean, I was doing multiple all-nighters a week.
You know, I would go to the office at 10, you know, 11 a.m.
And I would work until like quite literally until 6 a.m.
The next day I go home, I would take a shower
and I would sleep maybe like an hour and a half
and then get back on the train and go work.
And I would do that at least three times a week.
It was just brutal.
And it was an internship.
So, you know, I knew that it was going to end soon.
And I think that's why I was able to do.
But at the same time, I was like, you know,
I don't think I can work in an environment like this.
And in the 90s, the creative industry,
the advertising industry, the marketing industry,
working like that was not an unusual thing.
It was relatively common.
So I was too much of a wimp to, you know,
survive and thrive in the Japanese corporate culture.
So I decided to, you know, like I want to start my career in the U.S.
I graduated from school and I moved to New York at the end of the 90s.
And I got my first job as a designer in 98, 99, I think.
Now, fast forward, I started coming to Japan
日本のクリエイティブ業界の雰囲気
or going to Japan around 2010, 2011.
My first professional return,
mildly return was opening an office in Tokyo
for the previous agency that I used to work for, AKQA.
So I would travel every couple of months or so
to meet with people, to interview people, to work with clients.
And then I want to say like around that time,
I think around that time,
there was a very famous incident in Japan
where a young professional working in the advertising industry,
unfortunately committed suicide
because it was just so brutal for her and for other people.
That was a sticker shock to the Japanese creative industry,
but also to Japan as an economy, as a professional society.
And people, it was quite literally a wake up call,
you know, for the Japanese society.
日本の文化に再び触れるチャンス
And since then, it has gotten tremendously better
when it comes to working hours.
Yeah.
But anyway, that was kind of a long-winded background
and cultural and historical context.
But I guess what I'm sharing with you is in a different way,
I had a cultural shock that I had to adjust.
Being a Japanese person, having grown up in Japan,
but then moving to the States for college
and then spending probably the first decade
or about a decade or so of my career in the US.
So I would say my reintroduction to my own culture,
at least in a professional sense,
had a lot of cushion that I could fall back on.
Yeah.
Because even though I was Japanese and I speak Japanese,
I was working for a Western company
and there was that kind of fair or not,
probably more unfair than fair.
But I think there was that kind of buffer
that Japanese corporations and Japanese business people
gave to Western people and Western corporations.
Yeah, for sure.
The thing is also just quite interesting
is to like how different companies,
kind of Western companies and Japanese companies,
judge professional skill or professional kind of talent.
When I was applying for any kind of agencies based in Japan
and a lot of them may have international names,
but they're very much like a Japanese company.
A lot of them would kind of, I'd often get,
you know, through my experience,
luckily I became senior quite early.
They kind of questioned that.
And so they would always,
when they'd ask my salary expectations
or what my title that I was looking for,
and whether I was talking to recruiters
or kind of talent acquisition from the companies,
they'd often be quite, you know, not shocked,
kind of, I guess shocked is the most appropriate word of,
oh, well, you're only this age.
Why are you looking for this salary
and this title when that's your age?
Whereas I've never had that kind of experience.
Back in London, it was kind of, we see your portfolio,
we see your value.
We either like you, we don't like you.
I guess, yeah, it was quite,
there were a lot of kind of culture shots,
which I already knew about the working culture,
but kind of over time,
like work kind of being assumed
and it being part of your salary.
And there were like loads of little nuances
that kind of was such a big culture shock to me.
Interesting.
So, you know, luckily through kind of chance,
On has been a company I've been kind of,
like interested in their design work for a while.
And so that they were looking for a graphic designer,
and so I applied through chatting to them.
They, because they're Swiss-based,
they have kind of a really similar mentality.
Like any agency they've known about in London of,
you do the work, we're happy.
We're not going to kind of micromanage you.
Make sure that you are clocking in at this time
and clocking out at that time.
And I think in some way that kind of allows,
especially from a creative mindset, you know,
you can't really control
when you're going to have these like amazing ideas.
It kind of gives that person a bit more kind of freedom
to focus on creativity rather than following rules.
Well, the company that you're working for On,
which is a running shoe company,
the Japan office or Japan corporation,
is that run by mostly Westerners or have they localized?
They fully localize, but which is quite comforting
is a lot of the people that work here,
either half Japanese with another country,
イラストレーターと日本での働き方
or they've lived abroad at some point of their life.
And so I don't feel like an outsider.
I feel very much like...
Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.
These are my people.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was often the only, if not one of the very few Japanese people
working in any environment.
When I first moved to New York more than 25 years ago,
I was still...
I didn't quite know how to...
I mean, you know, I was in my early 20s
and I was just trying to find some kind of landing
when I moved to New York
and getting a job in the first year was really, really tough.
I interviewed at so many different places.
I sent many, many resumes,
more than probably easily 100 resumes.
And then when I finally landed a gig,
I believe I was the only Japanese person.
In hindsight, either consciously
or to some extent subconsciously,
I feel like I was trying to tone down my Japanese-ness
and suppress my Japanese quality
and trying to fit in.
I knew that...
And, you know, English is not my first language.
By that point, I had spent maybe about five years in the US
so I could have a conversation,
but I could not have a sophisticated conversation
or professional conversation.
Yeah, so I knew that I was working from a disadvantaged place
and I felt like by suppressing my Japanese quality
is the way to overcome my disadvantage.
And I would say it took until my late 20s
to feel comfortable in my own skin,
being a Japanese person.
I think the first big break
and that made me feel like,
okay, I can transcend the cultural differences
and language barriers
is when I received a Young Guns Award
from the Art Directors Club.
And then I think I was 29,
just right before I turned 30.
That gave me enough confidence,
okay, like I'm finally recognized
beyond my disadvantages and limitations
that I had as a Japanese designer
and I'm recognized as a designer,
not as a Japanese designer, but as a designer.
Yeah, it took a while.
Wow, so interesting.
日本での文化的な障壁
Yeah, you started your career in London
and I mean, that's your home.
English is pretty much your first
or very close to your first language.
You didn't have any of the language barriers,
but I guess moving to Japan,
what kind of cultural differences
or cultural barriers have you felt?
I mean, you talked a little bit
about the strictness of corporate Japan.
Yeah, I think it wasn't necessarily
experiencing the strictness of it.
I think people who aren't even from Japan
know about the working cultures
and essentially the harmful working conditions
some people are in.
And so this fear just kind of manifested in myself of,
am I gonna fit in?
And from my perspective,
or like in general, this is a mad stereotype,
but people from Osaka are seen as quite leveled,
especially from people who are kind of more from Tokyo.
And then also people who have been brought up abroad
are also quite seen as like rugged and quite outspoken.
And so these kind of negative traits
that people kind of stereotype with
has always kind of been a, I guess, fear
when I come to a different country,
I move back to Japan,
am I gonna fit into the stereotype
of people gonna find it difficult to work with me
because of these things?
Because I'm not, I think from my perspective,
these are really good traits of mine.
I think being able to be outspoken
and being able to kind of pull things out
when they should be pulled out is a good thing.
異なる背景の人々と働く
But there was obviously very much a fear.
Now, having said that I now work for a Swiss-based brand
and they are very lovely
and they are very much on the same mentality
as kind of Western companies.
And so I haven't actually felt any sort of,
all the fears that I thought I was gonna experience,
I haven't felt luckily.
Yeah, I would say I felt,
I think I spent my 20s trying to overcome my own fear
of being not just Japanese, but foreign in the US.
I was still finding my way around.
I didn't know if I would make it in this industry
and we'll be able to build a career.
There were a lot of designers and creatives
that I looked up to and I idealized them
to be my icons, so to speak.
And that was how I spent my 20s
and trying to see if I can prove to myself
and to the world, hey, I can do good work.
I feel in my 30s because I got into a position
at a relatively young age of being a leader.
And in my 20s, I feel like I lacked
enough mentorship support to,
I had these people that I looked up to,
but I don't feel like I had enough mentorship
that I could solicit from people around me.
So I struggled quite a bit in my 20s.
And in my 30s, without enough mentorship
that I didn't receive, however,
I was pushed into a leadership role
at a relatively young age.
And I started working at a company
that was quite international.
In my 20s, I was at RGA,
which back then was a very New York-centric
American agency.
So, I mean, there were some international people,
but it was very New York and very American.
And then when I was about to turn 30,
I joined this agency called AKQA.
And even though it was based in the US,
my first creative partner was Danish.
And then my second creative partner
when I moved to San Francisco was Brazilian.
And a lot of the people around me,
yeah, of course they all spoke English,
but a British person, Brazilian person,
a Danish person, American person,
so it was quite international.
And on top of that,
they were expanding globally very quickly.
So I spent my 30s trying to learn how to be a leader,
but also managing people from multiple backgrounds.
And on top of that,
opening offices in different places,
China, Shanghai, Tokyo, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Brazil.
So I was having to wear multiple hats
and going to different places.
Now that I'm talking about this,
and now that you asked me this question
about the cultural differences,
is contrary to my 20s when I spent my decade
trying to diminish my own identity,
I think in my 30s,
I understood that, okay,
having these differences is the starting point.
That was the first big acceptance that I had to have is,
okay, this person is from Brazil.
He comes from a very different background.
This person is from England.
This person is from this place, that place.
And even though we're using the same language,
common language of English,
just accepting that we are different
was the starting point.
Yeah, I think that's the one thing
I'm kind of grateful for having experienced this now
is that, especially within the design world,
female designers are quite rare for some reason,
even though in uni there were a lot more girls
than there were guys.
So I always kind of had this double minority
of not only being a person of color,
but also being a woman as a designer.
And, you know, I've loved my colleagues,
but all the designers I've ever worked with have been male,
アリス・コマガミさんのキャリア
which has been, as a concept, quite wild to think about.
Like I worked at very small agencies.
There's not a lot.
But then, luckily, I had two mentors, both female.
One is a female designer.
It was so empowering to kind of look up to her,
which kind of played in the,
I think I've kind of got to speed track
your kind of decade experience
of going, this is kind of the diversity
is the strength of us.
And so I definitely made it, I think,
as I got older and I just became more confident
in my position with kind of promotions and stuff,
definitely made it more of a thing to have these,
you know, like different experiences
or different perspectives.
I made it such a thing to be vocal about it.
Because I think that is what makes creativity
and what, you know, especially within advertising,
that's what makes it more interesting.
Yeah, it sounds like you had a role model
who was also a direct mentor that you could work with
and you could work under who happens to be female.
I don't know if she was a person of color or not,
but still something that you could identify with
and having that person as, again,
either a direct mentor or a role model
at a distance that, you know,
you might not have access to.
But now that you mentioned it,
I wasn't fortunate enough to have a steady set of mentors
that I could learn from directly.
So now you have people that you can look up to,
whether because of the gender aspect
or your cultural heritage perspective.
But, you know, one day you may be filling the role
of being the role model for others.
So I think what you just said
about having a female boss was empowering.
And I think that's a really important thing
for people to realize.
Yeah, I think Japanese creatives
working within a Western space is such a rare thing.
文化的アイデンティティの役割
Yeah. I think this topic of your own cultural heritage
as it relates to one's profession
is a really interesting topic.
And I think it's also important to be sensitive
to what that cultural background might give us
both in terms of advantage and disadvantage.
There's certain times, you know,
certain situations that might give.
And I think we should be aware of advantage
that could be privileged for us, right?
But also disadvantage because of the cultural baggage
that we might have and the stereotypes
that other people might push on us.
I think we should be extremely aware
of the suppression that might come from it.
So, you know, a non-Asian person telling you
or telling me, oh, you're an Asian person,
you must be good at it.
So you do the work as opposed to, you know,
me, non-Asian person doing the work.
That's just not acceptable.
And as people, whether we are Asians or not,
or other people, I don't think as a person,
we should be subservient to the cultural stereotypes
that others might cast on us.
Yeah, definitely.
So that was Ask Me Anything from Alice Komagami,
a designer who decided to take a chance on herself
and relocated to a foreign land to build her career.
Today's conversation wasn't really about Japan
or working in Japan.
Rather, it's about working out the differences
between identities, cultures, and values.
Something that I had to deal with throughout my life
and career growing up and working in different countries.
異文化との仕事
The questions she shared with us were,
what was my experience like working in agencies
in different countries with different working cultures?
Do I feel like my cultural identity has played a role
in working in different cities and countries?
And as an industry, is this something
we should be encouraging more?
Or do I feel like that's where we lose cultural uniqueness?
Some of these questions I do think about,
but some I hadn't thought about before.
So it was a useful conversation for me to have
and to be aware of my own identity.
アリスとの対話からの学び
Today's takeaway from my conversation with Alice,
however, had less to do with cultures and identity
more to do with how one might think
about the future of our careers.
Towards the end of my conversation with Alice,
I asked her where she sees herself five years from now.
She said that this was the same question
that I asked her several months ago
when I first spoke to her online.
She thought about it a little bit
and she said she didn't know.
In the past, she thought about where she wanted
to be a few years from that point in time.
And even though things may not have turned out
the way she had envisioned,
it still was a great turnout for her.
And she was at peace with the fact
that the plan didn't go necessarily accordingly,
but that didn't mean that the plan didn't work out.
It was still a great result for her.
And she was happy with the difference
between her previous vision
and the way things turned out.
So this time, moving to a different country,
initially, she didn't even know
what she was going to do,
but she landed in a place
where she feels very happy with.
And moving forward from here,
she's also not planning too much,
focus on what's in front of her right now
and let that take her to wherever
it could take her to.
I'm somebody who's always thought
about my future.
And in my case,
I've thought about my career
in a five-year increment.
I tried to stick with what I was doing
for close to five years
in order to build my career
for the next five years.
And looking back,
that worked out for me well,
or at least I think anyway.
And I try to encourage people
to think about what they would like
to see themselves
or where they would like to see themselves
in five years from now
so that what they do today
can be the foundation
of where they could go
five years from now.
But talking with and listening to Alice,
it gave me a different perspective
that perhaps it's OK not to know
where you want to be in five years
because nobody can predict the future.
And what you can do is to do
the best you can do today
so that that becomes
the building blocks
for your future tomorrow.
10 years ago,
there were a lot of things changing.
Now there are even more things changing,
whether it's technology,
society and other factors
that we can't really control.
Nobody can predict the future.
The best that we can do
is to do what we can within our control,
really focus on what you're doing today
so that tomorrow can be better.
What you can do today
is to do the best
you can do at that point.
And tomorrow,
all you should think about
is what you did yesterday,
what you were yesterday,
who you were yesterday,
and see if you can improve
maybe just one percent
from the version of yourself
from yesterday.
And really focus on that
because everything else
is somewhat out of our control.
So that was the takeaway
from my conversation
with Alice Komagami,
an up-and-coming designer from Britain,
who recently started a new chapter
in her career.
エピソードの終わり
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I'm Reina Moro,
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See you next time.
