IT'S HARD TO know what to expect when meeting Teruo Kurosaki. He's been dubbed eccentric and left-field and frequently praised by lifestyle publications as the Terence Conran of Japan. Icon magazine called him the most influential figure in contemporary Japanese design.
So, it's a pleasant surprise to step into his modest office in Tokyo's trendy Harajuku district to find a shy, soft-spoken man in everyday clothes. Possessing looks that hover between avuncular and boyish, the 57-year-old iconoclast seems more like a semi-retired geography teacher than one of Japan's most consistently innovative design entrepreneurs, talent-spotters and philanthropists.
The easy-going surface belies a keen mind and remarkable resume. Kurosaki has helped put the sleek, minimalist designs of Japanese interiors, furniture and fittings on the world map with his Idee lifestyle store and Sputnik design group, pioneered one of the most remarkable design events on the international circuit, the annual Tokyo Designers Block, and nurtured a generation of stellar talent that includes France's Philippe Starck and Sydney-born Marc Newson.
Among his current initiatives is an ambitious publishing project to fund UN peace programmes, and plans to set up design offices and galleries in Hong Kong and Beijing. As a sideline, Kurosaki operates restaurants and a design consultancy, renovates old buildings, runs a tea plantation in Bali and oversees a school for creative people in Tokyo. 'Life is always interesting,' he says.
Remarkable, given that he's not actually a designer, doesn't build things and hates the tag most often attached to his name. 'No, I don't like the word entrepreneur,' he says. 'I'm maybe a dreamer who sometimes makes money. But money is not my main issue. My life is like a dream. I just think: what if I try this? And I try it out.'
Despite his considerable commercial success, there is still something of the anti-corporate idealist about Kurosaki, who holds a degree in applied physics and escaped a career in engineering in his early 20s to travel the world as a Pink Floyd-loving hippie.