interview by Simon Sellars

Originally published on Sleepy Brain, 20 October 2003.

There’s a unique sense of overload for the first-time visitor to Tokyo. Intricate layers-upon-layers of ever-shifting urban culture crush the hapless tourist, who’s invariably pressed up against the very bottom layer like a stuffed pheasant under glass.

If this is you, get on the web and check out “Cyberjapan”. Online since 1995, it’s designed and edited by the hyperactive and extremely personable Mitomi Tokoto. It’s basically a guide to all that glitters in Tokyo, from drag queens to Bond Girl dykes, to underground cinema, to lovesick teens.

Cyberjapan’s depth and levels of information are, apparently, bottomless. There’s little consistent navigation (although design is clean and sharp) and once you get browsing, you will get lost. But you’ll always discover new tidbits: hundreds of interviews, all conducted in Tokoto’s charming style; tons of streaming video; bulletin boards on all sorts of topics affecting Japan’s vast, obsessive population. It’s a little like Tokyo itself: endlessly fascinating, constantly reinventing itself, crowded, hip, hilarious… That’s Cyberjapan!

In Tokoto’s words: “Cyberjapan is an online magazine covering all the Hype, Street Fashion and Club Culture in Japan. It is wild, not for kids and fierce!”

Mitomi Tokoto was born in France to a famous French filmmaker–father and a well-known Japanese model–mother. He is himself a model…and DJ, doco maker, designer, TV host… Tokoto uses the gregariousness of all his professions to source some amazing content for his site.

Please enjoy this interview.

You are a model, you make films and documentaries and you edit and design Cyberjapan. How do you find the time to do it all?

It’s the same job – it’s all about visuals. I work about 3 days a week and spend the rest of the week in clubs or surrounded by models. That’s it! I am not at all a workaholic or a computer “otaku” [ geek ]. Let me say clearly that my job is like the director of a TV channel. Cyberjapan is the channel and I am in charge to make it attractive to the folks that look at us. I would make a good TV program director, for sure!

As a designer, what is the future of the internet and web magazines?

There is no future. You want to be independent, you have to pay the price with your own money. It’s not that it costs a lot of money to make a web zine, but you then need to put a lot of time into it – and time is money!

What does “good design” mean to you?

Impact! Impact! Make something that has immediate impact and let the viewer think it’s cool. But remember: simple is best. So: simple, but with IMPACT!

How did Cyberjapan come about?

In 1995 I discovered a site called “Nirvanet”, the first Japanese site dedicated to music and video creators. It was great but I wanted to do something funky rather than cultural, so I started Cyberjapan, which was quite successful from day one.

Why do you think Cyberjapan is such a success?

Well, Cyberjapan was online at the age of stone for the internet – the end of 1994. That was a real benefit because we had a strong brand name. This meant that even if you never accessed us, you heard about us for sure because we’ve been here for so long. But I don’t deserve any credits for this – because there were so few Japanese sites online then, it was easy to get success. Also, I was modeling at the time so there were two big advantages there. I had a lot of free time, which meant I could spend it on Cyberjapan. I could also use my modeling network to get some killer content for free to put on the site.

But most importantly, we’ve stayed small and cool. We don’t expect millions of dollars and we’ve kept our identity from day one. Yes, I did have very big companies trying to buy me out during the “internet bubble”, but I am not doing Cyberjapan for the money so I refused it. I knew that one day they would probably ask me to give the money back. So instead we are backed by “patrons”, not sponsors, who believe that we are cool and good for their images. So they give us some money!

Our “patrons” are Sony, which is not a bad company – I like their spirit – and Diesel, which is a cool major brand in the world. And when a patron stops, then we look for someone else but we have never really searched hard. Fila came on board from 1996 to 1999, then Body Shop, then Mac cosmetics, then Sony and then Diesel. So I guess cool attracts cool brands. But I must admit that we are damn lucky!

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