SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says the first passenger on a private space flight around the moon will be a Japanese billionaire who also happens to be a rock musician and art collector.

Yusaku Maezawa is the founder of Zozotown, Japan's biggest fashion retail website. He's Japan's 18th-richest person, according to Forbes, which estimates his net worth at $2.9 billion.

Maezawa, 42, is paying an undisclosed amount of money to be the first commercial passenger to fly around the moon on SpaceX's Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), the company announced via webcast on Monday evening. The mission is scheduled to launch in 2023, and Maezawa is also paying for the fares of up to eight other passengers — all artists, who the billionaire says will create works of art reflecting their time in space.

SPACEX TWEET

"Ever since I was a kid, I have loved the moon. It's always there and continues to inspire humanity," Maezawa said on Monday.

Musk tweeted a photo of himself with Maezawa at the announcement:

TWEET

So, who is Maezawa? Turns out being SpaceX's first tourist is not the only interesting thing about him.

Growing up near Tokyo, Maezawa attended a prestigious high school, where he took up drumming and formed a hardcore punk band, Switch Style, which released its own EP album in 1993 while Maezawa was still in school.

Maezawa decided he was not interested in a traditional career after he constantly saw "salarymen" (Japan's white-collar workers) looking miserable on his commute to school. "Looking at the gloomy salarymen on the train every day, I thought, 'I never want to be like them,'" Maezawa said in a June interview.

Instead he skipped college and headed to the United States for a brief stint with his girlfriend at the time, who was studying abroad in California. While in the U.S., Maezawa obsessively collected American music that was not widely available in Japan; his tastes leaned toward America's hardcore punk scene of the 1980s, including bands like Anthrax, Biohazard and the Dead Kennedys.

While frequenting music festivals in the U.S. Maezawa realized the business opportunity in selling music merchandise, like CDs and band T-shirts.

In 1995, he returned to Japan with his collection of American music and an idea to import CDs and vinyl records of his favorite bands from the U.S. to sell in his home country. "I wanted to share my favorite music with everybody," Maezawa told Forbes in 2011.

Maezawa started a mail-order business out of his home in Japan, making a catalog of items like CDs, records and band-related merchandise. He worked from his kitchen table, packing and shipping orders himself, he told Forbes.

He balanced the mail-order business with his music — he was again playing shows with his band, Switch Style, which released full albums in 1997 and 1998. Maezawa told Forbes that he didn't mind splitting his time, "because I didn't really think I was in the retail trade," he says. "I was in the music business, and I was happy with it." (There appear to still be some videos of the band on Youtube.)

The business started out small, but by 1998, Maezawa had built up enough customers to hire 10 employees. He officially launched the company as Start Today — taken from an album by the New York hardcore punk band Gorilla Biscuits — and in 2000 he launched the company's first website.