COOKE: Was there anything like that happening here in Tokyo—like, even a few isolated people?

FUJIWARA: Nah, not really. Nobody really knew about it then, but people were interested very quickly—especially on the fashion side. But there really weren’t what you’d call street kids in Tokyo at the time. Very quickly, the DJ scene started building up. Because before that, there were no DJs carrying their own bags of records—the clubs used to hire DJs, but the vinyl belonged to the club.

COOKE: So before that, being the DJ was just a job—like a bartender almost.

FUJIWARA: Exactly. Nobody was carrying their own records. Maybe I was the first one carrying my records to go to the club once a week or a few times a month.

COOKE: Malcolm McLaren told you that London was boring. But, as someone coming from Japan, did you actually think that London was boring?

FUJIWARA: No. It was really interesting, but it was very slow. Everything closed on Saturday and Sunday. The stores closed at 6 p.m., and if you missed, even by a few minutes, they wouldn’t let you in. Even if you knew exactly what you wanted, they’d say, “No, no, come back tomorrow.”

COOKE: So it was not a convenience culture.

FUJIWARA: No. I was really surprised at that because everything was open on weekends in Tokyo.

COOKE: You stayed with some pretty interesting people in London.

FUJIWARA: Yes. I was 18 years old, first time in -London, and I was introduced by a friend from Japan called Hitomi [Okawa], who is behind the label Milk, to a group of people that included [director] John Maybury, Stephen Jones, [designer] David Holah, and Boy George. They were all pretty young. Culture Club was just beginning. Marilyn [the New Romantic pop singer] and Jeremy Healy from the band Haysi Fantayzee were there. Many people were sharing one apartment with many rooms. So I was in that community.

COOKE: The profiles of those people were pretty elevated at that time via style magazines like The Face and i-D—although they probably hadn’t yet reached the level of international fame they achieved later.

FUJIWARA: They were really creative, those people. It had a real impact on me. The nightclubs like Camden Palace, Cha Cha’s—you know, it was at Heaven. So there was that. And then the next thing that had a big impact on me was Stüssy. I was really into skateboarding at that time, and what people like the Bones Brigade [the ’80s skating team featuring Tony Hawk, Tommy Guerrero, and others] were doing.

COOKE: You were pretty serious about skating, right?

FUJIWARA: Yeah. I used to skate a lot when I was a kid. I loved it and was quite good. Later, when I came back to London in around ’85, I visited the Wild Bunch guys, Nellee Hooper and Milo Johnson [DJs and producers], at their flat in Camden Town. They showed me the Bones Brigade video, and I was so surprised because I’d never seen an ollie. It was like magic for me. So then I got really into skating again. But at the time, it had no influence from hip-hop. It was just thrash rock, hardcore rock, and skulls and all black—that kind of style. In Japan, the skaters were also strictly into rock culture, too, but I was coming from the hip-hop side, so for a while it was difficult to mix both interests. But maybe a year or two later, the hip-hop influence started creeping in. And then, around the same time, Shawn Stussy’s label started happening in the States. I used to buy Stüssy at Patricia Field in New York.