Soundings: Season 4 Episode 6

Takuji Masuda

On nose-riding at Pipeline, mentors, curation and Super X Media, Bunker Spreckels, and facilitating connections between tradition and youth culture in Japan.

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From Kamakura, Japan, Takuji Masuda has been a progenitor of surf culture since the 1980s. After traveling the surfing world and competing professionally with the Oxbow Longboard team, whose members included Joel Tudor, Duane Desoto, and others, Masuda pursued an interest in storytelling and cultural production. In the 1990s, through his reverence of surf and skate magazines and inspiration from the booming technological innovations of the era, he established his own magazine, Super X Media, published in English, Japanese, and French, which was influential as a cross-cultural hub for the surf-skate industry. Masuda more recently pursued filmmaking, including his 2016 documentary film Bunker77, focused on the short and fast life of Bunker Spreckels. In this episode, he sits down with Jamie Brisick to talk about how surfing allows you to design a lifestyle that reflects who you are, the fashion industry, art and culture in Los Angeles, Hawaii, what drew him to the Spreckels story, and the joy of making friends through surfing. 

Produced by Jonathan Shifflett.
Music by Farmer Dave & the Wizards of the West.

Feature image by Jeremiah Klein.