[Founder] Kyo, founder of the first coworking space in Tokyo, PAX Coworking.

In our series of Founders portraits, we meet inspiring individuals from very various backgrounds, who have embarked at some point in their life in a journey leading them to open a coworking space. We sit down with them and discuss how they did it, the challenges they encounter and the good things it brings to them on a daily basis.

While in Tokyo, we met Kyo, founder of Pax Coworking, the very first Tokyoites coworking space ever opened. With him we spoke about how he started, what was the perception of the market as well as his views on what the future holds. Scroll down for the full interview.

You initiated the coworking movement in Japan, could you tell us how and why you decided to create a coworking space?

I have been thinking that Japan, an economically matured country, needs more communication and needs to develop community.

I created a new type of restaurant in 2007: paxi house tokyo. The restaurant became very famous for its cuisine, featured in paxi (coriander or cilantro). Paxi was generally unknown in Japan at that time, but it became a big-boom by the late 2016. The restaurant was fully booked since May 2011 (two months after the Great East Japan Earthquake) until closing the location, and was called ‘the holy place’ by paxi lovers and source of the boom. Not just serving unique foods, paxi house is a restaurant with social communication. I have lots of experiences to travel (more than 50 countries so far) and to stay at guesthouses/hostels. I enjoyed the communication with many people staying the places and learnt a lot. In the restaurant we provided incredible experiences of new encounters with people and knowledge, and the guests enjoyed our atmosphere.

The guests at the restaurant became familiar each other. Many guests told me they created gourmet clubs and hobby clubs with others who met in the restaurant. Some people founded companies through the encounters at the restaurant.

I was happy to know that meeting new people may change their life. I believe people should spend happier time when we eat. What about when we work? We work much longer time than eating/drinking. I hit upon the phase: ‘Working as Partying’, and start imagining all sorts of happiest work.

After several months of imagination, or delusion I have to say, I came across the word of coworking by happening to look at the photo of the coworking space in England. At a glance, I knew that is what I was desperately needed. I joined cowoking google group (mailing list) and decided to create the Tokyo’s first coworking space.

How did coworking look like in the early days? How did you educate the market to what’s coworking?

Many friends and business consultants/experts clearly denied my idea. For them working is very strict and they believe they should not enjoy working. And they didn’t understand the value of various people being in the same place without common projects. I explained them the examples of the coworking in the US and Europe, but they thought for sure that coworking was not suited for Japanese culture.

I was actually alone in the newborn coworking space. I decided to have Jelly event. It might be difficult to pay for unimaginable monthly membership because nobody knew the word ‘coworking’, but I wanted to know the great atmosphere of Jelly/Coworking. I talked to almost all the guests at the restaurant about the new idea, invited them to Jelly. I even invited a sales person coming up to the restaurant. One by one, people found Jelly interesting, enjoyed the lightning talk and small discussion with new people. They knew more about my idea and myself. They started talking their friends and office mates about coworking. After three months, several entrepreneurs were working at PAX Coworking.

How did you see coworking growing in Japan over the years and what kind of professionals use it the most?

After 6 months, a new participant gave his impression about Jelly and coworking, and announced that he would open the Tokyo’s second coworking space. And he did it after 3 months. Gradually the visitors increased in PAX Coworking. In 2 years, there were about 10 coworking spaces in Tokyo. The owners learnt about coworking at PAX, and we introduced all of our guests to other coworking spaces. Coworking Users started feeling ‘Working is Partying’. Members increased in each spaces and finally mass media wanted to have interviews to me and our members.

In the early days most users were IT related in general, but PAX Coworking has a variety of members maybe because myself is not an IT person.

Are you still running a coworking space today? What do you do?

I closed the coworking space and the restaurant at the same time in 10 March 2018 ( on my 43rd birthday ;-)).

There are much more coworking spaces and paxi restaurants in Japan than several years ago, but most places just divided (not even shared) spaces. Honestly no fun.

My places had been financially stable and kept growing communities. However, for the future of coworking and paxi cuisine, I thought I should not stay at one place but go beyond. I quitted waiting for guests, go anywhere coworking and paxi are needed.

I do advice to build, grow, develop communities, publish all the recipes and know-hows, and sometimes having a pop-up coworking and pop-up restaurant. Wherever I go, I create a good community.

How do you think coworking will grow in the future in Japan?

The number of coworking spaces will keep increasing. Now the big enterprises are eager to catch up the trend and they will realize that they don’t always have to control employees. But spaces do not automatically create communities. Some ‘coworking’ will have less communication nor less community.

I think there will be more coworking spaces with community in local areas in Japan. They have more urgent issues than the big cities (depopulation and so on). I often visit local towns and talk with them about how to create good community. These days guesthouses tend to open coworking spaces and apply the idea of coliving and coworkification. Active people move all over Japan (and the world). The areas with open-minded will grow again with coworking communities.

Want to read more about Kyo? Check out some related articles below.

Lessons of coworking with a pioneer in Japan

https://medium.com/coworking-coffee/lessons-of-coworking-with-a-pioneer-in-japan-1d1016c434b

Coworking — A New Working Style for Connecting People

https://www.japanfs.org/en/news/archives/news_id032788.html

Tokyo’s Unique Coworking Spaces

https://leungalexander.com/tokyo-coworking-spaces/

Meet Kyo Satani, Founder of Pax Coworking Tokyo
http://www.remoteoffice.fm/pax_coworking_japan