Tadashi Watabe

“Keep chasing the excitement.”

I’ve spent 17 and a half years as a magazine editor in Japan. Fifteen years at a sports & wellness magazine, two at a fashion magazine. Do you know what a Japanese magazine editor does? Everything from concepting an entire issue, designing about 80 pages of content, doing research, staffing writers, photographers, stylists, hair and makeup artists, models, running interviews and shoots, directing the visuals, building layouts, writing copy, proofreading. Working with a long list of stakeholders, it took around two months to build something from zero to one. It was definitely busy, but for me, these 17 years were really about chasing the same two things, over and over: excitement and movement. 

My story starts in a small port town in the Japanese countryside. The nearest train station was a 50-minute drive away. You can probably picture how rural we’re talking. There was nothing to do but kick a ball around outside with the other kids, so naturally I fell into baseball. Just baseball, Morning, noon, and night. I was a textbook Japanese “jock”: I hated studying, but I worked hard at sports. Growing up in that environment, the values of “one for all, all for one”, of loyalty and human warmth were drilled into me from a young age. Anyone who’s talked to me would agree. People often find me a bit stiff at first but quickly change their minds. 

Choosing to become a magazine editor was, in a way, inevitable for someone as obsessed with sports as I was. I could meet pro athletes face to face. I could go to events and matches for work and watch from the best seats, for free. What better job is there? But one day, a defining moment came. In 2013, I had the chance to attend L’Étape du Tour for work, an event where cyclists get to ride one of the actual stages of the Tour de France, the pinnacle event for amateurs. The day before the race, the town was packed with people. The next day, every single one of them would push themselves toward a single finish line. I still remember the feeling of fire in my veins, just from being inside that environment. I wanted to make events like this. Generate this excitement myself, not just convey it on the page. That was the moment. 

A few years later, I was offered multiple management promotions at the company and I kept turning it down. I didn’t want to leave the field, and the idea of managing people sounded like the last thing I’d ever wanted. But looking back, I think the real reason was somewhere else. Deep down, I didn’t have the confidence to scale magazines as a business. To create the kind of excitement I’d seen at L’Étape du Tour with my own hands, I’d have to learn business properly, from the ground up. That’s how I ended up knocking on ESADE’s door. I’m the only student here from a background like mine, which means everyone around me feels like a teacher. Every class, every discussion, everything I see and hear feels new. There’s still so much of the world I don’t know. I’m working hard to find a job in Europe, and the days are full of doubt. But instead of being buried under them, I feel truly alive. 

The “Invisible but Essential” thing for me is what I started with: excitement and movement. A life without excitement is boring. A life without movement might even be meaningless. Granted, movement comes with goodbyes, and there are painful moments. Wherever the urge to move takes me, my own kind of excitement is always waiting, bringing new encounters with it. Straight from a tiny port town to Tokyo. Through work all over Japan, and to South Africa, India, the mountains of Europe. And now, from Japan to Barcelona. I would say I’ve got a bit of a short attention span. Flip that around though, and it just means my bar for curiosity is low. I find almost anything interesting. And that curiosity accelerates excitement and movement. I’m not exactly young anymore, but I have a feeling that this restlessness to chase excitement isn’t going anywhere anytime soon; it is my way of feeling alive.