[No. 218] Shinya Uchida

Thank you for choosing to read my article out of the many available. My name is Shinya Uchida. After working at Dentsu and LINE Yahoo, I am now the CMO and a board member at a startup called Star Music Entertainment Inc.

I believe I've lived a life that is the complete opposite of what one might consider a typical "science and tech" path. I heard from the editor that this "Keio Alumni Connections" column is written mainly for prospective students aiming for the Faculty of Science and Technology. With that in mind, I hope to write a column that reads like a very short business book, offering a small realization to readers, something along the lines of, "Oh, so there are people like this out there." I look forward to sharing my story with you.

The reason I chose the Faculty of Science and Technology for university was that I've had a strong core desire to "understand how things work" since I was little. In elementary school, I wondered, "How do TVs show pictures?" and spent hours in the library researching the mechanics. In junior high, around 1997, the internet was just emerging. My school had just gotten computers, so I learned to program and created video games. I carried that interest through high school and into university, pursuing a science and tech path. I was particularly fascinated by the mechanics of the world, such as the question in quantum mechanics: "Is light a particle or a wave?" In the laboratory, I belonged to the Ikehara Laboratory and specialized in blind source separation (a technology that, for example, extracts only the piano sound from a song mixed with piano and vocals, and is applied in technologies like noise canceling).

If you were to ask whether I was a top student or a poor one in the lab, I'd have to say I was a poor one. This is because I rarely showed up at the lab, being far too engrossed in my life as a professional magician, rushing between stages and hotels all over Tokyo. I got hooked on magic in elementary school after seeing a magician duo called The Napoleons. My high school had a magic club where I honed my skills, and by the time I was in university, I was performing on various stages as a professional. While many of my peers were achieving results in the lab, I was producing doves on stage.

When it came time to find a job, while my peers went on to science and tech positions at companies like Sony, Toyota, and the NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories, I ended up joining Dentsu as a copywriter.

I still remember many people asking me why I was going into a humanities field despite my science and tech background. However, in my mind, there was no distinction between humanities and sciences; my choice was simply the result of my single-minded desire to "understand how things work." For instance, if you input "move forward" into a program, it moves forward without question. But with humans, just because you say "move forward" doesn't mean everyone will. Sometimes, telling them "don't move forward" makes them advance (it's the same principle as the Dachou Club's famous gag, "Don't push me, don't push me! (Push me already!)"). As I spent my university years balancing research and being a magician, I eventually became fascinated with understanding the mechanics of "human emotions and behavior." This led me to become a copywriter, a research-oriented job that moves hearts with words.

Among the copy I've written, the work that remains most memorable is the catchphrase for Shimane Prefecture. The copy I wrote was, "The 47th most famous prefecture in Japan." At the time, in 2010, a survey ranked Shimane 47th in name recognition. I turned this on its head, thinking, "Wouldn't it be charming if Shimane Prefecture itself broadcasted its lack of recognition?" The result was that Shimane's self-deprecating copy became a huge hit and was even made into a calendar. The calendar sold over 30,000 copies, an exceptional success that caused a stir in the calendar industry, where 1,000 copies sold is considered a major hit. As far as my research shows, in 2015, it became the second-best-selling calendar, right after the Pokémon calendar.

In 2013, I moved to Yahoo Japan Corporation (now LY Corporation). I established the Brand Management Office directly under the president and became its head. I was able to experience firsthand the turbulent era of the internet's shift from PCs to smartphones, and I directed projects such as the naming, logo design, and brand launch of PayPay, the 3.11 project "Search is Support." (now renamed "What We Can Continue to Do."), "Search You Can Touch," and "History of the Internet." As a result, we won numerous domestic and international advertising awards, including Cannes Lions and the New York ADC.

While working at Dentsu and Yahoo, I also continued my activities as a magician. In 2010, my "iPad magic" video garnered 5 million views. I started on TikTok in 2018 and have since grown my following to 10.2 million on TikTok and 2.5 million on YouTube. Since magic does not require language, many of my followers are international users from countries like the United States and Indonesia.

Afterward, feeling that the core of communication in both my main career and side work was shifting toward media centered on smartphones and vertical videos, I joined Star Music Entertainment Inc., a short-form video startup, in 2021, where I remain today. My work now revolves around being an advertising agency for short-form videos (vertical, short-length videos like those on TikTok and YouTube Shorts) and influencer marketing.

I've gone on at length about my career, but the consistent threads have been a curiosity to "understand how things work" and an entertainer's spirit to "delight people." I believe it is because I have consistently pursued these two things that I have been able to have such a fulfilling and varied experience. I am still far from perfect, and it may be presumptuous of me to say this, but I would like to conclude this column by sharing two things that I'm glad I did starting in my university days, for both current and future university students.

First, if there is something you love, you should pursue it to the fullest. In my case, the logical skills I learned in my science and tech studies have been extremely useful in creating presentations, and the communication skills I developed through magic are also vital to my work. I am grateful to Professor Ikehara of my laboratory for warmly watching over me during that growth process. I feel that the environment of that lab is what led to the wonderful present I have now, where I can do what I love for a living.

Second, I hope you won't confine yourselves too much to society's rigid standards. The world still has distinctions—and sometimes discrimination (though less than in the past)—based on whether you are in the sciences or humanities, whether you are considered brilliant or not, or whether you have a certain academic background. I myself simply pursued my desire to "understand the mechanics" of whatever interested me at the time, without regard for the distinction between humanities and sciences. It just so happened that my interests fell into those fields. As a result, I feel I was often able to do work that I found personally satisfying and achieve good results.

I imagine that many of you who are about to become university students have hopes, but also anxieties and concerns about the future. The media often reports on how Japan is in trouble due to its aging population, but I am optimistic and believe that Japan will become even better and more interesting from now on. To make that happen, I think it's important to turn what you "love" into a strength, not be bound by rigid rules, and compete with the rest of the world from right here in Japan (in business, of course, not war).

As an environment for building that personal foundation, I believe that Japanese universities, the Faculty of Science and Technology, laboratories, and clubs are among the best in the world. I would like to conclude this column with the hope that all of you will have a fulfilling campus life. Thank you for taking the time to read this long article.