New age Samurai – talking Passion

Share options

I am completely psyched to be able to launch the website with these 2 interviews.
Full interview: Shunsuke Okunomiya, Kentaro Sakakibara.
フルインタビュー: 奥宮俊祐榊原健太郎

The idea in the Passion & Dreams part of TrailPassion.com, is to explore everything around Passion – specifically not by me just rambling away, but by hearing what other people think about it, who have somewhat of a proven track record with Passion.

Quick overview インタビュー概要

Who:Shunsuke Okunomiya
奥宮 俊祐
Kentaro Sakakibara
榊原 健太郎
Activity:Trail running (athlete and organizer)Start up (investment & support)
Company:Fun Trails (founder and CEO)Samurai Incubate (founder and CEO)
Passion:WinningGet the Peace Nobel prize, through technology
Boasting rights:Long list of successful races, podium and championships - you can check it outhere. Just won the Hasetsune cup race. “Fun Trails”, only started, but already running at 7~8 events each monthA portfolio including 83 Japanese and 17 Israeli start-ups, a number of successful exits, co-working spaces with 45 startups in Tokyo and 15 in Tel-Aviv.

Passion Samurai

Kentaro Sakakibara and Shunsuke Okunomiya who I had the honor to interview – definitely have the receipts. They come from completely different disciplines. One heading a seed capital investment and startup support company, and the other – a veteran trail runner who just won the Hasetsune Cup race a week ago.

Both of them have amazing track records in their respective fields, and looking from the side – both are easily suspected of being driven by a strong Passion.

The one common thing between them is that they are both Japanese, and with their strong demonstrated relentless spirit, I see the both as representing a new form of Japanese “Samurai” in a way. It might sound a bit awkward, but as it turns out – People around Kentaro know him mostly as “Ken Samurai”.

Expect the unexpected

I came into both these interviews with some bias – both about what I will hear them say, and about what I assumed their core passion to be (seemed pretty obvious).

It turned out that in both cases I got quite surprised when I realized how they define their own passion.

On the other hand, while they come from very different disciplines and backgrounds – when it comes to Passion-speak, I found them to have a lot of common ground in how they think about quite tricky concepts (as in nuanced definitions of Passion).

The small print

The interviews were conducted in Japanese, I then wrote things down in English, and made an attempt to translate back to Japanese. I am not really equipped to do this, so I apologize in advance for any misses, tough-to-comprehend writing style, and horrible Japanese writing – anything that seems out of order – is fully my own fault.

Still, the contents of the conversations, and the character and history of these two gentlemen I found to be super interesting, so I can only hope I managed to convey a small part of that in the write-ups.

For a quick taste – you can check out the summary table. For the full write-ups, follow the respective links for Ken or Shunsuke in either English or Japanese.

Do let me hear what you are thinking

Here or on SNS (links at the top, if you are not liking/ following “Run with me” already).