If Fuji Rock Festival could be embodied in one person, Masahiro Hidaka is the perfect choice. When the man who founded the country's premier outdoor music gathering meets up with The Japan Times, he is wearing a Pogues T-shirt and taking drags off a cigarette in the rain — after all, what's Fuji Rock without rain?
Hidaka is known for being a free spirit with a progressive streak. He created the anti-nuclear Atomic Cafe events in the 1980s and battled a conservative status quo to establish Fuji Rock in 1997. He adds that as a child he was as unrestrained as he is now.
"The people around me liked me," says the president of Smash Japan, the company in charge of the festival. "But I used to get in a lot of fights with the other kids, and clashed with the schoolteachers, too."