Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who created online fashion retailer Zozo and who has been chosen by SpaceX as the firm's first private passenger, is seen at a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo on Oct. 9, 2019. | REUTERS

National

Former Zozo fashion retailer Yusaku Maezawa seeks girlfriend for 2023 SpaceX voyage

Reuters, Bloomberg

Call it “The Bachelor: Lunar Edition.”

In the latest attention-grabbing stunt by Japanese entrepreneur and billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, his search for a girlfriend to join him on a voyage around the moon will be the subject of a new documentary program.

Maezawa, 44, who sold his online fashion retailer Zozo Inc. to SoftBank Group Corp., is seeking single women over 20 for the show, which will be shown on streaming service AbemaTV.

“As feelings of loneliness and emptiness slowly begin to surge upon me, there’s one thing that I think about: continuing to love one woman,” wrote Maezawa on a website for applicants.

“I want to find a ‘life partner.’ With that future partner of mine, I want to shout our love and world peace from outer space,” continued Maezawa, who is due to fly around the moon in 2023 as the first private passenger with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Maezawa, who recently split from actress girlfriend Ayame Goriki, 27, had said that he intends to take a combination of painters, musicians, dancers, photographers, film directors, fashion designers and architects on a weeklong lunar lap, where he’ll get to watch as they get inspired and create art along the way. He has dubbed the project “Dear Moon.”

The documentary on his search for romance, set to be titled “Full Moon Lovers,” will stream on AbemaTV, which is backed by online ad agency CyberAgent and broadcaster TV Asahi and targets a younger audience that is turning away from traditional TV.

Applicants must “be interested in going into space and able to participate in the preparation for it” and “be someone who wishes for world peace,” the website states.

Applications close Friday and Maezawa will select his partner by the end of March.

Last week, the entrepreneur announced on Twitter that he planned to give away ¥1 billion ($9 million) to 1,000 of his Twitter followers who reposted a message from his account.

Maezawa has a net worth of $3.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He skipped college, moved to California to play in a rock band and started his own e-commerce company, Start Today Co.

After making his fortune, he started investing hundreds of millions of dollars in works of art.

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