At Coral Capital’s Tokyo HQ, artist–entrepreneur VERBAL (m-flo rapper and producer, AMBUSH® Co-Founder, and SŌMATŌ sake founder) sits down with James Riney and Tiffany Kayo to unpack how Japan’s next cultural wave is being built at the intersection of streetwear, music, and frontier tech.
They explore why a Tokyo mindset still captivates tastemakers from Pharrell to Prada, and what has to change for Japan’s creators to capture Silicon-Valley-level scale.
The conversation dives into:
• Streetwear’s original “soft-power” playbook — how Nigo, Pharrell, and a Harajuku network turned Japanese design into hip-hop currency and seeded brands like AMBUSH®.
• Two SKUs and a Paris runway — why VERBAL and Yoon Ahn sold a majority stake in AMBUSH®, what they learned inside New Guards Group / Farfetch, and why they just bought it all back.
• Craft sake, misunderstood luxury — the cold-chain, labeling, and pricing gaps keeping nihon-shu under-valued abroad, and how SŌMATŌ plans to rebrand the category for Michelin tables.
• AI, Web3, and VTubers — a realist’s take on Suno-generated melodies, token-gated superfans, and the virtual-idol economy Japan is quietly leading.
• Lessons from K-Pop’s public-private machine — what Japan can borrow (and what it shouldn’t) to export its own IP at scale.
If you're working on something ambitious, we’d love to hear from you at Coral Capital!
Get in touch with us here: bit.ly/contactcoral
Connect with VERBAL:
X: https://x.com/VERBAL_AMBUSH
Connect with James:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesriney
Connect with Tiffany:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiffanykayo/