Kaikai Kiki Announces the Appointment of Mr. Tamonoki of Mercari as Advisor

Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo / Representative: Takashi Murakami), led by Takashi Murakami, announces that Mr. Hirohisa Tamonoki, SVP of Global Expansion and Executive Officer of Mercari Inc. and former CEO of Mercari Japan, has been appointed as Advisor.

Since its establishment in 2001, Kaikai Kiki has been producing works by Takashi Murakami and managing artists.
Today, Kaikai Kiki has become a global organization with a total staff of over 250 people in Japan and abroad who support the global activities of Takashi Murakami and the other represented artists.
With the expansion and diversification of Kaikai Kiki’s business, Mr. Hirohisa Tamonoki, who has extensive global management experience at IT companies such as Mercari and has a deep knowledge of art, has been appointed as Advisor in order for the company to promote digital transformation and further accelerate the development of digital business.

After graduating from Waseda University, he joined GMO Cloud, Inc. where he was engaged in CS operations, server hosting business, and new business launches. In 2010, he joined Pixiv Inc. as Director and COO, overseeing business operations including system development, marketing, and growth. In January 2016, he became President and CEO of Animate Labs, Inc. to execute IT business promotion in the retail domain. He joined Mercari in February 2017 as Executive Officer. After promoting overseas recruitment, overseeing customer service operations for the US version of Mercari, and overall customer service for the Japanese version of Mercari, he has served as CEO of Mercari Japan since October 2018, where he is responsible for Japan operations. From January 2022, he has been serving as Senior Executive Officer, SVP Global Expansion, and from September 2023, as Executive Officer, SVP of Global Expansion, driving Mercari’s international expansion.

Mr. Hirohisa Tamonoki (a.k.a. Tamosan) has assumed the position of Advisor to Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. as of October 1, 2023.
My relationship with Mr. Tamonoki goes back to his days at Pixiv, where he worked before Mercari. He was in charge of the cosplay business there, and he operated a gallery as a joint project with Kaikai Kiki. When I had my The 500 Arhats exhibition at the Mori Art Museum in 2015, Perrotin Gallery organized a party on a boat in Basel, Switzerland, to promote the exhibition outside of Japan, during which there was an event where cosplayers dressed up in the style evoking the Arhats. Tamosan lead the pack himself, shedding 20 kg of his body weight in order to do a super cosplay that involved him being close to naked.
When I heard a rumor that he was leaving Pixiv (Animate), I immediately contacted him and asked if he would be interested in working for my company, but, unfortunately for us, he moved on to Mercari at that time. He was also an art collector and a customer of ours, however, so we kept in touch.
At the beginning of the pandemic, when my company was about to go under and I was feeling down, Tamosan came to our gallery opening and I asked him if he could help me manage the company. He said that he would be willing to do so as a volunteer and, starting around September 2021, he has been advising us on HR matters, among other things.
During the period since, he has advised us on the launch of our NFT business, HR reform operations in general, and most recently, he helped us bring in Shohei Sasaki, former CFO of CrowdWorks, as our COO.
The art business has expanded greatly beyond anyone’s expectations during and since the pandemic. I would like to evolve Kaikai Kiki digitally under Tamosan’s direction in order to create a powerful point of contact where we can meet the needs of society.
With Tamosan officially joining our company now, I hope that an increasing number of IT people will join us in our endeavor.