- Turning childhood interests into a career

Goro Yamada spent his childhood during the period of high economic growth when robots were a fascination for people.

"There was an auto repair shop near our house, and I would pick up the discarded gears and shafts that were piled up and get told off by my mother. I even took apart the alarm clock we had at home and couldn't put it back together. I think that my love of machines is what led me to my current work with watches."

His favorite magazine at the time was Shonen Magazine.

"At the beginning of the magazine, a genius editor named Otomo Shoji ran a serial called the 'Large Color Illustrated Series.' Each time, it was a pictorial spread with a decided theme, and I'm sure it had a huge influence on many male editors of our generation. Sometimes art such as Magritte's works were introduced, and I think it was Shonen Magazine that first introduced Escher to Japan. There was a time when Yokoo Tadanori was used for cover design, and even though I was young, I thought it was crazy and admired him. The influence of Shonen Magazine on art, as well as the fact that I have a relative on my mother's side, the Japanese painter Muramatsu Hidetaro, and my father collected prints so our house was decorated with works by various artists, may have been the background that led me to later take up a job introducing art."

I was amazed by the architecture at the World Expo held in Osaka in the 1970s.

"There was a parade of amazing architecture, like the Soviet Pavilion and the Australian Pavilion. The large roof that surrounded the Tower of the Sun was connected to the arms of the tower by escalators, and the inside of the roof was the exhibition space, but even though it was over 100 metres wide, there wasn't a single pillar along the way. It made me wonder how it was supported. When I think about it, the things I loved back then - machines (clocks), art, and architecture - are all connected to my work now."

- The name engraved on a mechanical pencil is the origin of his pen name

He entered Sophia University, majoring in journalism.

"I loved movies and wanted to watch and critique them rather than make them, so I chose a university that offered courses in film theory. After graduating, I joined Kodansha, where I was put in charge of fashion in the editorial department of Hot Dog Press. For a while after I joined the company, the name of the magazine wasn't even known, but with the boom in DC brands and the popularity of jeans, sales exploded. It was a working environment that is unthinkable now, as I would have to stay up all night or sleep overnight at the office, but it was fun. I guess I missed the opportunity to quit, because I ended up working for the company for 23 years."

The magazine had power, and he began to appear on radio and television under the name "Yamada Goro." The reason for the name came about when, about seven years after joining the company, a lost mechanical pencil was discovered inside the office.

"I realized at a glance that it was a Montblanc PIX! It was a model that had already been discontinued at the time, and was vintage and expensive. I knew that Shigesato Itoi had used one, but no one else was interested in it. Then, it was time for the big end-of-year cleaning, and I offered to have it if no one wanted it. However, there was one problem; the mechanical pencil had my name engraved on it, "M.YAMADA." My real name is Masahiko, so I didn't care about the M, but I thought I'd have no choice but to take the surname Yamada myself."

There is further story as to why his pen name became "Yamada Goro."

"When columnist Enokido Ichiro was publishing his first book, he didn't like the title given to him by a higher-up at the publishing company, and asked me for advice on whether there was some way he could decline amicably. I thought it would be best to use the same title as a title that already existed, and so I quickly started a column of the same name in Hot Dog Press. I thought it would be better to have a proper author, so I created a fictional character called Yamada Goro. I wrote the manuscript and eraser printmaker Nancy Seki did the illustrations. Around that time, I was asked to appear on Tamori Club, so once I appeared under the name Yamada Goro, there was no way I could back out, and so even after I left Kodansha, I have continued working under that name to this day."