Ken’ichi Yanagawa, universally known as “Yanaken,” is cheerful, enthusiastic, articulate, and always full of infectious energy! However, after six years of planning and many weeks of hosting the 2023 Cycle Messenger World Championships (CMWC–see next article), he understandably needed a rest. A few days off was all it took for him to recover his characteristic dynamism. On a Friday night at the end of a full week back at work, Yanagawa was still vibrant and tireless when he sat down with Seasider for an interview.
Born 49 years ago in Kami-Ōoka, the heart of Yokohama, Yanagawa always enjoyed pushing his muscles to the limit. He fell in love with bicycles early on and briefly considered a career in triathlon. Other options in which he could make a living while staying active included the fire brigade and the Self-Defense Forces, but a job as a bicycle courier seemed to “kill two birds with one stone,” he says. Yanagawa founded Courio-City in 2003, a business which has grown today to include 43 employees and a branch office in Tōkyō–although he emphasizes with civic loyalty that the headquarters has always been in Nishi-ku, Yokohama. In addition to on-demand same-day delivery service (by bicycle and other means of transport), Courio-City also provides sales promotion and office support, with a level of flexibility that helps small companies cope with daily demands with minimal disruption. “We keep businesses going and growing by filling in the blanks.”
Yanagawa is an unpretentious idealist. He partners with the city and NPOs to promote environmental awareness and solutions to the global warming crisis at the local level. He displays the United Nations’ seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) prominently, and when asked which of them is most important, he doesn’t hesitate to focus on the environment. Promoting bicycle use helps to lower emissions and reduce fossil fuel dependence, while also “helping young people discover the joy of cycling.”
In 2017 a dedicated core of cycling enthusiasts, led by “Yanaken,” “Sangtae,” “Rascal,” and eventual 2022 world champion “Chikappa,” took on the grueling job of planning the 2023 World Championships, back in Japan for the first time since the 2009 Tōkyō event. (Nicknames are de rigueur in the cycling world: Yokohama Bay Brewing impresario Shin’ya Suzuki was once dubbed “Zookie” during his courier days.) When the Japanese delegation won the team victory in Jakarta in 2019, all were optimistic for future success, but the coronavirus had different plans, causing two years of cancellations. Undaunted, the planning team pressed on, buoyed by success in New York City in 2022. The finals at Nissan Stadium included 377 competitors, about 40% of whom came to Japan from 28 countries around the world. (Unlike other competitive sporting events, women and men compete in CMWC races without distinction.) One can only imagine how many details had to be ironed out before the final week!
In any race, every competitor wants to win, but at CMWC there was also room for a deeper meaning. The CMWC cargo race was based on the premise of an earthquake or tsunami disaster, and the cargo represented emergency provisions such as water tanks, gasoline, or an automated external defibrillator (AED). The boxes in the cargo bays were actually filled with second-hand clothing that will eventually be sold or recycled to reduce “fast-fashion” waste. No detail was too small for these dedicated and imaginative organizers. They already have their sights trained on the 2024 and 2025 CMWC events in Zürich and Sydney!