www.henkaone.blogspot.com: 07/2011

By Carol Lee

Photographed by Kazumi Asamura

We at PAPER were deeply saddened to learn yesterday that Fumihiro Hayashi, aka Charlie Brown, the founder of Dune Magazine and The Last Gallery, passed away at his home in Toyko after a long struggle with cancer. To celebrate his all-too-short life, we are re-posting Carol Lee's October 2009 profile of the very iconic and very special person.

Better known stateside as Charlie Brown, weaves the blurred line between the man and the legend like someone taking a sobriety test. Tales of his drunken escapades are of epic proportions, his friends are an international Who's Who of the cool and his work as the publisher of Dune magazine and writer for Rolling Stone Japan has made him a global information excavator. And it is safe to say that since the early '90s, no one has done more than Hayashi to bring the so-called "downtown" and "youth" cultures of Tokyo and New York together -- by being a gracious host, a dedicated ambassador of the underground and simply the most fun person to chill with while in Tokyo. He forged a bond between the cultural capitals of the East and West by egging them on to confront and hang out with each other. For Westerners who were initially intimidated by the tradition and the maze of Tokyo, Hayashi put them at ease by taking them to karaoke bars and out-wilding just about everyone in the room, or back alley for that matter.
In 1983, at age 18, Hayashi came to Tokyo to attend Aoyama Gakuin University from his hometown in Mie Prefecture, a quiet east coast district, five hours outside Tokyo. When he couldn't find employment in publishing, he took matters into his own hands and started his own magazine. In 1993, he put out the first issue of Dune with Japanese actress Rie Miyazawa on the cover. "She was engaged to the famous Sumo wrestler Takanohana at the time, so they were in the news a lot," says Hayashi. "But right before the issue came out they broke up the engagement." C'est la vie.
Since the ill-fated first cover, Dune has come a long way, riding out the choppy waves of independent publishing and establishing itself as a cross-cultural hub. "Until the '90s, New York was a faraway place -- not too many people could go there and experience it," says Hayashi, who has traveled to New York countless times. "The gap has narrowed and the people in Tokyo have quickly absorbed the aspects of the downtown art scene. In terms of material culture and products, we have enough here, but the people who are making the scene in New York are very exciting to me." Over the years, Hayashi has collaborated with some of our finest wayward luminaries: Chloë Sevigny, Harmony Korine, Terry Richardson, Ryan McGinley, Liz Goldwyn and Aaron "The Don" Bondaroff, to name a few.
Photographer Mario Sorrenti met Hayashi in New York over a decade ago and the two have worked on numerous projects together. But more impressively, Sorrenti is responsible for Hayashi's oddly appropriate nickname: "Charlie Brown." Sorrenti recalls, "One night we were hanging out at a bar with a bunch of people, and I thought he just looked like Charlie Brown -- he never said anything because he didn't speak English, and I could never remember, or know, how to pronounce his name, but he just hung out and fit in."
When Hayashi's good friend and Dune regular Sofia Coppola cast him in Lost in Translation as himself, she helped plant "Charlie Brown" permanently in the pop culture landscape. "I met him in Tokyo when I was around twenty. He looked at my photos and was very encouraging. I felt he understood my point of view and style. He hired me for [Dune] shoots and this helped give me some confidence and experience to start making films," says Coppola. Hayashi introduced Coppola to many places around town that ended up in the film. "When Sofia comes to Tokyo, I always take her to spots I think are interesting, like karaoke and Japanese izakaya bars," says Hayashi, who appeared in one of the movie's most memorable scenes -- singing karaoke with Bill Murray.
The past couple of years have seen Hayashi ground himself more firmly in his work and community. To the surprise of many, the perpetual party man got married and is about to welcome his second child. And this past May Hayashi opened an art space called The Last Gallery. Considering the current state of the economy, it was a risky move. But after meeting and observing so many New York artists, he craved a scene of his own. "I wanted to open a spot where I could share the freedom of art, and where young talented people can have shows. I would like to represent what's going in Tokyo to the world," Hayashi says. "I feel like now it's the end of a period and the beginning of a new era."

This article was originally published as part of a feature story titled "The Real Deal," which, as we explained back in 2009, was about "art dealers from Tokyo, Los Angeles and New York, who do a lot more than provide gallery space. They act as cheerleaders, mentors and drinking buddies to the artists they represent. Committed to keeping business authentic even during troubled times and maintaining a vision large enough to embrace the most subversive acts and radical ideas, they are THE REAL DEAL." Hayashi