DESIGN /
FEATURES
January 31, 2026
【Hiroshi Fujiwara Interview】"AI won't eliminate music" - A speaker from fragment × BE@RBRICK appears | MEDICOM TOY
MEDICOM TOY | MEDICOM TOY
BE@RBRICK AUDIO Portable Bluetooth® Speaker FRAGMENT 400%
A collaboration model has arrived: a BE@RBRICK speaker developed by Rinaro, in partnership with fragment, led by Hiroshi Fujiwara. Available in two simple designs: BLACK and WHITE. It embodies the aesthetic of HF, who has been involved with countless BE@RBRICK projects.
As this is a speaker, we asked about AI and music, topics frequently discussed in recent years, as well as the currently popular podcast program "BAD PHARMACY" and the SLIDE CULTURE MAGAZINE (a magazine you watch on YouTube) "QUIET."
Additionally, an interview with Pavlo Shymanovych, founder and CEO of Rinaro, about the development of the "BE@RBRICK AUDIO Portable Bluetooth® Speaker" can be foundhere
Text by SHINNO Kunihiko | Photographs by TAKAYANAGI Ken | Edit by TOMIYAMA Eizaburo
I have 100 percent trust in what MEDICOM TOY wants to do
—The collaboration model "BE@RBRICK AUDIO Portable Bluetooth® Speaker" with fragment is about to be released. Do you use Bluetooth® speakers in your daily life, Hiroshi-san?
Hiroshi Fujiwara(Hereafter, HF) I'm not home much, so almost never. However, I've been working with BE@RBRICK since its inception, so I take the stance of "go ahead with whatever MEDICOM TOY wants to do." I trust they won't bring anything strange, and I have 100 percent faith in their vision. There aren't many companies like that.
—BE@RBRICK is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, and you've been collaborating since its predecessor, KUBRICK. That's quite a history.
HFIt's amazing. MEDICOM TOY has become quite a large company.
—The colors are BLACK and WHITE, which are symbolic of fragment. Was that an easy decision?
HFYes. If there's a concept, I'm not the type to spend a lot of time on design.
—If you were to gift this speaker to someone, who would you choose?
HFRather than people who already like BE@RBRICK, it might be good for music lovers to get it and discover BE@RBRICK through this. However, I feel that the opportunities to listen to music at home have generally decreased compared to the past. In the first place, I think music in the 1970s was something only truly passionate people listened to.
So, perhaps it would be better if listening to music at home became something unusual again, like "only weirdos listen to music at home." Back then, when you bought a record, you'd listen to it until it wore out, but people don't listen that much anymore. But this is true for all genres; it's an inevitable consequence as archives grow.
Music is the most suited for AI, I believe
—Your song "KOTOBA" with the music unit "Order of Things" featuring Koki Okamoto was recently released digitally. Has your motivation for creating music changed from when you first started?
HF"KOTOBA" was a song made when COVID began. It was originally planned for release the summer three years ago, but due to the record company's circumstances, the release kept getting delayed. Now, with the rapid advancements in AI, I find myself questioning the meaning of doing it myself.
While AI is being utilized in various fields like video and text, I believe music is the most suited for it. This is because music itself is inherently based on imitation.
When you start a band, isn't it like "Let's do something like The Beatles" or "Let's do something like the Sex Pistols"? Since it's fundamentally built on "likeness," copyright is more ambiguous compared to other genres. There are only 12 notes, so even with a random prompt, it can form a coherent piece.
—Do you plan to utilize it yourself in the future?
HFI don't intend to release anything made with it myself, but when I asked a friend what they were listening to recently, they said, "I make my own music every morning and listen to it."
—That's incredible. An era where supply and demand can be met by one person.
HFAnd it's amazing that something we would take a month to create can be done in about 20 seconds by entering a prompt and pressing a button. In fact, thinking up the prompt takes longer.
—However, since it's created by recombining existing elements, it inevitably results in something that feels familiar. Also, there's a concern that if it leads to mass production of low-quality content, music might lose its value in the future.
HFIsn't all music like that? It's all something you've heard somewhere before. Every time new technology emerges, there are always people who complain. When DAT (Digital Audio Tape) came out, it was opposed with fears that records wouldn't sell if they were copied. There was also a debate about whether musicians would become obsolete if sampling could replicate orchestral sounds.
Now, there's a concern that AI might eliminate musicians. But fundamentally, since everyone is doing something "similar," it won't disappear. You could say the value of music might diminish, but with the general public starting to use it all at once, 2026 might truly become the first year of AI.
—The electricity consumption must be terrifying (laughs).
HFGoogle's search has already become AI-driven without explicit user action. Personally, I like new and interesting values. The hip-hop techniques I found interesting in the past involved sampling and using good music from the past, so I've always been drawn to that kind of thing.
The background behind the creation of "BAD PHARMACY" and "QUIET"
—Please tell us about the podcast program "BAD PHARMACY" with TaiTan and Ryohei Kamide. The collaboration with Lotte, which resulted in the release of the "Hokaron" portable hand warmer last November, also became a topic of conversation.
HFInitially, the word "podcast" itself seemed to be gaining popularity independently. "BAD PHARMACY" began two years ago when one of the students from FRAGMENT UNIVERSITY ( *Note 1) where I gave lectures, expressed a desire to do a podcast with me upon graduation.
*Note 1: A lecture series held as part of an open campus event from October 2023 to March 2024. It will be published as a book, "FRAGMENT UNIVERSITY | Non-Verbal Marketing HF's Special Lecture," in February 2025.
The initial proposal was to hear my old stories, but I suggested it would be better as a platform to discuss things I find interesting now and what will be interesting in the future. That's how it evolved into a collaboration with TaiTan and Kamide. Both are incredibly intelligent individuals, so I mostly listen.
Basically, I don't know much about what they do elsewhere, and they don't ask me about my activities at all. I also don't mention things like, "I'm releasing a new BE@RBRICK soon." That's part of what makes it interesting. Since both of them come from families who ran pharmacies, it would be great if we could do something witty and unusual, like creating and selling ginger shots.
—Listening to "BAD PHARMACY" while using the BE@RBRICK AUDIO speaker sounds enjoyable. Also, please tell us about "QUIET", the SLIDE CULTURE MAGAZINE (a magazine you watch on YouTube) that started in December 2024.
HFIt's been about a year, but the access numbers are incredibly low, which I find interesting in itself. "QUIET" originated from my contrarian thought: what would happen if YouTube had no video or audio? That's how it started.
Again, monetization is zero. Well, it doesn't cost much either. I imagine early magazines were created by people who were driven purely by their passion. In that sense, "QUIET" is exactly like that. Since there's no income from anywhere, no one involved receives any payment.
Conversely, we recently released a print magazine ("QUIET Presented by PRODISM"), and it attracted sponsors. We were finally able to monetize it through analog means. Normally, the common practice is to monetize online because print magazines aren't profitable, but we're doing the opposite.
—That's remarkable. That reverse way of thinking.
Producing a book on the history of Shibuya from the perspective of record stores
HFI've always enjoyed editing things, and it's the same with how I create music. Perhaps it's a habit formed from experiencing the golden age of magazines when I was younger. I hope to release a second issue of the print "QUIET" in about six months. Publishing the first issue made us realize we could use the YouTube "QUIET" as an archive, and conversely, we could conduct interviews and discussions more effectively by creating just a few lines of headlines for an article and leaving the details for the magazine. As part of that, a book about the history of Shibuya will be released soon.
Shinichi Takei, who runs a used record store called "Face Records" in Udagawacho, started investigating "Where was the first imported record store in Shibuya?" This led him to delve deeper and deeper, requiring him to visit the National Diet Library every week. His research findings were so fascinating that I encouraged him to "let's make a book" and produced it. All the manuscripts are complete, and it should be out in late February.
—I'm eager to read about the history of Shibuya, which was once the city with the most record stores in the world from the 1990s to the early 2000s.
HFApparently, the area where CISCO (a long-established imported record store that closed in 2007) used to be in Udagawacho was originally a military prison. The stairs in front of CISCO led to the prison's back entrance.
—I had no idea.
HFAfter the war, the US occupied the large land owned by the military and established Washington Heights ( *Note 2). It's said that only officers could live in the Washington Heights residences, and furniture, clothes, and records discarded as trash from affluent households spread throughout Shibuya and Harajuku, potentially forming a unique culture. That's our hypothesis.
*Note 2: Constructed in 1946 as a US military facility in Japan. Returned to Japan in time for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, it now encompasses Yoyogi Park, the National Yoyogi Stadium, and the NHK Broadcasting Center.
When I was young, foreigners primarily meant Americans. I went to London when I was 18, and when friends I made there visited Japan, they would mock the Japanese accent in English. It's true that all the English taught in Japan is American English, and we lived a life of "Hooray for Coca-Cola!" So, for the first time, I realized that the British found it strange. To that extent, during Japan's period of high economic growth, the 70s and 80s, it was truly dominated by America. Takei-san's book contains many such stories.
I also interviewed people in the fashion industry over 80 years old about Shibuya back then, and received many interesting responses. There was a pioneering select shop called "CAPSULE" ( *Note 3), with interior design by Shiro Kuramata and the introductory text written by Tadanori Yokoo.
*Note 3: Introduced emerging domestic creators of the time, such as Comme des Garçons, Kansai Yamamoto, and Issey Miyake, to the public.
Takei-san has already decided on the concept for his next research project, and there's talk of turning that into a book as well. Since I'm interested in interviewing people, and "QUIET" also facilitates interviews, things are moving along quite well. We've discussed how we can do more interviews and dialogues.
The next 100 years are actually the most interesting
—We look forward to the book's release and the future developments of "QUIET." Lastly, this year (2026) marks the 50th anniversary of Punk and the 40th anniversary of the release of "Kensetsuteki" by Ito Seiko & TINNIE PUNX (Hiroshi Fujiwara, Kan Takagi), a monumental album from the dawn of Japanese hip-hop. What are your thoughts?
HFI don't particularly think about my own anniversaries. TINNIE PUNX itself started from Kan-chan and me saying, "Has it really been 10 years since Punk?" However, this might connect to the AI discussion earlier, but I used to believe that pop culture ended in the 90s.
Rockabilly in 1960 and hip-hop in 1990 are completely different genres, and while there were various developments like glam and punk in between, after the 90s, everything felt like it was just based on rock, reggae, hip-hop, and house that had already emerged. Nothing felt particularly new, and I lived my life thinking that things didn't have to be new to be good.
—I think many people over 50 feel the same way.
HFHowever, recently, while watching "The Beatles Anthology" released on Disney+, I realized that perhaps the 100 years starting from the 90s, when all of pop culture had fully emerged, might actually be the most interesting period.
This is because Einstein proposed the theory of relativity 100 years ago, and it's only recently that quantum mechanics has taken shape and been realized in computers. While we may not be aware of it, physicists have likely been contemplating various ideas over the past century to reach this point. I believe similar developments could occur in the world of pop culture.
I was fortunate enough to be part of the generation at the starting point of this era, so I'm content to watch as existing elements are rearranged and their uses changed to create new and interesting things.
BE@RBRICK AUDIO Portable Bluetooth® Speaker FRAGMENT 400%
Size | Approximately 280mm in height
Colors | Available in 2 types: BLACK / WHITE
Weight | 870g
Specifications
● Equipped with Bluetooth® 5
● Frequency Range: 90Hz-20,000Hz (-6dB)
● Rinaro proprietary "QUAD’360™" omnidirectional audio technology
● Includes USB-C charging cable: 5V/2A
● Replaceable rechargeable battery
● 6 hours of continuous playback on a 1.5-hour charge
● Control volume and tracks with wrist rotation
Release Date | Available at MEDICOM TOY NEXT on February 7, 2026 (Saturday)
Price | ¥107,800 (tax included)
※ Limited quantity. Please forgive us if sold out.
BE@RBRICK TM & © 2001-2026 MEDICOM TOY CORPORATION. All rights reserved.
Contact Information
MEDICOM TOY User Support
Tel. 03-3460-7555