You’ve probably seen or heard of Kasso by now, but if not, here’s the gist: it’s like Takeshi’s Castle on skateboards, or what the Dime Glory Challenge might look like as a Japanese TV show – and it’s just as entertaining as it sounds. The show is produced by TBS, the same TV company that brought you Ninja Warrior. However, since there aren’t any skaters working at TBS, Shimon Iwazawa was hired to design the courses and curate the roster of skaters. During our interview with Shimon, we discovered that he grew up in our neighboring town Düsseldorf until the age of eleven, before moving to Japan, where he started skating at twelve. His journey into the skateboarding industry began with posting videos on YouTube, gradually building connections in the scene. While studying in Tokyo, he met many skaters who were on a professional level but despite their talent, struggled to make a living from it. Shimon wanted to change that and began managing skaters, helping them to get sponsorships and jobs. Furthermore he consults for companies that want to get into skateboarding and has designed several skateparks across Asia. You can see that he’s a creative mind, finding his own special niche to support skateboarding. Eventually, a friend introduced him to TBS, and that’s how Kasso was born. Naturally, we wanted to dive deeper into the concept behind this crazy show.
Two years ago TBS wanted to do something with skating and they were talking to me about what to do. Since the people from the TV company had no idea about skating, I was the only skate brain on the team. I was raising the idea that there are too many contests now – Street League, X Games, Olympic World Skate – and I thought it was getting to be a bit too much. We wanted to make something that was interesting and entertaining, for skaters but also for non-skaters, because it’s really hard for a non-skater to watch Street League. They don’t know how hard a switch kickflip backlip is. We wanted to make something that’s really fun to watch, and that’s why we ended up with this crazy course. We took all the tricks away and decided to just have cruising around, downhill, the fundamentals of skating. Kasso means to run but in a skateboard context it means to push and roll. So we ended up making this weird course that would be really hard to clear.
"I am usually the first tester. I’m just praying that I can skate it because if it’s not possible, I’m in big trouble, I guess."
We have more people that create, but the main team, including me, is three people and I was telling them to scroll through Instagram and watch cool skate content for an hour or two a day. They were scrolling all the skate clips that were going viral, crazy rail tricks and stuff. As a skater I’m interested to see a kickflip crooked flip out but TV producers are interested in stuff that’s big, that also interests non-skaters. So we gathered ideas and I designed some of the courses. We went back and forth and changed things. We start with a big idea, like a 30-meter rail course on water and then we change the shapes and stuff. We make a 3D model on the computer and it really takes a long time watching that together and making things bigger, smaller, longer, shorter, because we can’t just use a million dollars to make the course and see if it’s skateable. We can’t do that. So we were really careful that it would be actually possible to skate.
We can’t test, but I have some experience in designing and making skateparks. Still it’s a lot of pressure, it’s basically on me. If I say this is possible, they make it and I have to just pray. I am usually the first tester. I’m just praying that I can skate it because if it’s not possible, I’m in big trouble, I guess.
Not completely. There are minor changes. For example, we make a rail or a path, and it’s too narrow, so we make it thicker. Before the actual show filming, we do 10 or 20 days of just testing, testing, testing. I gather some professional skateboarders from Japan and let them try and we do small adjustments and check the safety.
For the rail coaster, no one did it until the end. I guess it was too difficult, but that was also the fun part, too. For the wallride, one person did clear it in the testing, but not in the actual show.
Usually I pick skaters that I feel fit the course. I try to pick skaters that are not only competing in contests but also do a lot of street skating so that we can convey to non-skaters about the culture.
For Leo, he just messaged me: “I want to compete!”. I was like, “Oh, hell yeah!” and invited him. Wes and Madars, I just messaged them: “Would you be down to join this weird Japanese show?”. I guess they were just really interested, because I think they like to skate things that haven’t been skated before. They were really excited to join the show.
"We film the show in two days, and we don’t allow people to practice, so it’s even."
Maybe for the long rail I’d like to have Jamie Foy. I also want to see a lot of creative skaters and also skaters like Yuto [Horigome] who are good at contests. Or skaters like Brandon Westgate, who push really fast. I want to see him go skate the downhill. Or Cordano Russell, he would be interesting, too.
We were really surprised that it blew up so much. I really didn’t think that so many people would be interested in the show, but I also didn’t think it would be too weird because I knew a lot of people liked Ninja Warrior or old Takeshi’s Castle shows. I personally wanted to make the show really Japanese TV style. I think that was one thing that helped make the show interesting.
In Japan the show is on TV at midnight and not too many people watch at that time. But seeing all the Twitter comments, they seem to like it. We hope we can broadcast it earlier so more people can watch.
We film the show in two days, and we don’t allow people to practice, so it’s even. But we show how the course is skated by the test skaters so they can watch it and they get to walk through and see the course once. They can see each section just to make sure that they know the distance or the size. So for example they can try the kicker, but not the whole downhill.
Because that place is used for other shows too, they break it down. I was really surprised when we did the the show the first time, nothing was built until three weeks before. And in the last two weeks, they just used a lot of people. They built all the obstacles in a few days and then in one or two days, they take everything down.
It’s usually something that I imagine would be cool to skate and to watch, like a rail over the water. I also just go through Instagram, watch some aspects – a curved rail or a quick jump up or a bank by the stairs – and make it into a course. But not every course idea came from me. Some came from the non-skaters and I made the shape so that it can be skated.
Yeah, it’s really fun to design and create but it’s also a lot of pressure. What if it’s not skateable? What if someone gets injured? It’s scary, but I enjoy it a lot.
The final course is a bit different in Season 1 and 2. Season 1 had a square rail on a flat ground, and Season 2 had a round rail on water. Actually, no one in the second season was able to clear the rail. I think with all the pressure of only one try, with 30 cameras looking at you and at night time, the light is shining, moving – that makes it really difficult.
I think so. It’s really scary to skate the rail coaster. You have to get on a rail three meters above the water. And if you miss with one wheel, you can credit card the rail, so it’s really scary, and it’s really harder than it looks. Skaters that do the course first try are really good at skating.
I think the prize money is not too important. But in Japanese TV show, one million is a common prize money. It’s like a TV thing. One million is a good number. On Season 1, five people received one million. In the second season, it’s zero.
Skateboarding is still not really liked in Japan because Japanese culture is about not disturbing others. Skating is the opposite of that. Destroying ledges, making noise, etc. It’s just not really fitting the Japanese culture. So I think what happened was that since skaters can’t really skate the streets, they just went to skateparks to practice. Japanese people are also really dedicated to learn every trick. There are a lot of contests in Japan and I think young people’s motivation was being able to win the contests. If skating was not hated in Japan as much, there would be more fun skating.
I mean, the TV company is responsible but I think since it costs so much money to build the course and make the show, just having a one-hour show on Japanese TV doesn’t make up the money. I think their plan is to make it like Ninja Warriors and sell it to other countries.
