During a three-year stay in Hong Kong while his father taught at an international Swiss German school, Matthias Frey did some training in Wing Chun, the original kung fu style practiced by that city’s most famous son. Returning to Rothenberg, near Lucerne aged 10, the young Frey had been firmly bitten by the martial arts bug.
The gentle way
Unable to find a kung fu school locally, he took up judo, soon becoming intrigued by the idea of fighting but “not hurting people.” Judo also put him on a path that would bring him to Japan and help define him. Martial arts have, “taught me more about life than all my education has,” Frey says. No small claim given that his scholarly achievements run to a PhD in semiconductors, a postdoctoral fellowship, and further studies in technology strategy, financial data analysis and global policy at UC Berkeley and UC San Diego.
First visiting Japan on family holiday in 1984, Frey would spend 5 months at Tokyo Institute of Technology (where he would later do his postdoctoral fellowship) in 2001, and returned to the country at every opportunity for judo training and conferences. During the postdoctoral work, he “realized that Japanese was essential to properly communicate with my research colleagues,” and subsequently undertook full-time intensive language studies.
(Photo: ©Dr. Matthias Kaiserswerth)
There and back again
After a little over a year working on R&D projects for joint venture Nikon-Trimble, he took on a chief technical architect role with MTI, developing high-tech solutions in collaboration with a Japanese university. Following the March 2011 disasters, Frey began to consider returning to Switzerland, but first took a detour to Guatemala – “as different a culture to Japan as could be” – to give himself time to think, and learn some Spanish. While working as a med-tech consultant in Zurich, he spotted an opening for science and tech attaché at the Swiss embassy in Tokyo.
(Photo: ©Behram Dacosta)
A last-minute application paid off, and he was soon heading back to Japan in the autumn of 2012. Facilitating research and business collaboration between the two countries, promoting education and organising events, Frey found the position extremely rewarding.
But towards the end of the five-year contract, he attended a presentation by Nassim Nicholas Taleb on the outspoken author’s ‘Antifragile’ concept, decided to test himself afresh and headed back to Europe.
The one and only
After consulting freelance in Switzerland on business development, Frey was hired by Sony as a chief analyst and technology scout in Europe in 2018. This put him back in close touch with cutting-edge technology, but the pandemic brought a chunk of his work, and much of the associated travelling, to a halt.
In early 2021, he was appointed strategy planning manager for Sony Group, Japan, though was unable to come to Tokyo until April 2022. Exploring and developing new tech opportunities for Sony, his current main areas of focus are AI hardware and blockchain technology. As well as bringing in new information from outside, Frey says another of his tasks is to get the divergent divisions of Sony to interact more with each other.
While he was still in Switzerland, Sony were flexible enough to allow Frey to act as tech lead for a start-up called Mictic, which brought an innovative wearable music creator device to market at the end of 2021.
Multiple strings
Music has been one of Frey’s long-term passions, and along with playing bass guitar in bands in Japan and Switzerland, he previously collaborated with an embassy colleague on an AI-driven project that created new songs in the style of punk pioneers The Ramones.
Yet another string to his bow is photography. “I picked up a camera as a kid and have never let go.” As a high schooler he was able to cover judo tournaments he was competing in for newspapers, and has since held exhibitions of his photography in Japan and Switzerland.
Frey has continued his judo training over the years, and has been awarded his 5th dan by the Kodokan, the martial art’s headquarters since its founding in 1882. As well as competing — he won the Swiss veterans’ tournament in 2018 — Frey has also coached and refereed judo.
Never one to shy away from a new challenge, last year Frey took up Brazilian Jiujitsu, an offshoot from judo that emphasises grappling on the ground, in contrast to the parent art’s focus on throws. Not inclined to do things by halves, he recently entered the All Japan Master Jiujitsu Championship.
Text: Gavin Blair for SCCIJ.
(Photo: ©Dr. Tom Kuczynski)
